Chapter 11
My heart nearly leaps out of my chest when I hear the front door slam and then him, calling my name.
"I'll be up in a minute!" I yell, hearing the heaviness of his rain-sodden coat in the creak of the ancient coat rack. "Just go on up!"
He probably wanted a cup of tea.
Well, he wouldn't be getting it from me.
I heard the stairs give, two at a time, sensing an urgency I hadn't accounted for. Had Bill said anything even slightly incriminating? Was the game up before it had even begun?
I stood, holding my breath at the bottom of the stairs, listening as he threw open his flat.
Silence (but for Bach).
"Hello, Sherlock," said Molly Hooper, like a soothing balm on a stormy night. "I sort of made you dinner."
And then he gently closed the door.
~x~
Sherlock
The room, my room.
The heat from many candles and a glowing fireplace rolls across my face, my body and I almost feel steam rising from my damp hair and clothes.
The table is immaculately populated with items I neither own nor recognise, a deep red burst of chrysanthemums at its centre. Their scent is heady, intoxicating, thickening the air and I am dizzy with it.
Mingled, weaving their way through the flowers are herbs - thyme, coriander, parsley, sage, then garlic and butter and the warmth of spice. It appears to originate from my kitchen. This is not usual for my kitchen.
Bach and the warmth of the room draws me further in, stepping across, dropping my keys, my phone on the coffee table. It is laden with a ruby red Merlot, bottle and two glasses glinting in the candle light.
Sensory. Everywhere. All at once.
"Sit down, I'll pour," says Molly Hooper, and I do.
New dress (cherry red, silk, collar, sleeves, exquisite), bought very recently as it allowed for recent weight loss (four pounds, maybe five). Home manicure, but older (favourite) varnish as slightly gathered in the cuticles. Also, fresh as her off duty decreed she worked yesterday. Her face (sleepless night last night) is dappled by flickering light and she wears her mother's gold bee earrings (sentiment; comfort) but no lipstick. I look and look, but she doesn't mind my silence.
"I'm indecently smug that I managed to surprise you," she smiles, leaning over to pour, holding back a skein of silken hair, dark lashes brushing her cheek. "Although I know you're not entirely fond of surprises."
She holds forth a glass, brown eyes assessing, infinitesimally uncertain but strong and unflinching, so I reach up, taking it, brushing her fingers against my own and my heart springs into life and pounds in my ears. (Oh!) … and it is then, at that very moment, amongst the candles and the Bach and the soft, velvet eyes of Molly Hooper, that I finally know, and it will not be contained.
"I love you," I say. "Molly, I love you."
And I smile, because it is exhilarating, it is freeing, it is true.
~x~
Molly
Oh the millions of fearful seconds that vibrate through me as I wait for him to speak, to respond, to address the whole insane situation.
And then he does, and it's like his words just spill out, surprising him, surprising me.
But that smile - letting me know how much it pleases him; how the idea is just so brilliant and outstandingly clever, like he's just invented love and needs the world to know about it all - that smile disarms me.
Putting down the bottle, I half sit, half slump into the sofa and exhale.
"Ok," I breathe, trembling slightly (as one might). "That's very convenient, since I've loved you for always. Forever."
There was a pause and we let a little Partita fill the gap.
"Well," remarks Sherlock Holmes (solver of crimes, breaker of rules, love of my life) "I may need to give Wiggins a raise."
We drink(I'm afraid I glug) the excellent Merlot and he looks at me again with everything he has, and I know it's going to be alright.
"So," I sweep a hand about his sitting room. "You're OK, with all this?"
"I barely recognise my own home. Everything you've done … it is both utterly unexpected and unbelievably welcome." He looks around, still processing, still appraising.
"I had help." I couldn't take the credit. She had been so wonderful. "Your housekeeper."
Sherlock sits back in his seat, smiling, happy, relaxed, open.
"She has made … quite the impression."
"She's wonderful."
He looks down, placing his glass carefully, glancing at his files in the corner of the room.
"Yes." (mercurial eyes, glittering, glowing) "Yes. She has my measure."
"Mine too. Ten years of knowing you and this is only happening now. I don't think this would have happened without her."
We sit momentarily, taking it all in and I'm suddenly aware of this loaded set up I've cunningly engineered. I stand, bustling, moving towards the oven.
"So there's dinner."
I'm bright and breezy and Sherlock smiles at me, his phone beeping regularly, his phone ignored.
