Frozen Grave

Chapter 15

At seven o’clock, Gillian put three ice cubes in her vodka and tonic and climbed the stairs up to her bedroom. She plonked herself down onto her bed and rested the glass on her chest and lay looking at the ceiling. She thought it through. She didn’t regret the text. She didn’t regret finishing it and she meant it – but then, if that was true, why did she feel so sad? She sat up and opened her laptop and logged onto Love Uniform Dating. She scanned through the men – nobody new, nobody worth looking at. There was the policeman again. There were all the same men that had been on there the last two years. She gave a heavy sigh and lay back on the bed that still smelt of Ellerman’s aftershave. Maybe she should ring him and give him another ultimatum and try to force him along a bit? She wished he’d come back and she could talk it through with him. She’d been hasty maybe. Gillian regretted it now. She’d got into such a state about things. Two weeks of waiting for him to turn up, missing him like mad. She had too much time on her own to stew over things and some things just didn’t add up. But she didn’t want to finish it. She hadn’t meant to get so angry. Now she was lying here on her own; that was not what she wanted. She heard the squeak of her letterbox and waited for the sound of junk mail landing on the mat – it didn’t come; she picked up her drink as she sat up on the bed. It was then she smelt smoke.

She scrambled off the bed and ran to the loft stairwell. Between her and the front door was a wall of fire. She closed the door and grabbed her duvet – jamming it at the bottom of the door. She was crying, her hands were shaking as she found her phone and dialled 999.

‘Help me – I’m on fire – my house is on fire!’

Gillian ran back and forth from the locked window to the door with the phone in her hand as she waited for the sound of the fire engine. She felt the heat building in the room as she coughed and choked on the thin smoky air. She stared at the door and prayed as she listened to the roar from the other side. Then she heard the fire engine and ran back to the window and started to bang on the glass… She slammed her hand against it as she saw the firemen running towards her house.

‘Help me… help…’

She looked back towards the door. It was starting to blacken and smoulder and smoke was beginning to pour through.

The heat was burning her lungs. She felt dizzy.

She screamed as she banged on the window. The front of the house was on fire now. She tried to open the window and her hand stuck to the metal handle. In that second all the holes in the burning door joined up and it exploded inwards.