VIII.
I don't know who's more excited as we move from room to room, seeing the miraculous, phoenix-like renaissance of 221B as it slowly emerges from its pitiful destruction - Rosie or my old (and soon to be new) landlady.
"...and look at that cornicing, John. I always hated that damp patch, and now it's all gone and new again! And you should see the staircase! Brand new hand rail… mahogany, no less!"
Yep, definitely Mrs Hudson.
We duck under loops of cable and exposed boards and Rosie claps her hands when a workman starts drilling nearby.
"Oh, you'd think she'd be startled, wouldn't you dear?"
"She's not easily shocked," I say, hitching my daughter higher as we pass two men with a long roll of carpet tramping up the stairs.
Weeks (even days) ago, I could never have believed the sitting room would ever be a habitable space, but she opens a (half painted) door and here it is. Chairs under dust sheets, flesh-coloured unpainted plaster drying out under heaters, the smell of wood shavings and the spring of new boards beneath our feet. She is over by the newly glazed windows (still labelled and smeary), rustling around under numerous boxes and sheets until she pulls her arm out in triumph.
"It survived the blast untouched John. Mrs Turner's Adam found it over the street, in number 200's hanging basket."
"Bill! Bill!" Shouts Rosie as we all contemplate Sherlock's skull; his companion before me.
"I'll be sure to tell Sherlock," I say, "after I find out how my fifteen month old daughter learnt the name of his human skull."
"No need, dear", she comments blithely, placing it atop the new pine mantle which had yet to be painted. "He'll see it here tonight when he comes over to show Molly around. About six."
"Molly? Well isn't that nice."
"Bill!" shouts Rosie, clapping her hands.
~x~
Sherlock is a little late, but I don't want to wait inside. I just want to be alone with my thoughts. I know he's been sharing these cases over the past few weeks to reach out to me, to show me he's sorry for … what happened. Time has been useful, I think. Sherlock being Sherlock can't explain or ask for forgiveness in a normal, straightforward way, he needs to show me examples of human duplicity and moral uncertainty so that he can deduce the nature of my own moral code. Idiot. I don't know why he did ... why he made that phone call, but I do know - genuinely and truthfully - if I didn't have him in my life (in whatever mode it needs to be) I would be as empty as a depressing seaside town which is neither seaside nor town. He's like a missing piece in the puzzle of my life: awkward curves and corners which can be a devil to fit in sometimes, but absolutely and utterly needing to be in there, since they hold the whole picture together.
I sit comfortably on the stoop at 221B Baker Street and let the surprisingly balmy evening breeze ruffle my hair, which is loose and free. A few shoppers stroll past, maybe some commuters looking forward to their dinner, their glass of wine or an embrace from the one who greets them at the end of a tough day in the city. They don't know me, but I smile at them anyway.
Suddenly, one of them in the far distance breaks into a trot and I soon see the darkly dressed man is a police officer, flack vest flapping and hat in hand as he starts to run. Then I see the policeman is, in fact, Sherlock Holmes and he slows his pace considerably as I stand to greet him on his own front doorstep.
"Officer," I smile.
"Molly," pants he, face flushed, radio crackling and curls awry. "Would you like coffee?"
"No," I say, pulling the bottle from my bag. It's still cold. "I'd like wine, as would you."
He smirks, stepping up, inserting his brand new key.
"I never drink on duty," he says.
~x~
It's too warm for a fire in the grate, and Sherlock has shucked off his uniform jacket, removed his clip on tie and shoved his radio under a pile of dust sheets and old Daily Mirrors, presumably left behind by the workmen who seem to be working night and day to finish the job. He's promised to show me around but I decided we should have a drink first, therefore, we are arranged casually across two chairs he's unearthed from a cupboard under the stairs which smell musty and damp, but I don't care because he's telling me another tale as we sip Co-op Chardonnay in the slowly sinking sun glimmering through new windows.
"Hilda Hope has been married to Trelawney Hope, Cabinet Minister and close personal friend of the Prime Minister for twenty three years, yet she was unable to be remotely honest about the life she'd lead as a young girl, the reckless things she'd done in her past."
"Doesn't everyone have a past of some kind?" I say, sipping wine from a stripey mug (I'd forgotten glasses; there's always something) "and does it really matter in this day and age?"
"Yes they do." He looks away briefly, clear eyes dimming with… thoughts, memories? "And sometimes they suppress a past they don't like and remodel it into one that they do; a more acceptable version. This she had done, and when your husband is a cabinet minister, it doesn't pay to have any embarrassing secrets, since blackmailers are always poised, like sentinel spiders to pounce and take your life away."
"How much did the blackmailer want?"
"Not one penny, just the contents of her husband's black box . She stole his key and emptied the box, giving rise to Mycroft's dangerously high blood pressure levels this past fortnight." He shucked off regulation shoes, first one and then the other and propped up his feet on an upturned plasterer's bucket."I suspect the treadmill took a pounding."
"Inside the box?" I am watching him arch his long neck and rotate his shoulders; a man who's had a tough day. And here I am, with the glass of wine…
"A memory stick, supposedly full of delicate correspondence and war-provoking plans, but mere hours after it was given by Mrs Hope to the blackmailer, the latter was conveniently murdered by another wronged victim who has fled the scene and, it must be said, has my blessing. Thus, the lady was now in a quandary: what was she to do about the memory stick? How did she get it back before it could be taken as evidence, causing her husband to possibly loses his reputation and his position? The blackmailer's room is under police surveillance twenty-four hours a day and time was running out."
"So, she was unable to replace it."
"No. She could, and she did."
"You're going to tell me how, aren't you?" I look at him, and he looks right back, and he knows how I feel about him, but it's OK. It really is.
"Yes, Molly Hooper, I am." He puts down his mug and then picks up his camping chair, bringing it directly opposite mine, so that we are as close as comfort allows in a room that suddenly seems very small.
"It was the rug, where the body had fallen. I saw the crime report and because of the delicacy of the situation, Mycroft was reluctant to allow me near it. Spooks all over the place and no circumstance for 'family connections'." He smiles briefly. "Hence, my current attire. As 'PC Ashdown', I spoke to the officer who had been on duty all the previous week. He was nervous, defensive. When I examined the rug it confirmed my suspicions; there was spilt blood across the rug, but no corresponding bloodstain on the floorboards beneath."
He leans forwards towards me, long, pale fingers steepled beneath his mouth, drawing the eye. My eye. His voice is lower, quieter, lulling me. I decide to put down my mug of wine.
"It makes little sense…"
"Hooper, you are a pathologist. When you have eliminated the impossible…"
I'm looking into his eyes and I'm not seeing the sharp, glitter of a Sherlock Holmes explanation at all…
"Whatever remains…" I murmur.
"However improbable…"
"Still confuses the hell out of me."
His eyes pop wide, expression momentarily befuddled, then offended, then a realisation followed by a sudden snort of laughter. I'm suddenly laughing too, as all the tension leaches from the room like solid carbon dioxide in a wind machine. My chest hurts, I'm breathless and a hiccup away from hysteria before Sherlock is wiping his eyes, standing and walking deliberately over to the brand new mantelpiece where he lifts something I can't quite make out in the half light.
Suddenly he isn't laughing anymore.