Chapter 18

Minutes later, John drew back and sniffled. "I—I'd better ring Lestrade," he said, his voice thick. "I promised him I would, if I remembered."

"Of course," Siger agreed. Sniffing again, John rose to his feet and entered the lounge, where he picked up his mobile phone. After speed-dialling Lestrade's number, he soon heard the middle-aged detective inspector's gravelly voice over the phone.

"Good morning, John," Greg said over the phone.

"Good morning, Greg." John sniffed again. "I—I just remembered David's death. Or my discovery of it, rather."

"I'm listening, John." Greg's voice was business-like. "Do I have your permission to record this?"

John nodded. "You do."

"In that case, I'm turning on the recording app on my phone." John nodded and cleared his throat. Seconds later, Lestrade said, "All right, John, I'm listening."

For the next several minutes, John carefully relayed to the D.I. everything that he now remembered about that previous day, everything that he had told the Holmeses. When he had finished, there was silence on the other end for a brief moment.

"Thank you, John," Lestrade said. "I'll make sure Sherlock listens to this. What you've told me will help us in this investigation."

"I hope so," John said.

"Sherlock and I are going to speak with Harry, and then we're going to Chelmsford," Lestrade added. "We may be gone for some hours."

"As long as your investigation there bears fruit, that's the important thing," John said.

"I agree." Lestrade paused. "Are Sherlock's parents with you?"

John glanced at the others. "Uh, yeah. Siger and Mellie are here with Rosie and me now. Mycroft's here, too."

"Good." Lestrade paused again. "Well, I'd better hang up, John. I need to get started."

"Right," John agreed. "Good-bye."

The phone went silent, and John shut it off. "He's going to fill Sherlock in on what I told him," he told the others.

"That's good," Mycroft said. "And I'm very glad that you finally remember this, John, even though the memory of it is painful."

"You have no idea, Mycroft." Pain welled anew in John's heart. "David wasn't just one of my friends, when I was a child; he was my best friend. We spent so much time in each other's company through the years, until he died. And Amy was my sister's best friend."

"David was for you what Victor Trevor was for Sherlock, I suspect," Siger said softly.

John looked at him, startled. "Yeah. Yeah, I—I guess he was," he stammered. "I never thought of it that way. And—and he suffered the same fate as Victor."

He sank into his armchair and gazed down at his lap. Memories flitted across his mind of David, of the time they had spent together. "I remember envying David when I was a little boy," he finally said. "He had three Action Men, and I didn't even have one. *Finally, when Christmas was approaching, I asked my mum if she thought Father Christmas would bring me one, if I asked him. I was seven at the time."

Siger smiled. "And what did she say?"

"She said there was only one way to find out." John smiled in his turn. "I knew the way she was talking about, and I took it. I got hold of a notebook and wrote a short letter to Father Christmas, asking him for an Action Man, and left it on the coffee table. And then, on Christmas Day, sure enough, there was an Action Man standing underneath the Christmas tree—dressed like a soldier, as I recall. Looking back, I realize that my mum must have bought it for me at Poundstretcher, but at the time, I thought Father Christmas had left it for me." Siger and Mellie laughed, and Mycroft snorted. John grinned. "Of course, the Action Man wasn't my only Christmas present, that year. Mrs. Templeton had given me three storybooks, and my Granny Leekey had sent me a small stuffed bear. And in my stocking was a chocolate bar, an apple, a package of balloons, and a small rubber ball. Looking back, I realize that Mrs. Templeton must have helped my mum out with the stocking stuffers, since our finances didn't permit her to buy us much. She could only give us one or two gifts every birthday or Christmas, so the rest of our presents came from Granny Leekey and Mrs. Templeton. Mum bought some of our gifts at Poundstretcher and made the rest."

"And the gifts she bought you were inexpensive, weren't they?" Siger asked.

John nodded. "They were all she could afford. All any of my family could afford, really, including Granny and Grandpa, and the same thing applied to Mrs. Templeton. My aunt and uncle never got us any gifts. I guess they couldn't afford to."

He smiled ruefully. "Well, anyway, overall, that was one of our better Christmases. It helped that Dad was sober that morning; otherwise, he would have spoiled everything. After we'd had dinner, I took my new Action Man and my balloons next door to David's, so we could play with them. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing together at his house." He smiled at the memory.

"When did your parents get your Christmas tree?" Mellie asked him.

"Actually, it was my mum who always got one for our house, with my godmother's help, and they always got it on Christmas Eve." John paused. "That's when you can get them the cheapest, you know. That was also the day we always decorated the house. We always left up the decorations till after New Year's." He gazed at Mellie, and then Siger. "When did you get your tree and decorate your house?"

"A few weeks before Christmas, as a rule," Siger said. "And then we always left up the decorations till after Sherlock's birthday."

"Which just happens to be Epiphany. January 6th." John nodded. "You'll have to tell me about your family Christmases sometime. I only know about the one I took part in after Sherlock came back, and the one Mary and I took part in after Sherlock had recovered from his gunshot wound."

