Chapter Text
PART 1: THE MOLE
Rosie
"Dad? Why can't Tara and I do a sleepover?"
Dad was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. The water in the pot on the cooker was bubbling, and there were chopped vegetables sizzling in the pan. Not courgettes, hopefully, I hate them, they taste so bland and boring. Dad gave the pasta a stir. He was only half-listening, and I thought I'd timed my request well. If he had been really concentrating, he'd just have come up with more objections.
I was watching him from my favourite place, hanging over the backrest of his armchair, arse about face. (I'm not supposed to say "arse" out loud, but I could think it, right?) My tummy felt warm against the faded woollen fabric of the upholstery. The chair tilts back just far enough to make you feel a little dizzy in a pleasant way.
Over in the kitchen, Dad checked the timer on his phone. "I've told you, Rosie." He sounded a little impatient. As he stirred the ragout in the pan, I caught a glimpse of whitish pieces in the tomato sauce. It was courgettes. "I don't see how we can ask Mrs Hudson to lug your schoolbag and violin and an overnight bag -"
"Sherlock takes me to school on Fridays."
I glanced over my shoulder at the other chair, the plain black leather one. It was empty, of course. It had been empty for days.
"You know Sherlock's away." Dad moved over to get the colander from the cupboard. Just then, the water in the pot boiled over. There was a loud hiss when the froth hit the hot surface of the cooker. Dad muttered something actually worse than "arse", lifted the pot out of the mess and grabbed a dishcloth to clean up. "Can we discuss this later?"
Not such great timing after all, then. I wanted him distracted, but I didn't want him annoyed. He'd already said yes to a playdate at my friend Tara's, but the chances that I could turn it into a full-blown sleepover were slim right now. Tara would be disappointed. The sleepover was her idea, but of course I'd been on board right away. I couldn't wait to see the Maguires' house, and Tootsie - that's Tara's dog - and it would be lovely to camp out in her room till the next day. I'd only known her since the Christmas holidays – she was new at my school – but it already felt like we'd been best friends since forever.
We clicked right away. We had so much in common. We both loved animals, and we mostly liked the same books and movies (except for Tara's obsession with Disney princesses, who I feel lukewarm about at best, apart maybe from Mulan). We even look a bit alike – me and Tara, that is, not me and Mulan, although that would be really cool. Tara's hair is the same colour as mine, kind of sandy brown (caramel, Sherlock calls it). Tara is taller than me, but that's only fair since she's also half a year older. And of course I have no mum and Tara had no dad.
No, that's the wrong way to put it, as everyone keeps reminding me gently when the subject comes up. I do have a mum, she just isn't alive any more. And Tara's dad is actually alive, but he's not around, either. Tara said she and her mum went and visited him sometimes, but she didn't like those visits much, because it was a sad place and her dad was always sad, too.
To be completely honest, I felt that I was better off than she was. Tara could talk all she liked about her grandmother living in a castle in a far-away place called County Tyrone, which I thought was a whole lot of Disney Princess tosh anyway. The reality was that Tara only had her mum and Tootsie, but I have Dad and Sherlock and Mrs Hudson and Molly Hooper and Grandma and Grandpa Holmes. And Harry, too, and Greg, and Uncle Mycroft, I just don't see them as much, because Harry lives in Scotland, Greg is always busy at work, and Uncle Mycroft is too pompous. (He also doesn't like being called "Uncle Mycroft" and pulls the most hilarious faces when I do it, so of course I keep doing it.)
"Are you coming then, love?" Dad's voice cut across my thoughts. The kitchen came back into focus. The table was set, and dinner was ready.
"Yay!" I jumped down from Dad's chair, landed with a resounding thud (a perfectly allowable thud, since it was after six and Speedy's downstairs was closed) and skipped across to the kitchen. As it turned out, there were enough redeeming meatballs and mushrooms in the ragout to make up for the courgettes. Sherlock is definitely the better cook, but Dad's dinners are still better than a lot of the stuff at the school cafeteria. So Dad got a kiss before I sat down at the table, and he smiled the first real smile I'd seen on his face since he got back from work. He looked tired, and that was no surprise, seeing his surgery is always busier in winter because there are more sick people then, and also more sick doctors.
