Jim

Slowly and carefully, thinking it out, I tell her what we're going to do. I tell her we used to have lots of options and now we have only a few and this is the best of them. I tell her in detail how it will work, what few things are in our favour, and she is left absolutely certain that it's a lot of fecking hassle for me.

She tosses her cynical head, mutters, "You love it, you slag."

For a second I almost call her out on that. I almost try to get her to take that back. But then it strikes me she's right. She doesn't mean to be, obviously, but fools can be awfully wise when they're not thinking about it.

It's like school. They used to make us write these great long essays about whatever the church was up to any given time of year. Like clockwork. Start of March there's one about St Patrick, middle of December you do the Christmas story. It was the only way I could ever tell Easter was coming up, was we'd do the Lent essay. Same fecking soul-destroying shite every year, but every year you were older and the essay was expected to be longer, even though there obviously comes a point where you don't know any more than you did before and – Sorry. Bad trip, bad flashback.

Then there's this one fella. English teacher. Fucking hippy, right, with his ponytail going steely-grey down his back, and he starts talking about haiku. Which are these little Japanese poems with a million rules and seventeen fecking syllables to do it in and that – that was interesting.

Stop laughing. I know you're fecking laughing and I was good at them tiny little things, so just stop laughing, because I was good.

Where was I taking this again? I had a point when I started this.

Oh, aye. Dani. Being nearly right by accident. Saying I was enjoying the particular little task at hand, and I am. This is why. Haiku. Tiny little details with a million rules and constrictions. Putting every perfect syllable in the perfect place with perfect timing. The rules make it more fun.

When I run a job, it's because I want to. Because I see it and because it can be done. This is a new challenge. Everything's the same, except I've got one hand tied behind my back.

I've been drifting. Danielle leans into my line of sight and I flinch. "Jim? Still with me?"

"'Course I am. I'm thinking."

"Do you really think it'll work?" She's looking right at me and her eyes are huge, lips parted. None of that funny look about her, not just yet. No, this is her scared, and wanting me to say yes, absolutely, it'll work, she's safe, I'll protect her, and it is much, much easier to explain why I find this so gratifying.

I will not for one second deny that what I say next will be designed to keep her scared and vulnerable and unnerved, because it's more than she's worthy of.

"How could I possibly be sure of this? It does go just a little bit beyond the everyday, does it not? I mean, I don't know what you do in between Jeremy Kyle and Countdown, but I certainly do not spend that time fucking about with Her Majesty's."

"Scale of one to ten, Jim. One being we all fall down and ten being knighthoods…"

"About a four, four-and-a-half?"

This is better than she was expecting. Matter-of-fact, she looks impressed. "I can work with a four."

"What about your end?" Much as it pains me, she's actually quite important to the plan. Her and her various contacts. I'd reached one particular part of my explanation where I thought she might at least have questions, but it passed without event.

"Oh, yeah, no fear. I've got a fella in mind."

"Yeah, well, get on with him then. Sooner you do that, sooner I can start. And you should probably… y'know, rest up, or whatever it is severely beaten, half-slept people do."

"Oh, I tried. Where you found me is as far up the stairs as I got. I'll be on the sofa, I think."

"You were going to go to bed and just leave me to sort all this out, weren't you?"

"Pretty much. Listen, I'll go out and talk to my guy now, right? But…" She goes all shy and sheepish. Oh, just the perfect little actress, when she wants to be. God, that almost looks like real pain when she looks away, when she won't meet my eyes. And I prompt her, 'But what?' but she shakes her head and tries telling me it doesn't matter, like that's going to work. "No, come on, spit it out. From the look on your face it's another massive bloody favour."

"That's true, actually, that's exactly what it is…"

"How did I guess?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, I told you, doesn't matter…"

Not acting. In genuine distress. Fighting with herself over what she wants to say and whether or not to say it. All of a sudden I feel like a prick. Watch her lowering herself onto the sofa, braced between the arm and the back until she's sunk low. Still not looking at me. "I'm messing you about, Danielle; what is it?"

Her eyes start to shut, then flick open. Fighting sleep. "Look, I know… how you are about certain things, so I know it's asking a lot but… Could you work from here?" No. Never in a million years. Even at home, in my own space, the simple knowledge that she had been there pretty much prevented me from doing anything useful. No. Sorry, love, can't be done. There's no way I can possibly be effective in saving yourself and Mr Darcy if I've constantly got this rank, clammy, rotten rubbish feeling of being in your space all over me, no way. "I know it's stupid, given I plan to be unconscious any moment I'm not directly necessary but… I just really don't want to be on my own right now."

She doesn't, either; she's holding a cushion against herself, wrapped tight in both arms and with her face pressed into it. Eyes closing again as she rubs against it and this time it isn't sleep sneaking in there, this time it's something else.

"…Person Of Interest did some fecking number on you, didn't he, angel?"

