Mrs. Wilkens looked over the schoolyard. All children were gone now except two girls who were sitting up on the slide.
Mrs. Wilkens didn't teach any of the girls' classes, so she didn't know them very well, but she knew that their names were Rose and Ellie Watson. She had heard a lot about them. They seemed to be pretty extraordinary students.
She looked at her watch, school had been out half an hour ago. She went over to the slide. "Who is going to pick you up?" she asked the girls.
"My Dad!" the younger girl, Ellie, said. "He's always late, because he has a job where he has..." She hesitated.
"...irregular working hours!" Rose, the older girl added.
"That's why he always says, why my Mom or John should pick us up, they're usually on time..." Ellie said.
"Although mostly no one picks us up at all!" Rose said proudly. "Because our parents think it is ridiculous that most kids in our school aren't allowed to walk home by themselves."
"But on Tuesdays we have got violin lessons", Ellie added. "And we have to use the tube to get there and we are not supposed to do that by ourselves yet."
They slid down the slide.
"When do you think your Dad will be here?" Mrs. Wilkens asked. She wasn't supposed to go home before all children had left.
Both girls shrugged their shoulders. They started to climb up the ladder of the slide again.
"He isn't my real Dad, you know!" Rose told the teacher. She slid down the slide. Her sister followed her.
"We usually don't correct people who say it wrong," Ellie said. "Because it's too complicated to explain to everybody, but he is MY real Dad. HER real Dad is John, but they both don't like it, when we call them real and not-real Dad, because that sounds like if we liked one more than the other."
"Which we don't! They are both really cool", Rose said, while she climbed up the ladder again. "And Ellie and I decided that we wouldn't take one each, but that we would share them both."
"But we still call our own Dad 'Dad' and the other one 'Sherlock' or 'John'," Ellie said and climbed behind her sister.
"The real Dad is the one, you get your DNA from, you know!" Rose explained. "The DNA tells for example your hair which colour it should have."
Mrs. Wilkens remembered that she had heard that Rose Watson was a pretty smart student and that when Ellie Watson started here there had been a specialist at the school who had tested her. She got especially advanced assignments after that. She had had the vocabulary of an average 11 year old and had been able to handle numbers up to 1000 at the age of six.
"My parents call them father and co-father, when they explain that to other people." Rose said. Both girls slid down the slide together. "That's a word people also sometimes use if there are two fathers for one child because the fathers are gay, you know!"
They climbed up the ladder again. "Then there is also one father that is the real father and one who isn't but likes the child as much as if he were," Ellie said and slid down the slide.
"Are your fathers gay?" Mrs. Wilkens asked. She wouldn't have a problem with that, but she always thought it was important to know as much as possible about the children's background. She had heard a lot of theories and rumours about the situation in this particular family. A gay couple and the ex-wife of one of the partners was one theory she had heard. It would be interesting to know, how things really were.
Rose sat down on the slide but didn't slide down. "I don't know...," she said musingly. "They like each other and although my Dad doesn't want that around people other than Mom and Ellie and me, they also kiss and hug and stuff. So they probably are gay, yes."
"But they both like Mom, too," Ellie objected starting to climb the ladder again. "With kissing and hugging and stuff. And you aren't gay, if you are a man and like a woman, aren't you?"
Mrs. Wilkens really didn't want to decide what their Dads might consider themselves to be. "Maybe you should ask them that yourself!" she said.
"We will!" Rose said and slid down the slide. Mrs. Wilkens was pretty sure, they would.
They heard a police siren in the distance that was approaching until a police car stopped squealing in front of the school. A tall dark haired man in a dark coat jumped out. "Thanks, Greg!" he called into the car and hurried towards the girls.
"Hi," he said to Mrs. Wilkens and shook her hand. "Sherlock Holmes, sorry, I'm late. I've got... Very irregular working hours."
"So I've been told...", Mrs. Wilkens said.
He turned towards the girls. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
They were.
"Where is your hat?" he asked Rose.
"I didn't wear one this morning!" she said.
"Yes, you did!" he said. "I saw you leave with it!"
"No, I didn't!" she said again. "You must remember wrong."
"Rose Lucy Watson! If I tell you, that you wore a hat this morning, when you left for school, you can be sure, that you wore a hat this morning, when you left for school! Where did you put it?"
"I told you, I didn't have one!" Rose said again.
"Yes, you had!" her little sister told her. "If Dad and I both remember that, it must be true. Mom says, both our minds work the same way and never miss anything!"
Rose realised that she had lost this discussion. "Maybe I left it in the classroom," she mumbled.
"Why don't you go up with... Him... and search for it?" said Mrs Wilkens, trying to remember whose Dad this was.
"I'll wait down here!" Ellie called and started to climb onto a bench that stood on the school's playground.
"It's easy to remember, that he's my Dad, you know," she said, knowing about people's problem with this and always eager to help. "I have dark curly hair like my Dad and Rose has blond straight hair like her Dad. Because of the DNA we told you about earlier! Do you remember?"
"Yes, thanks, I remember," Mrs. Wilkens said.
"Rosie doesn't have my Dad's DNA and I don't have John's DNA, but we both have our Mom's DNA," Ellie climbed up on the bench.
"Do you know, that they couldn't put my Dad's name onto my birth certificate because only John was married to my Mom and my Dad wasn't? Even though everybody knew that my Dad was my Dad they would have had to put John's name on there." Ellie jumped down from the bench.
"But then my uncle took care of that. My Mom and John always say he can take care of everything. My Dad says they shouldn't tell him that because he has a feeling of omnipotence as it is." She climbed up the bench again.
Her father and Rose came out of the school building. Rose was wearing a light blue hat and looked very angry.
"I don't know, how the hat could get here. I left it at home this morning," she said. "Somebody must have taken it at home and brought it into my classroom! You should really investigate that!"
"Yes, sure, I will..." Sherlock answered. "Come on let's go! We're really late now!"
"But that's really not our fault!" Rose said, while the girls took their violin cases and backpacks, that were lying at the side of the playground.
They jumped towards the school gate. Ellie's father and Rose's Sherlock followed them, his dark coat flying behind him.
Notes:
I read that you have to put the mother's husband as the father onto the birth certificate even if everybody involved knows that that's not true and agrees that the real father's name should be on there.
I immediately saw a story in that and knew Mycroft would solve this problem...