"Dad?"
"Mmh?"
"I'd so love to stay over at Tara's. Her mum says it's fine."
"I know, Rosie." Dad put down his knife and fork and rubbed the back of his neck. "Listen, it's – it's not just getting your stuff there. It's – I'm not against it on principle..."
He'd better not be, I thought. I'd stayed over at Molly's and at Grandma and Grandpa Holmes's without Dad or Sherlock there for as long as I can remember, and it had never been a problem. But maybe this was like one of those discussions that Dad sometimes had with Uncle Mycroft when they thought I fast asleep upstairs. I didn't usually catch what exactly the problem was, but it was always about me, and it always ended with Dad saying "I just want her to have a normal life!" And then Mycroft would roll his eyes like only Mycroft can (I could see it exactly in my mind's eye even when I was upstairs in bed), sigh and say odd things like "On your head be it." Why couldn't the sleepover be on Dad's head now?
I realised that I wasn't really listening to what Dad was saying. "... but you know, you've only known her since after Christmas. That's such a short time. I just don't want you to – I want to be sure that - "
"Christmas was ages ago, Dad." At least that's how it felt.
It was doubly unfair that Sherlock wasn't here. He usually sides with me when it's a question of two scoops of ice cream or just one, so chances were that he'd have sided with me about the sleepover, too. And if Dad was so worried that the Maguires might not be nice enough, or that they wouldn't insist on a proper bedtime, or that they didn't have that screentime limit thing on, then Sherlock could easily just have deduced all that for him and put Dad's mind at rest.
Ah, no. I was forgetting that Sherlock got himself permanently banned from deducing my classmates and their families. That was a couple of months ago, when Sam had to leave right in the middle of term. Our class had this little farewell party for him that Sherlock picked me up from, and Sherlock knew from a single glance at his mum that Sam was leaving because she'd been caught embezzling money from her employer in the City and now the family needed all their money to pay the damages and the lawyers so there was nothing left to cover Sam's school fees even until the end of term not to mention the rest of the school year. (Yes, Sherlock really talks like that, and he doesn't even stop for breath.) It's not like Sherlock said all that to Sam's mum's face, though, he just whispered it in my ear on the way home. But I felt so proud to be the in the know that I couldn't help repeating it all to my classmates the next morning. (I also just really liked the word "embezzle", it sounded so funny, even though I'm still not sure what exactly it means.) Dad got a very stern phone call from my teacher that night, and both I and Sherlock were in a peck of trouble. That was the last time Sherlock was allowed to make deductions about anyone at school.
There was an uncomfortable silence that had been going on far too long, but I knew from the look on Dad's face that he was not going to be swayed, deductions or no. Well, that was that, then.
It's always quiet at the table when it's just the two of us. It's not like Sherlock is always home, and it's not like he always eats with me and Dad even when he is home. But it's different when I know I'm not going to see him for a week or more. No clients ringing the doorbell, no big long coat on the rack, no microscope cluttering up the kitchen table. Less music, less laughter, less – everything. I know that there was a time when Sherlock went abroad for work for two whole years. That was before I was born. Molly told me. I can imagine how lonely Dad must have felt back then. Or maybe I can't even. Two weeks were bad enough, and that's what we were looking at now. "Eight days minimum, ten days realistically, and a fortnight at most," Sherlock said when he left, and he's more honest and more accurate with estimates like that than any other grown-up I know. With everyone else, it's always "Just a minute!" and then it's really ten, or worse, "Soon, dear!" when they really mean "I'm putting it off till I'm sure you've forgotten all about it." But even Sherlock probably had no idea how horribly long a fortnight could be. And this was only day four since he left on his trip to wherever.
Sometimes it's kind of cool to have someone in the family who goes away on these secret missions and can't tell me where, can't say when exactly he'll be back, and who I'm not allowed to call until he contacts us to say it's okay again. Dad says it's nothing to boast about, but I can't resist sometimes. Tara went green with envy when I'd told her the other day that it was happening again.