Being caught takes all the magic out of it and she pushes the pillow away. Starts getting up again. "Oh, fuck off. You can just say no, you don't have to be horrible about it."

"Danielle-"

"No, really, I understand. Call me if you-"

"Dani, I'll stay."

Thinking to myself, People always know/The price of what they ask for./They fear the word 'Free'.


Sherlock

Mycroft does exactly as I told him. He drinks his tea and leaves. The cheese and biscuits are a gracenote of his own, but the victory is still mine. Mycroft thinks the blue bits in that cheese are intentional, bless his upper-middle-class heart. It's not liable to leave him with anything worse that a couple of days mild discomfort, either, so I don't have to feel too awful about wishing it upon him.

Anyway, once he's gone I can finally get back out of the bedroom. That wasn't such a good idea as I had thought, actually. Apparently it's not as simple as shaking out the dent somebody left in the sheets. Found it very difficult to sit down. Difficult to look at where we'd been, Mies and I. Much better altogether to strip the sheets from the bed and, now that I'm free, leave them bundled behind the door for the next trip down to the basement laundry. Better altogether not to think of them at all.

Maybe I'll just leave all that behind. I mean, you hear all this nonsense about 'putting one's affairs in order' and 'cleaning house'. And yes, certainly, there's a place for all that. But it's horribly sentimental, at heart, and really I don't have an awful lot to organize.

I know what you're thinking, by the way. You all thought I'd had what the counsellors and psychiatrists would term a 'breakthrough'.

Let me explain something to you; last night's little distraction did no more than confirm to me that I had the right idea in the first place. Nothing, emotional or chemical, is ever going to feel genuine and real and empty and beautiful ever again. And what, I ask you, is the point, of rambling on in a second-rate world? A world which has, more than once, offered better and, pardon the pun, higher things, only to then recant. People will lie to you, yes, of course, it's human nature. Nine times in every ten you'll feel better for the lie. Just go with it, just get over that. Honesty is very rarely the prudent course of action and still more rare is the occasion when it's the right thing to bloody do.

But when the world, when your own stinking existence, starts lying to you, well, then, maybe it's time to call it quits.

Danielle's taken off with a corner of the stash still in her jeans pocket, but there's more than that. I told you before, I had a few days' worth.

In a way, this is a much better version of events. There was too much going on, yesterday. Curled in a bath on a day of untold trauma? Do me a favour… Not the message one wants to send out at all, now, is it? Christ no. There will be nothing of the stark, naked corpse about this, thank you very much. This will be dignified and controlled. A simple statement, a plain, honest 'No thank you' to the fickle, hateful, petty little cruelties of the world. Executed (if you'll pardon another pun) with the sparse elegance of Hemingway. Yes, this is much better.

When you think about it, Mies did me a favour, putting this delay together. Not only that but, just in case I was interested, just in case it occurred to me upon my dying breath, she helped to prove that there is honestly no other way.

That's another thing you hear a lot of very destructive nonsense about. This terrible, romantic notion that people can save you. People can make all the horrors of the big bad world go away. Finding the right people, the close friend, the sibling, the lover, and keeping them about you, that's the way to cope. That's the way to live wisely and happily.

Don't listen to this bollocks. If I could leave one lesson behind and have all the world hear it, that would be it. Please, for God's sake, don't buy into this ridiculous notion that human relationships are going to make it all better, because they're not. I've told you before, relationships are just exchanges of worth and willing; what you have to offer and what others want from you. Take me and Mies, for example. I had Mycroft and that's what she wanted. She had a kind word and a bloody bacon sandwich and I was easily bought.

That sounds like I regret it, like I blame her. Please don't think that. As I say, it was a massive favour.

People lie. The world lies. And I've had enough.

People lie.

Wait. Wait. Christ, God, Christ, people lie, don't they? Fuck's sake, people lie and Mies is just like any other and she lies. She told Mycroft she'd give him Darcy to save herself and I believed it. Didn't blame her, didn't hate it, it's to be expected, that's what people are, it's what they do, but they lie as well, don't they? As well as stealing and cheating and betraying, they lie.

There's been something off about this since the moment Mycroft walked in.

Oh, to hell with the end of me. That can be arranged anytime. I'm staying to see the end of this. I don't know how I'd do it, but that's something I can give a little thought as I go along. Everybody knows you don't leave before the curtain falls. Not only is it awfully bad form, but that's how you miss the best part. Even the worst fiction has to tie itself up in a bow, and this one, this one is going to gleam and rustle and glitter. You don't walk out when you've finished your part; you stay for the bow.

Top yourself before it's over and you miss the best bit.

People hate liars? People read novels, watch television, films, listen to music. People love liars and they just won't say it.

And my God, to be found stiff in a flat with a vandalized violin bow and sheets rich with staling jasmine perfume? My God, they'd say I was a tortured artist; what was I thinking? No. Until the curtain falls, I'll stay on my feet, thank you very much…