"We'll be glad to, John," Siger told him, "but we would like it better still if you and Rosie came to our house next Christmas, and celebrated with us."

John leaned back. "I—I'd like that, very much, and I know Rosie would enjoy it," he said slowly. "But would Sherlock like to? There won't be much point in my going to Surrey with Rosie for Christmas if Sherlock stays here."

"Don't worry about Sherlock, John. He'll come," Mycroft assured him.

"And so will you, Mycroft," Mellie told him firmly. "Your father and I would like it very much if both of our sons could be home for a family Christmas once more. Especially since Eurus can't." Mycroft grimaced, but raised his hands in acquiescence.

Silence descended over them all for a few minutes. It was Siger who broke the silence. "Mycroft," he said, "would you go to the townhouse and bring back our family movies? We'd like to show them to John."

With a nod, Mycroft stood up. "I'll send Anthea to do that. There's something else I should like for her to bring back as well." He removed his phone from his waistcoat and stepped into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he returned to the lounge and, slipping his phone back into his waistcoat pocket, took his seat once more.

The next half-hour went quietly. At one point, Mrs. Hudson brought Rosie back up to the flat and handed her to John, and then she stayed to visit. She was still there, visiting with them, when Anthea entered the flat with a cardboard box, which she set on the coffee table at Mycroft's instructions. With a nod toward the others, she left.

"This box contains our family videos," he told his parents. "When we have finished watching them, I'll show you what else I had Anthea bring with them." Siger and Mellie nodded, Mrs. Hudson smiled in anticipation, and as John watched curiously, Mycroft took the discs containing the family movies out of the carton and handed them to his father, who put them in the player and pressed 'start'. The others sat down, with Mrs. Hudson holding Rosie.

In the first family movie, a young, chubby Mycroft was sitting on a beach, munching on a snack, and his parents were folding up beach blankets. A tiny Sherlock was running about on the sand, playing. John smiled at the sight. In the next movie, a little Sherlock was running around the back garden in Surrey, wearing a pirate hat and a patch over his eye, waving about a wooden sword. In the third, the Holmes family was having a picnic outside, in the garden in front of Musgrave Hall. A beach blanket had been spread on the grass, and everyone but Siger was sitting on the blanket, eating. "I was the one holding the camera; that's why you can't see me," Siger explained to John, who nodded.

John, the Holmeses, and Mrs. Hudson watched several more family movies, some of them containing little Eurus, before they had finished. "It sounds as if you all had a lot of fun while Mycroft and Sherlock and Eurus were children," John said to Siger and Mellie, smiling.

"Yes, we did." Siger smiled, and Mellie nodded agreement. "We made some good memories while our children were growing up." He paused. "I'm so glad we recorded them."

John smiled in his turn. "They're wonderful. And it's wonderful that you have those memories on video."

After taking Rosie from Mrs. Hudson and sitting back down, Mellie turned to Mycroft. "Mycroft, you said you asked Anthea to bring something along with the family movies. Is it what I asked you to bring, earlier?"

With a nod, Mycroft opened the carton again and removed several more discs. "Yes, though I had to get Harry's permission first. As you know, while John's parents had no way to take videos of their children while John and Harriet were growing up, their schools and universities did. So, as you requested, I was able to get copies of the videos their nearby infant, junior, and grammar schools took, along with a few that were taken by London University and King's College."

Rolling his eyes, John shook his head. Was there nothing the British government could not gain access to?! Mycroft smirked at the expression on his face. "My parents have shared their memories with you, John. This will be your chance to share some of your memories with them."

With a shrug, John nodded. "Of course. I have no objection." Well, actually, he did object to Mycroft helping himself to the schools' archives in this way, but he would not begrudge Siger and Mellie, or Mrs. Hudson, the chance to watch him, his sister, and their classmates in action. Taking the discs from Mycroft, John strode towards the telly and, taking the disc on top of the stack out of its case, placed it in the DVD/VCR recorder, and started it.

The video that started to play turned out to be one of the Nativity plays that John had performed in, back at Kings Road Junior School as a child. As soon as John saw the sling he was wearing in the video and the bandage on his left wrist, he remembered: that was the Nativity play he'd been in when he'd been seven. He and the others watched the play until it finished.

When the screen turned black, and John popped the disc out, he placed it back in its case. "John," Siger asked, "what had happened to your wrist?"

John bit his lower lip. He did not relish sharing this with anyone. After a long moment, though, he sighed. He had promised long before, no more keeping Watson secrets. "I told you my dad sprained my wrist once, when the Christmas holidays was approaching. He sprained it several days before the play. *It was the Christmas I received an Action Man, when I was seven."

"Because you dropped a glass of milk, correct?" Mellie furrowed her brow in disapproval, and Mrs. Hudson looked distressed.