The downside is that without Sherlock at home, life kind of feels like it's on hold for the rest of us, too. School goes on, of course, and Dad goes to work as usual, and I actually see more of Mrs Hudson and of Molly because they take over Sherlock's share of the school run, and some of the fun stuff, too. But Dad gets tense and on edge somehow, and I don't like that at all. Maybe it's because it reminds him of the two years.
"I miss him," I said, stabbing moodily at a piece of courgette with my fork.
For some reason, Dad seemed to know exactly how I got from Tara's sleepover to this conclusion.
"I know," he said. He reached out and brushed a strand of hair out of my face with a warm hand. There it was again, the smile, but it was a rather sad one now. "I miss him, too."
* * *
Dad talked to Tara's mum on the phone about the playdate, and it got fixed for Friday, just like I was hoping, even if it was just going to be for an afternoon.
On Thursday evening, I was so excited that I nearly forgot about the tulips. Dad was in his chair, the telly was on for the evening news, and I was supposed to be done brushing my teeth in the bathroom ten minutes ago. But this sort of thing can't wait.
I'd brought home some origami tulips, complete with folded green stems, that I made in my Art lesson that day. There were three – one for Dad, one for Sherlock, and one for Mrs Hudson. I was downstairs at Mrs Hudson's earlier, but I'd had so much other stuff to do then – tea first, and then she let me order the week's groceries on her tablet, which I love to do, because it's fun to tap my way through all the colourful packages, plus I get to choose the biscuits. It was only then, while I was packing my school bag for tomorrow, that I found the tulips at the bottom. They were a bit crumpled now, but they still looked nice.
Dad switched the telly to mute (it was just commercials anyway), admired them (the tulips, not the commercials) and promised to find a small glass for them later, so they'd look like real flowers in a vase. But he wasn't happy when I suggested that I'd run down quickly to Mrs Hudson's and give her hers, too.
"It's past your bedtime already, so no," he snapped and flipped the sound on the telly back on.
If Sherlock had been there, he'd have clicked his heels and made a mock soldier's salute in Dad's direction, and then the two of us would have dissolved in giggles. And then Dad's face would have softened and he'd have grinned a bit guiltily, and then he'd have told me the same thing again, only in a much nicer tone. And then I'd have been okay with it. But Sherlock wasn't there.
I grabbed the third tulip, called "Back in a mo'!" over my shoulder and clattered down the stairs to Number 221A. The opening music of the evening news came on just as I rounded the corner on the landing.
The light was on behind the glass panes of Mrs Hudson's door, so I knocked and entered, calling "It's me!" down the short corridor. I could hear that the telly was on in her kitchen, too.
Mrs Hudson came out to meet me, smiling. "And what brings you here again so late, love?" she asked kindly. She's got a more Sherlock approach to bedtime than Dad, too.
I held the tulip out to her.
"Oh! That's really pretty. Is it for me?" She took it carefully into her wrinkly hands. "Come in, we'll find a nice place for it."
In the kitchen, rows and rows of soldiers in clay-coloured dress uniforms were marching across the TV screen, flanked by waving flags with a red star, while the newsreader said something about peace talks failing again. Mrs Hudson quickly switched it off. "That's far away on the other side of the world," she said. "Nothing we need to worry about." She put her arm around me and hugged me to her side (the side with her good hip), then looked around for the best place to put the paper flower.
"I made three," I told her proudly.
"Clever girl."
"I wasn't as quick as Tara though," I admitted. "She made seven. And a crane." That's what Tara called it anyway, even though it looked more like a bird than something from a building site.
"Where did she learn that?" Mrs Hudson stuck the tulip on her pinboard. Now it peeked out from behind a pretty postcard with a sunset on a beach.
"She says her new au pair showed her how," I explained. "But she's pretty useless otherwise. The au pair, I mean, not Tara."
"Why's that?"
That's another difference between Mrs Hudson and Dad. Mrs Hudson always has time.
"Tara says the girl is supposed to play with her, or help around the house, but she just spends hours and hours talking on the phone instead. Tara's mum says it's okay, she's probably really homesick and it'll get better in time. But Tara says it never gets better. I'm glad I've got you, and I don't care that you're old."
"Oh, my dear." Mrs Hudson took my head between her hands and kissed my hair. "You keep me young!"
