Disclaimer – I don't own the characters. They belong to ACD, MG and SM and the BBC. No one pays me to do this, I do it for love.

Harrow School is a real place but all of the character and events depicted are entirely fictitious. I am just using Harrow as a location in which to ground the plot.

Chapter Eleven

Sunday evening, on an Exeat Weekend, was a busy time in the house. All the boys were supposed to be back by nine in the evening but the vagaries of Sunday travel sometimes caught people out. It was a favourite day to schedule maintenance on the railways, which might mean services cancelled all together or replacement bus services, so that part of the journey had to be completed by road. Parents often kept their children home as late as possible, just to have more time with them, meaning they cut it rather fine to make the nine o'clock deadline. As each boy returned to the fold, Reba ticked them off on her Call Over list. Once back in house, they were under school rules, which, on a Sunday evening, meant not being allowed out of house after seven fifteen. The boys had a lot of catching up to do, with one another, talking about their weekend at home, so they sat around the house in groups of various sizes, chatting, gaming watching TV or playing table tennis or snooker.

Mr Wilson had told Reba earlier in the day that Mrs Holmes had agreed to Sherlock moving to Gayton so she was responsible for organising the move. She had arranged for one of the porters to bring his trunk up from the trunk store but she would not touch his belongings until he arrived. She would never be so intrusive. But she would help him to pack and to move over and settle in to the new house. She would still be his matron, in the new house, as Gayton did not have a matron of its own. If he were ill or had any other pastoral needs, she and the over-spill house staff would sort out amongst themselves who could best attend to these needs. He would still be a member of The Park and would go there during the day but he would spend his evenings, nights and all his weekend free time at Gayton.

ooOoo

Sherlock arrived back at the house at about seven o'clock in the evening, delivered by the chauffeur. Reba was in the lobby, chatting with the parents of another boy when he walked in through the door. She put her hand out to stop him and he waited patiently while she quickly finished her conversation, then she turned to him.

'Sherlock, I hear that your mum has agreed to you moving to Gayton for a while,' she began, smiling. His scowl told her that this had not been a welcome revelation.

'Come with me,' she said, and led the way to her surgery. Once inside, she invited him to sit in the arm chair. She sat on her desk chair.

'How do you feel about going to Gayton for six weeks, because that's how long you'll be there?' He looked her full in the eyes and said,

'I couldn't be happier, Matron, to be honest. The further away from Morris I am, the better, but my mother is not pleased. She said I was being sent to the Sin Bin house, with the other naughty boys. She says I'm a wicked child and that is where I belong.' The complete lack of emotion in his voice and facial expression when he spoke these cruel and vicious words was almost as shocking as the words themselves. Reba had to be very careful what she said next. She could not be seen to criticise the parent but she could not leave such a statement unchallenged, since it was entirely inaccurate.

'Sherlock, I know that some of the boys call Gayton the 'Sin Bin' house but it is not and never has been intended to be a negative concept. Gayton is a small environment with higher staff/pupil ratios, for the benefit of pupils who we think need a little more support than others to cope with living in a boarding environment. No one is ever sent there as a punishment. The idea is that pupils spend a short time there, so that they and we can work together to help them feel more at home in the school, more like they belong. The reason why I - and it was me - recommended you go there is because I think you had a very unfair start to your time here which, to be honest, was mostly our fault. As she spoke, she went to her filing cabinet and opened the drawer which contained all the pupils' confidential files. She took his out, opened it and removed her copy of the report she had written for the Head Master. She gave him the papers and invited him to read it.

'I wrote it about you, so it is only fair that you should see what it says,' she explained. 'I'll leave you alone for a moment, but, when you have finished, please do not take it away with you. It is confidential and I probably could get into a lot of trouble for even letting you see it, let alone should anyone else get hold of it. Are you with me on this?' He nodded so she left the room and stood outside in the corridor, giving him some privacy.

Sherlock began to read the report. It was quite technical in places, using psychological terminology but he read a lot of science magazines, so there weren't any terms there that he hadn't come across before. As he read the account of his first month at the school, written from a third person perspective, he had the strangest feeling that someone had opened his head and looked inside. All his perceptions were laid out in this document, written in formal scientific language, but so precise and so accurate that he could hardly believe that he had not written it himself. He read about his devastation at having to leave behind his beloved violin, his trepidation at finding himself confronted by the boys who assaulted him, his shock and horror at the realisation that he could have died, his relief in finding that Morris was not in the house when he returned from hospital, his dismay when he discovered that he still had to share a room with the boy who had almost killed him and the absolute joy at being reunited with his violin but obliged to keep it and play it in secret, in order to protect his brother, making it unavoidable that he must play it at night, thus depriving himself of sleep. He read in these graphic descriptions all the logical decisions he had taken, so logical that no other course of action could have been deemed appropriate. It was all there in black and white. He read to the end, including the recommendation that he be given a place in Gayton so that staff could try to repair the damage caused by his traumatic induction to the school and the house; so that he might become as well integrated into the Harrow environment as possible for him, as an individual, high-lighting the fact that every pupil had a different Harrow experience, specific to them and that pupils should not be seen as a homogenous group but as a group of separate, unique entities. Having finished reading, he sat holding the sheaf of papers, gazing at them, rendered somewhat speechless.

