George drank his coffee quickly and went off to start loading the exhibits van, leaving Dillon alone with Emma. “So,” he said, feeling the need to fill the silence, “what time have they got you working till today?”
“Why?” Emma asked, eyeing him mischievously. “Surely you weren’t thinking of asking me out, what with me being gay?”
Dillon blushed, gulped down a mouthful of coffee in order to buy himself a few seconds grace, and then stammered something in gibberish.
Emma laughed at his discomfort. “You do think I’m gay, don’t you?” she asked, moving closer. “Only, a little birdie whispered in my ear that you told Ned I wasn’t interested in men. Is that true?”
Bloody hell! Dillon thought, angrily. Georgebig-mouth Copeland has grassed me up! No wonder the tubby git had shot off sharpish, he must have known Emma was going to bring this up.
Dillon cleared his throat and ran a finger around his collar, which suddenly felt very tight. He couldn’t deny it, not when her source was Copeland. “It’s not like it sounds,” he said, hastily raising his hands to placate her.
Emma folded her arms across her chest. “Oh? And how exactly does it sound?” she asked, sweetly.
Dillon’s mouth opened and then closed, and he felt himself wilting under her gaze. His mind went into overdrive as he tried to concoct an answer that wouldn’t drop him further in the shit. And then, out of nowhere, inspiration struck. “I was only repeating what Kevin Murray told me,” he said.
The look of amusement was gone in an instant, and Emma’s face clouded with anger. “That nasty little turd,” she fumed. “I should have known.”
Dillon breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a bit of gamble, blaming Murray, but the man had a reputation for letting his hands wander when he was around the girls, and he wasn’t averse to calling any woman who complained about him a lesbian. As an advance exhibits officer, he was someone that Emma would already know; and in Dillon’s experience, to know Murray was to dislike him.
“Why do you say that?” Dillon asked, and then answered his own question. “Don’t tell me, he tried it on with you and you said no?”
Emma nodded, shuddering at the recollection of creep features brushing against her on the dance floor at a recent leaving do; gyrating his skinny hips as he pointed at his crotch and invited her to play with his extendable baton. “I most certainly did. I wouldn’t go out with that slimy little toad if he was the last man alive. Plus, I don’t generally date coppers – no offence, but I know what most of you lot are like.”
“None taken,” Dillon said. He knew what most coppers were like, too.
“I made the mistake of going out with one once,” Emma said. “Bloody heathen had the cheek to sniff me when he thought I wasn’t looking, to see if I still smelled of death.”
“That’s terrible,” Dillon said, shaking his head like it was the worst thing he had ever heard. “I would never do a thing like that.”
“Anyway, I knew Kevin’s nose was out of joint when I turned him down, but I didn’t think he’d stoop to spreading rumours about me.”
“I’m not surprised,” Dillon confided. “I’ve never trusted him.”
“To be honest,” Emma said coyly, “I thought you’d told Ned that I was gay because he was going to ask me out and you were jealous. I thought it was rather sweet, and I was going to tease you about it. I didn’t bloody well realise that you really thought I was gay.”
Shit, Dillon thought. She thought it was sweet that I was lying to put Ned off asking her out. I could have got away with it, but now I’ve made the situation worse by blaming twat features!
“Just you wait until I see that little cretin,” Emma said, vindictively. “I’m going to cut his tiny shrivelled bollocks off with a rusty knife.”
Dillon held up his hands to calm her. “Perhaps the best thing is to say nothing,” he advised. “You don’t want to give that petty little knob-head the pleasure of seeing he’s rattled you.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man to forgive and forget. I would have thought you’d be all for me cutting his gonads off.”
“Oh, I would be, normally,” Dillon admitted, but even he drew the line at turning a man into a eunuch for something he hadn’t done – even a man like Murray. “I suspect he was only saying it out of insecurity, to stop people taking the piss out of him over you giving him the cold shoulder.”
Emma wasn’t buying that. “Yeah, right! That man’s got the skin of a rhino; he wouldn’t care what anyone else thought about him.”
“Tell you what,” Dillon said, “why don’t you let me have a quiet word with him on your behalf. There’s no love lost between us, and I’ll put the fear of God into him.”
Emma thought about this for a few moments. “I had heard you two didn’t get on,” she said. “Very well, I’ll let you sort him
