Three days.

Back at the Hammersmith school on Monday, Adele was silently chanting to herself. Eliza clearly was getting more and more frustrated, what with Adele zoning out whenever Eliza tried to speak, and when she did get a chance, Adele interrupting her. At lunch on Monday, Adele found herself confronted.

'What's the real reason you weren't here for most of last week?'

'I told you. John was being stupid, because of the roof thing, and – '

'What roof thing? The Sherlock roof thing?'

'No, not the Sherlock roof thing, it was just…'

Shit. Adele had said too much.

'Then what roof thing?'

'Nothing, it doesn't matter anymore.'

'Yes it does.'

'Why? If I said it's not important, it's not important. End of story.'

'That isn't the only deciding factor.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Tell me.'

Eliza was glaring at her now, and Adele didn't really have the energy to argue.

'I sort of found my way onto the roof and… long story short, Lestrade caught me before I could have any fun. And then John got all paranoid.'

Just as Adele finished speaking, Eliza threw her arms around her. For Adele this was quite awkward, considering that hugs weren't really her thing, and that she wasn't particularly used to hugs and such. She sort of pated Eliza on the back, until she let go, to Adele's relief.

'Are we done now?'

Eliza shook her head sadly.

'You don't even care.'

Adele shrugged.

'It was basically last week. Not important, unless it helps solve all this, which it doesn't.'

'You were about to throw yourself off a building…'

'Big deal.'

'Why don't you care?'

'It's not important! If I thought it was important, I wouldn't be here, would I?'

'Is it boring now?'

That was it.

'Yes it bloody well is!'

'Why?'

'Because there are worse things going on in my life to worry about! I'm slightly more concerned with getting out of here!'

And for some reason, that was it for Eliza, too.

'Your life isn't so crap, you know!'

Adele was quite taken aback by this sudden outburst.

'So you have to live with Mrs Daines,' Eliza continued, rising from the short stone wall they both had been sat on.

'So you're a- a social pariah or whatever!' The brunette ranted in frustration, pacing to and fro. 'And, I know, you saw your father figure jump off a building, I get it.'

Adele scoffed. How could she 'get it'? But before she could voice this, Eliza spoke again.

'But that doesn't mean you can just, assume, that you've got it worse than everyone else! You're mean, and you say things that shock people just to see the looks on their faces!' He hands flew outwards around her head at the last.

'And you know the worst part?' Adele looked at her, but the look of fire in Eliza's eyes stalled her words. Eliza half laughed, and continued almost as if she were mocking herself.

'You're, the only person, who's relatively nice to me. I don't care, about the way you talk, the way you act, because you're the only bloody person who even speaks to me. And yes that includes my family.' She was looking at Adele now, almost imploringly. 'You've got people who care about you, people that love you! And all I've got is you.' Her face changed again as she spat out the words bitterly.

'And I don't care that you think you're better than me. You are, you're clever, you're funny, whatever. But don't you dare, treat me like I'm some insecure little kid whose biggest thing to worry about is the latest fashion. Because as sarcastic, and clever as you are, you DON'T KNOW ME, Adele Holmes!'

Both girls glared at each other, and then, without warning, Eliza turned on her heel and walked away.

Adele stared after her. Then as she frowned and lowered her eyes slowly to the ground, her brain raged a war with itself.

What the hell was that all about? Alright, so Adele was pretty self-centred, but it wasn't as though she did it deliberately, or just out of spite. Most of the time. And besides, Eliza was annoying basically half the time she was around Adele, and Adele hadn't had a go at her. Yes, she had been tempted too, but she hadn't. Which was strange, considering that she would have under normal circumstances. But she hadn't, which made Eliza's outburst much weirder. Adele wanted to go after her, and ask what had happened, but according to books, and the general rules of friendship (or ex – friendship, in this case), that didn't happen. Damn and blast.

Swearing silently to herself, Adele began pacing the small space in which she had been spending these lunch hours. If Eliza was really pissed off about something, Adele was pretty sure that she would have picked it up by now. After all, she usually could.

Or could she? Adele's powers of deduction had been failing her for a while now, but not to this extent. She could still tell who was cheating on who, and vague details from various people's lives. And now she couldn't do any of that. The lack of knowledge was annoying, not to mention headache worthy, which was frustrating, to say the least. Now Adele was straining to find out even the obvious. Well, most people would still be unable to identify it, and probably wouldn't be too worried if they didn't, but for Adele, who couldn't really identify herself as 'most people', missing something was almost scary.

Well, in keeping with her general person policy, Adele decided not to go after Eliza. If Eliza wanted to explain, she could. Although Eliza didn't know it, she had two and a half days, and after that she hopefully wouldn't be hearing from Adele again. So, not the nicest way, but disappearing had always been Adele's speciality. The ability to remove yourself from somewhere at any given point in time was a useful one, and Adele had used it a fair few times before. Some she had vanished completely, for instance when Sergeant Donovan was annoying her, and others she had blended into the background, one step removed from the action. Of course, sometimes this had been against Adele's wishes, and she had only done it because Sherlock didn't want any trouble, and wanted the case over as quickly as possible. Saying this, it hadn't been frequently. Sherlock had loved a case, provided it was interesting enough.

But now she was off topic. And was about to be even more so.

As Adele turned around to pace some more, she saw, in the distance, Mycroft Homes.

What on Earth was Mycroft doing there? He was talking to someone, and clearly didn't want to be seen. His umbrella was in his hand, as per usual, and opposite him stood –

The headmaster.

Adele couldn't get any nearer, in case she was seen, but she couldn't hear anything from where she was. This meant that she would simply have to observe their behaviour, and hope she wasn't spotted.

It was obvious that neither of them wanted to be seen together, and within two minutes, Mycroft had walked off, leaving the headmaster to himself. Adele was so surprised by this that she failed to notice a text coming through on her phone;

One of them.

SH

One of them… One of them knew? Well, one of them knew about the texts, which was the headmaster. Both of them had spoken to Adele fairly recently, and both of them were complete idiots. One of them had known Sherlock very well, and one of them was very powerful, both of those being Mycroft.

Specify.

Adele

Adele didn't have to wait long for an answer;

One of them knows. I'll let you work it out from there.

SH

Urgh. Adele had enough to deal with, but she did want to know. However, she didn't really have enough time. But still, making it difficult for her didn't put this person in Adele's good books. There weren't many people in there anyway.

On Wednesday, whoever this was would be in big trouble.