Presently, he stood, put the report on Matron's desk and walked to the door of the surgery. She was standing outside and turned to look at him, when he appeared in the doorway.

Matron,' he said, 'I don't know what to say.'

'You don't have to say anything, Sherlock. Let's go and get you packed up.' She sent him on ahead to begin his packing, whilst she returned the report to the filing cabinet and locked the door, then followed in his wake to his room, to help him get sorted.

ooOoo

Having caught up with Sherlock in his room, she advised him to pack things he would need for Sunday night and Monday morning in a separate bag to take with him to Gayton that evening. His trunk would be delivered by one of the porters, the next day.

'I know it's only just down the road but I'll take you in my car, then we can take your bedding and your violin, too.' At the mention of his violin, she saw his face fall rather dramatically.

'Did the Head Master tell your parents about the violin?' she asked. He nodded.

'So are you being allowed to keep it?'

'I don't know,' he replied. 'My father is still away so I expect I'm alright until he gets back but, after that, I will have to wait and see.' He still seemed perturbed about something but she decided not to pursue it. One thing at a time, she thought, and right now, the 'thing' was moving. Having packed everything up, she sent him to the Sick Bay, to collect the things he had left there, on Friday, then they both carried his overnight things down the stairs and out to her car. The narrow streets of Harrow-on-the-Hill were still quite clogged with cars retuning boys from their exeat but Reba manoeuvred her car along the High Street onto Peterborough Road and then along Davidson Lane turning left onto the one-way street Grove Hill, pulling up right outside the over-spill house. She helped Sherlock to carry his things into the house, through the main entrance. Mr Anders, who was in the Tutors' Study, came to greet them. Sherlock recognised him as the man who had helped him on the first day of term, which made him feel less awkward about being in this strange house. Mr Anders showed him to the room that would be his home for the next six weeks. It was a single, on the first floor, facing the street.

'Leave your things in here for now, Holmes, and I'll show you around the house. Most of the other boys are back now, so I'll introduce you, at the same time.' Reba turned to Sherlock and said,

'I'll leave you with Mr Anders, now, Sherlock. He'll make sure you know where everything is. I'll have your trunk brought over tomorrow so you will be able to unpack properly. Don't forget, you still belong to the Park, so come for Call Over at lunch time and your old bed is still yours, if you need somewhere to hang out, while you are there alright?' He nodded and thanked her for her help. She said goodnight to him and the beak and she left.

'Right then, let's go!' said Mr Anders, cheerfully, and took Sherlock off to meet his new house mates. The other boys were mostly Removes but there were also two Fifths and a boy in Lower Sixth. The Removes were all in double rooms, the others, including Sherlock, were in singles. He hoped the ones in doubles wouldn't hold that against him but he need not have worried. The other boys seemed very affable and seemed to get on quite well together. The 6th Former was a bit aloof but he still shook Sherlock's hand and bid him welcome to the House of Ill Repute. He didn't actually know what that meant but figured it was something smutty by the sniggering response of the other boys.

'OK, guys, no fun at Holmes' expense, please. Let the poor man get his bearings before you start ribbing him,' Mr Anders pled on his behalf. Although he was the youngest in the house, Sherlock wasn't the shortest. A couple of the Removes where shorter than him so he didn't feel too intimidated. Sharing a house with fifteen other boys was a lot less daunting than sharing with another sixty-nine and having his own room was a huge bonus. He thought he was going to quite like being here and would probably be sad to leave, when his time was up.

At nine o'clock, Mr Anders rang the bell for Call Over and the boys all assembled in the Common Room. The House Master, Mr Russell appeared and introduced himself to Sherlock then had a chat with the boys about their weekends, gave out some important notices, reminded them all to make sure they had uniform and school things sorted out for the morning, then called the meeting to a close with Call Over. Mr Anders reminded Sherlock that Shell Lights Out still applied, even though he was the only one it applied to, and left him to sort out his bed. He was quite happy to go to bed at ten o'clock. It had been a pretty stressful weekend and, every time he thought about what he had said to his mother about Mycroft, his stomach turned over. He deeply regretted that little outburst and feared it would have far-reaching consequences but the cat was out of that particular bag and he could not put it back in. He would ring Mycroft tomorrow evening and try to apologise. That would be a very difficult conversation.

ooOoo