* * *
When I was in my jim-jams and back on the first floor, I took the long route to the bathroom just so I could get a peek at what else was on the TV. The sound of a storm and roaring waves and a reporter's voice shouting to make herself heard intrigued me.
On the screen, there were huge waves breaking against a red and white lighthouse, the light at its top a tiny white point almost hidden behind a cloud of spray. It looked quite scary, to be honest.
"Newhaven," Dad said, as if that would help.
He saw me staring and pulled me to his side. I perched on the armrest. The reporter came back on. She was standing on a beachfront road with the sea foaming dark grey behind her. She was in a red waterproof jacket and held on to her fluttering hood with one hand. The other hand held the microphone, and I could hear the wind rushing across it, making it crackle. "… weather warnings issued across the United Kingdom and northern Europe as strong winds are expected to reach hurricane levels in the coastal regions..."
"We'll need to hold on to our hats tomorrow," Dad said with a smile.
"Is it going to be like that here, too?"
"More or less. But without the waves and the lighthouse."
A lighthouse on Baker Street was a pretty funny idea, actually. And not scary at all. "You never wear a hat," I pointed out.
"I could borrow Sherlock's."
"That would look silly, Dad." The hat looks silly on Sherlock, too, but there are limits, as Mrs Hudson likes to say.
"Maybe not, then." Dad gave me a gentle nudge. "Right, time to brush your teeth."
The poor reporter lady was gone, and the newsreader in the studio was back.
"Rosie -" Dad protested when I made no move to go, but the newsreader cut him off.
"The largest international diamond smuggling operation in years has been busted today in Antwerp, Belgium," he said. "Following an extensive undercover sting operation, special forces of the Belgian police moved in today to arrest..."
"Rosie. I mean it."
Well, bad luck. Dad loves news stories about crime, even if they've got nothing to do with Sherlock's cases, but he insists that I'm still too young for that kind of thing.
The last glimpse I got of the news, before I grudgingly headed for the bathroom, was flashing blue lights and big masked policemen in black uniforms with guns, leading men in handcuffs out of a building.
* * *
By the time I was done in the bathroom, the news were over. Dad came upstairs with me and tucked me in, and to my surprise, he didn't even tell me off because it was so late. Maybe he was sorry that he snapped at me earlier.
When he opened the window to let in some fresh air, a rush of wind blew the curtain into the room. It billowed like the flags on the news.
"There's our storm coming," Dad said and quickly pulled the window closed again. "But don't worry, we're safe and snug." He kissed me good night. "Sleep well, Rosie. The sooner we sleep, the sooner it'll be tomorrow."
* * *
I woke the next morning from the sound of Dad's phone in the room next door pinging a text alert. He usually puts it on his bedside table to recharge overnight, and the dry wall between my bedroom and his is thin enough to hear sounds like that clearly. (I'm not sure why it's called a dry wall. It's not like the other walls in the flat are wet, except that one time in the kitchen when Sherlock bought a pressure cooker for an experiment that went wrong.) (The builder who came and put the wall up, a few years ago when I got big enough to have my own bedroom, was really nice, by the way. He looked scary at first, with a bald round head and bulging arms with tattoos all over and a booming foreign-sounding voice. But when I and Mrs Hudson made him tea and sandwiches, he kissed – kissed! - both our hands to say thank you, like we were queens, and he let me help mix the plaster and the paint and he really was so nice. Sherlock says that's because he's kind of an old friend – someone hired him to shoot Mrs Hudson once, years ago, but then that job got cancelled. And since he's actually a really good workman, they've had him come back a couple of times for other stuff around the house, too. Not that I really believe that – the shooting bit, that is. Because honestly, who on earth would want to shoot Mrs Hudson?)
There was hardly any light coming through the curtains, but my alarm clock said it was nearly time to get up. Dad was not in his room, but that didn't worry me. I know where to look for him when I wake up in the morning and he isn't there. The phone on his bedside table caught my eye as I walked past it on my way to the stairs. The light of the screen was still on.
