Frozen Grave (Willis/Carter #3)(31)

‘Let’s go upstairs.’ She picked up the bottle. ‘I want to work up an appetite for this meal that you’re going to take me for.’ Ellerman looked at her expression and thought how she had obviously been building up to this and he hadn’t noticed. Whatever she had suppressed in the last few visits, it had certainly decided to surface now and he was feeling very deflated.

‘I’ve booked a restaurant in town. It costs a lot but then I’m worth it, aren’t I?’

She led the way up to her attic room.

He went across to look through the skylight at the evening. He could see the orange glow of car headlights going past on the road below; he could see streams of them in the distance on the motorway. He couldn’t see his car from there – he always parked it further up the road, well away from any chance of it being knocked. But he knew it was waiting for him. He felt the urge to get back in it now and drive, put on his music, and hit the highway.

Coz, baby, we were born to run . . .

He turned back to the bed and saw that she was waiting, and said to himself: ‘Get it over with . . .’ He started his usual moves but today it wasn’t working for him. He changed positions. Maybe if he thought of someone else – that would do it for him? But it didn’t. He was having a difficult job staying hard, maintaining his interest. He stopped, sighed, smiled embarrassedly as he hovered over her.

‘Sorry, darling – been a long day for me. I feel under pressure with you looking so damn sexy in your red corset. And . . .’ He rolled away. ‘My client really took it out of me.’ He lay on his back, exhausted.

‘You can’t just give up – don’t be so selfish. I thought you were Mr Stud?’

Forty minutes later, Ellerman was given the signal that enough was enough.

Gillian rolled over and looked at her phone on the floor beside the bed. ‘Just in time – we have forty-five minutes to get to the restaurant. And God, I’m hungry. I hear this place is Michelin-starred – a hundred pounds a head. But then . . .’ She turned and looked defiantly at him as she opened the attic-bedroom door and went out on the landing to have a shower in the bathroom next door. ‘You owe me – all the meals and the bottles of wine you’ve had here in the last eighteen months and, to be honest, I’m beginning to think you’re mean with money . . .’ Ellerman turned over in bed and lifted his head in protest but didn’t speak. ‘Yeah . . .’ said Gillian. ‘Prove me wrong.’

Ellerman got dressed whilst he heard the shower running. He gathered up his things and stepped down the stairs from the attic bedroom. He was thinking it through. He’d lost his hard-on halfway and had to spend half an hour on his knees pleasuring Gillian and now he was going to have to pay two hundred quid for a meal he couldn’t afford. Enough was enough. Ellerman went downstairs and into the lounge and was just contemplating what would be the best plan of escape when Gillian hurried down the stairs wearing a white towelling robe, as if she knew what he was thinking.

‘You going somewhere, darling?’ she asked in a child’s petulant voice as she pulled the robe tight around her. Her eyes were set hard. He could see that she was still in the mood she’d been in before they’d had sex, despite his exhaustive efforts.

‘I’m so sorry, babe. Just had a call. I need to go.’

‘What about the restaurant, babe?’

‘I can’t this time, darling. I am truly sorry. I have to drive up North straight away. I’ve got a six-hour car drive ahead of me.’ Gillian shook her head in mock sympathy as she glared at him. He reached for her and rubbed her arms as if she were a needy relative. ‘Oh, bugger it – you’re so much more important to me than you realize. I’ll stay here but let’s relax, get cosy, get drunk together. I wanted to talk to you about the Spanish house. I wanted to give you an update. You know . . . I am so looking forward to us moving out there, darling.’

‘Really? All the money I’ve put into it these last eighteen months, I would have thought you could have built a fucking mansion by now.’

‘Yes . . . well . . . I wish.’ He pulled back to look at her. ‘It’s so nearly there, darling. You just need to keep the faith. It’s within our grasp and then we’ll be flying out there and living a life of luxury – lying in the sun – just you and me.’ He could see by her face that she’d been waiting for the chance to explode. The time was now. He braced himself. But then he saw a tiny chink of light. Her face was softening, her eyes melting. Was she going to relent? He knew why – she didn’t want to be on her own. She had missed the boat for having kids and had banked on a career that had not come through for her. Now she was lonely and brittle and too old to compromise.

He smiled as his eyes searched hers and he did his best dejected look.

‘I’m so sorry, darling – you know I wouldn’t let you down for the world but I’m finding it so hard at the moment with cash-flow problems. The architect in Spain needs paying or he’s threatening to stop working on the site and we don’t want that, do we?’ She shook her head. ‘Look – I can’t lie to you. I’m not mean – God forbid! But, you’re right, I haven’t had any money recently. It’s all tied up in building boats. I’m so pissed off I can’t take you to a fancy restaurant like I know I should. You deserve that and so much more and you will have it, I promise.’