With another sigh, John sank into his armchair. He nodded. "Yeah. It was suppertime, and I was taking a glass of milk to the kitchen table when I ran into Harry. The glass got knocked out of my hand and landed on the floor, spilling the milk. Fortunately, the glass was made of plastic, so it didn't break, but the milk made quite a mess."

He pursed his lips into a thin line as anger welled up in his heart. "Dad just happened to be there, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting to eat. He flew into a rage and leaped out of his chair; first he grabbed me by my wrist so hard, so roughly, he sprained it, and then he hit me across the face, quite hard. Hard enough that everything went black momentarily, and an explosion of stars appeared in my vision." He shook his head at the memory. "And then he ordered me to clean up the mess I had made. I managed to, but it was hard, because it was my dominant hand that was injured, so I had to wipe up the milk with my right. As soon as I was finished, I ran out the kitchen door and into the garden shed. I stayed out there till it was bedtime and spent much of that time crying; needless to say, I had no supper that evening. I had to wait till morning to eat and do my homework, and then it was hard, both because I had to try to write with my non-dominant hand, and because my parents were fighting in the lounge while I was working in the kitchen." John shook his head while clenching his hands. "They were having quite the screaming match, as I recall." He grimaced. "That happened a lot. In the end, my mum hid in the basement—she slammed the basement door behind her—and my dad slammed the door as he left the house to go to work."

He gritted his teeth before continuing. "When I got to school, my teacher took me to the nurse's office to have my wrist wrapped. I was faced with a real problem: I was supposed to be the Wise Man carrying the myrrh in the Nativity play, and it would have been impossible to do with my right hand without spilling it. So, my teacher had David and me switch roles. I would carry the gold instead, and David would carry the myrrh."

John shook his head again. "Well, that solved one problem, but another arose. During rehearsals, I kept banging my injured wrist against nearby objects, which really hurt. When it became clear that I was going to have to drop out of the play unless something was done, my teacher got me a sling so I could keep my wrist in it when we were rehearsing. I wore it in the play itself, on the last day before the Christmas holiday began." He paused. "That was the Christmas I got the Action Man I had asked for, along with several other gifts."

He rolled his eyes. "I told you that, overall, that was one of our better Christmases. And that was only because Dad just happened to be sober on Christmas morning." He stood up and started pacing the lounge restlessly.

Mellie rose to her feet, handed Rosie to her husband, and approached him. She hugged John. "It is most unfortunate that Hamish Watson was such a cruel man," she told him. "Even though your father didn't make much money, yours could have been a happy childhood had he been a better husband to your mother and a better father to you children. I want you to know, John, that Siger and I love you, and if you had been our son, we would have cherished you just as we do Mycroft and Sherlock."

"We certainly would have," Siger added.

"So would I have, John," Mrs. Hudson added. "If you had been my son."

John hugged Mellie back. In a choked voice, he said, "Thank you. All of you."

He removed the next disc from its case and inserted it into the player. As soon as it had loaded, he started playing the video that was on it. That video was of Harry in a school play. "I remember that play," John said, smiling. "I was only five years old at the time. Mum and Mrs. Templeton and I all went to see it. She was in her last year of junior school, and I was in my first year of infant school."

For the next few hours, they watched one disc after another. Some had been taken at John and Harry's infant and junior schools; some had been taken at the grammar school that Harry had attended, Chelmsford County High School; some had been taken at the other grammar school that John had attended, King Edward VI Grammar School; and the rest had been taken of Harry and her classmates at London University, and of John and his classmates at King's College London. In the videos that John appeared in, he was shown acting in plays, playing the clarinet in the school orchestra, and playing rugby and other sports at KEGS and King's College.

At last, John ejected the last disc. After placing it back in its case and laying it on the side table, he turned to the Holmeses and Mrs. Hudson. "Well, now that you've seen the photos and seen Harry and me in action on these videos, what do you think?"

Mrs. Hudson smiled, and Siger and Mellie exchanged looks. "I think that, despite everything, you grew into a man your father should have been proud of, had he lived. I also think that despite your home conditions, you and Harry made some good memories for yourselves, growing up," Siger said, and Mellie nodded agreement.

"I do, too, John, and I agree with Siger and Mellie," Mrs. Hudson added softly. "And when Rosie's old enough, you can share these memories with her, too."

"That's right," Mycroft added. "These are copies of the videos that the schools and universities gave me, so they don't have to be returned. They're yours to keep. As soon as I can, I'll get you a photo album to store your photos in."

John nodded. "Thank you, Mycroft. And thanks, all of you. I enjoyed sharing them with you." He glanced at his baby daughter. "I'll look forward to showing them to Rosie, when she's old enough."

He smiled at the prospect and laid the discs on one of the shelves against the lounge wall, and then he glanced down at his watch. It was time to get started on lunch. Maybe I will show them my army mementos and my Boy Scout badges after all, he thought. I'll have to wait till after lunch to do that, though.

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A/N: *The accounts of the Nativity play, John receiving an Action Man, and his sprained wrist are told in my story, "First Christmas," which is posted on Fanfiction dot net and Archive of Our Own.