It know it's rude to look through other people's phones without permission, but it could have been something urgent, couldn't it? So I walked over and picked up the phone, but I'd barely read the first few words of the message from some random number when the screen locked itself and turned dark. Something about airports being closed on account of the weather. Since neither me nor Dad were going to need an airport today, I immediately dismissed it from my mind. I had more important things to think about. Because that day was Friday, and that meant I was finally off to Tara's after school!
Dad was in the kitchen, and he'd already made breakfast. He was in a much better mood than the night before , humming off-key under his breath, and he didn't even frown when I sat down and heaped on the Frosties.
When he joined me at the table, I pushed the phone across to him. "I think you've got a text."
Dad made a rather hasty grab for it, glanced at the message – and broke into a broad grin. A grin, seriously. It had been a while.
"What is it, Dad?" But I thought I knew already.
"Sherlock's coming home."
"What, today?" I nearly knocked over the milk in my excitement.
"Yeah, he says the airports are closed because of the storm, but he'll get a seat on the tunnel train. He'll be home for dinner with his suitcase full of Belgian chocolate, Rosie."
"Really? All for me?"
"You may have to share with Mycroft."
"Deal."
We clinked mugs – milk for me, tea for Dad. We were both grinning now.
"Dad?" I asked, because something in my memory of last night had just started to make sense. The sooner we sleep, the sooner it'll be tomorrow. We. That wasn't just about me and Tara. "You knew that already, didn't you? Last night, I mean. That he was coming back."
Dad smiled a little ruefully. "I really can't get anything past either of you, can I?"
Ha.
I tried to wheedle more details out of him – where exactly was Sherlock, what was he doing, did he catch the bad guy, and why is he coming back even earlier than he said he would? – but Dad just said that I could pester Sherlock about all that once he was back.
"Right, have fun, be good, and I'll pick you up from Tara's at seven tonight," he said as he pulled on his jacket a little later. His surgery is on the same bus route as my school, but it's a long way further out, so he always leaves ahead of me because he starts work early on Fridays. Mrs Hudson arrived to take over, and I lost l no time telling her that Sherlock was due back later that day.
"Oh, so it was him getting arrested on the news last night, was it?" she asked Dad, sounding weirdly relieved. "I thought I was seeing things."
"Erm, well- " Dad, who had been packing his bag, suddenly looked really uncomfortable.
"Sherlock got what?" I blurted out.
Dad grimaced. Mrs Hudson saw it and put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed. "It's nothing, Rosie, I'm sorry. Never mind me, I'm rambling." She ruffled my hair, which is something she doesn't do often and which I really don't like because it makes me feel like a four year old. I'm almost nine now!
"What's that about Sherlock getting arrested?" I insisted. The images that were crowding into my head right then were frightening. Blue lights. Uniforms. Handcuffs. Guns.
Dad sighed. "It's fine, Rosie, don't worry, please."
"Was he on the news?" Dad's face told me all I needed to know. "Why didn't you tell me that? You never tell me anything!" That's not technically true, but sometimes I just hated how they'd keep me in the dark about things. Dad still owed me an explanation why I couldn't go on my hockey team's excursion to the Aquarium, too. What on earth did we win the bloody North London Under-10s Interschool Championship for if I didn't even get to enjoy the prize? (I'm not supposed to say "bloody", either, but to be fair Dad does that a lot, too.)
"Look, Rosie, don't blow your top now," Dad said in that annoying extra-calm tone that he always uses when I start yelling. "I didn't want you to worry, all right? Sherlock's fine, he was just pretending to be one of the bad guys, you know, so he could find out what they were up to and where they were hiding their smuggled diamonds. And the police knew that all along. They were never going to hurt him or anything."
As far as explanations go, that didn't sound very comforting. "Isn't that terribly dangerous?"
"A bit, yes, sometimes. But he's Sherlock, remember? He's cleverer than all the rest of them put together, so - "
"But it's a bad thing, right?"
"What, being clever?"
"Spying on people. Tara says spies get put in prison."
"Listen, it's fine, believe me." Dad opened his arms, and I let him pull me into a hug. "Nobody's putting Sherlock in prison. They'll probably give him a medal. And all the chocolate. And he will be home for dinner."
Well, I thought, he'd better be right.