"I'm not hungry," he stands, holding out a hand.
But I've already opened the oven door and suddenly, inexplicably, an ear piercingly loud beeping bursts forth from the ceiling and then water, cascading down, pouring over us, over everything, drenching it all.
~x~
Internally I'm screaming, but I consider there's been enough noise this night and therefore decide to keep my hysterics to myself.
The fire brigade have left, the sprinklers have been disarmed, the sitting room is ruined and I'm now sharing Mrs Hudson's upcycled garden shed and misting up its little windows with the two people I attempted to shove together this evening.
I think longingly of data handling as I realise that Mrs Hudson will shortly be arriving after a 24 hour flight to a damp 221 Baker Street, and has yet to write me a reference.
Molly hands me a cup of steaming tea (at least the electrics and plumbing work well enough in here) and pats my shoulder. She's a hero and I'd marry her tomorrow myself if Sherlock's eyes weren't all aglow over her every move. It's little wonder the sprinklers were set off.
I sigh.
"It's going to be OK," she said, sitting on an upturned beer barrel and pretending her sodden silk dress was of little concern.
"John and Mary will be back any minute with the dehumidifiers. We'll have it dried in a couple of hours."
"Probably nearer to twenty four," commented Sherlock Holmes, hair plastered down, shirt damp but as cheerful as I'd ever seen him.
He caught Molly's frown, however, adding:
"Perhaps less though. There's a change in the air and tomorrow promises … mmm ... bright sunshine?"
But I leaned against the blue tasselled curtain and sighed again.
I'd been too ambitious, climbed too high, like Icarus. Already depressed about leaving my Baker Street menagerie, I couldn't lift myself out of this.
"Those sprinklers were a little over sensitive," remarked Molly, sipping at her tea sweetly, as if she wasn't squeezed into a tiny garden shed between her heart's desire, a sack of potatoes, and me.
Sherlock was tapping on his phone, emails pinging left and right.
"Obviously Mycroft's doing and what he commonly regards as humour. Any way he can discourage my smoking or experimenting here and he'll take it."
He showed me a blurry picture of the engineer and his van's number plate, as well as several invoices and a letter on Ministry notepaper.
"God, his signet ring should have told me. And the shoes: way too expensive."
"You weren't to know the intricately layered levels of my brother's interference. A slow day at Whitehall allows the devil to make work for idle hands. He'll be laughing all the way to the Diogenes about this particular victory."
I sighed again.
"I ruined your lovely dinner."
Leaning forward across my prized foldy-down table, I put my head in my hands. I'd been so obsessed about pushing them together, I'd made a hell of a lot of assumptions along the way.
"You both have every right to be furious about the sprinklers but also my … my …"
"Conspiring?" supplied Sherlock.
"Plotting with good intentions." suggested Molly.
"Contriving, perhaps?" suggested Sherlock, but his eyes were kind.
"Indeed you have," he added, softly. "And look how very successful you have been." He gestured to Molly. "We have been remiss."
"We've been absolutely useless," confirmed Molly gently.
"You have schemed as successfully as some of my more prosperous criminal adversaries," mused Sherlock, pouring me some leftover Merlot and pushing it across the small table.
"And I must do nothing but thank you for it. For years I created a construct to preserve my clarity of mind and all it did was deny my own heart. A good man (and a good detective) is nothing without both. Logic dictates that to do well in this world, we need to be happy." He looked at Molly and I knew it had been worth it.
"I'd do it again in a heartbeat," I said, boldly, and I meant it.
"I don't doubt it," he laughed.
There was a sudden fumbling and scuffling outside in the yard and I could hear multitudinous voices, one of them John Watson's.
"Take two upstairs Wiggins! Joe, you and Terry put one in the kitchen and one in Mrs Hudson's bedroom down here."
More fumbling and clunking (and a fair bit of swearing) and the door was suddenly pulled open by a bright, smiley fair-haired woman wearing a beanie hat and a knowing expression. She looked directly at me.
"Hi, lovely to meet you at last and how atrocious that this was the first time! I think John's ever so slightly scared of what I might have said to you! Hey, Sherlock! Molly! Do you have any wine in here? You two look like you've come to your senses, thank God! Your mooning about the flat was getting a bit much Sherlock … seriously, is there any wine? It's lovely in here! Cosy!"
"Hello Mary," said Sherlock. "Why don't you come in? There's absolutely no room, but I'm sure that won't stop you."
So she did.
~x~