Secrets, Labs, and Microscopes
There were no cases to distract him, and it did not help. The way his insides were stirring normally did not render anything good. He would have used John as a buffer but not now. His fingers drum on the arm of his couch. He closes his eyes. He never apologized before for leaving abruptly. It is not like they had agreed to meet. They had bumped into each other. They had decided to have a coffee, and then he could not stand it, and he had to leave. Technically he didn’t have any commitment elsewhere but also practically he had to be anywhere else but sitting across from Molly, their knees almost touching in that overlit café at Tate Modern. The urge to apologize was unbearable. He reached for his phone. Letting out an exasperated sigh, he texted:
Did you make it home okay?
He deleted it immediately. He had never acted overprotective; he wasn’t going to start now. He looked at the screen of his phone on the empty message that he was about to type. Maybe that was what had irritated him. She had acted protective before, caring. The times she had screamed at him for taking too many narcotics, the time she slapped him thankfully without an engagement ring, the times he asked, and she always offered… But never… Was there any pity in her eyes? He hoped there was not. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. He could barely stand his own. He wasn’t sure because he barely looked into her eyes, afraid of what he would found there. There was something in the middle of the storm that was brewing inside of him that did not allow him to see further into the epicentre, did not allow him to step into the centre of the tornado where he could find the calm, but it meant diving into the territory of sentiment and he wasn’t sure his papers were in order to cross those borders. His eyes focused on the titillating whiteness on his palm, and he typed:
I’m home. Are you?
Simple. He sent it because otherwise he would overthink it. Sherlock left the phone on the armchair and paced to his violin. He played while his eyes waiting for the phone to vibrate and lit up. Nothing. Molly had fallen asleep already because she arrived earlier and collapsed on the bed. His mind reminded that she had probably fallen asleep, but there was a nagging feeling with a rat at the back of the mind gnawing its way out. What if something had happened to her on her way home? What if someone else had targeted her because of him? It would not do. He stopped playing abruptly and heading to the phone again. He unlocked it and typed.
Just confirm you got home. Please.
He sent it not leaving room for hesitation again. He waited. Nothing again. He rang and waited.
Hi, you have reached Molly at the dead centre of t…
He hanged up. Damn it, Molly, pick up, pick up, pick up. He paced and rang again. Same result. If you keep doing the same things, you'll end up getting the same results. It was 11.30 p.m. He could text John, but he could hear what he would say if he were awake and if he were asleep, he would give out to him and tell him the same thing he would have said if he was awake. And then he would speculate for hours about why Sherlock was feeling so worried about Molly now and then he would draw his own conclusions which would be inevitably wrong… Frustration mounts and he grabs his coat. There’s only one thing left to do. He’ll go check if she’s home himself.
The goodness of this idea as he leaves 221B Baker street quickly fades as the taxicab he got into turns a couple of blocks in the general direction of Molly’s flat, but he’s committed now. He needs to make sure she’s okay, but she’s probably asleep. She must be. The imagery seeping through the walls of certain safe rooms, or safe till then, in his mind palace are illusions, projections, remnants of the fear they all experienced in Sherringford. He pays the taxi and walks out. The code of the apartment block is not difficult to guess, the indentations on the number pad, the erosion of the numbers and the rain corrosion of the numbers that are less used make it too evident. Mental note to tell her later to lobby in the residents forum to change the cover of the keypad regularly, or at least to get new stickers for the numbers. He pushes the gate as it gives in to the four-digit code and walks in. Molly lives on the first floor. He knows because he’s been here many times, but never long, short visits, quick cuppas in her kitchen. Her car is parked in front. The old mini that she bought with her first savings as she told them once at one of the random birthday get-togethers that Mary liked so much.
- Oh, cheer up, Sherlock – Mary had said shoving another glass of prosecco into his hand.
Lestrade had started the talk on cars, on first cars, on driving licence tests. The boasting didn’t take long to start. John had talked about how he passed his test straight at 18, and Mary confessed she had been driving for years before getting an official licence, to everybody’s teasing tisks.
- How about you, Molly? – Greg asked her.
- Me?... I grew up on a farm.
- What’s that supposed to mean? – asked Mary.
- It means that she was probably driving a tractor before she got into a proper car – John said, and Molly laughed.
- Well…
Even Sherlock had smiled a bit because the mere image of tiny teen Molly driving a John Deer should have been dignified with a
photograph.
- I’m sure Simon has photos of it somewhere. We were both obsessed with dad’s tractors though. I think he got one of those tiny battery-operated ones. I was so jealous... – she suddenly remembered – We had a Vespa too!
- Awwww – Mary exclaimed – I would have loved a Vespa.
- It was more for dad to go to the fields, but we were occasionally allowed to borrow it to go down to the shops. – Molly had clarified.
- But what about your first car? – Greg pressed.
- My first car is the Mini.
- The one you still own? – John said.
She nodded taking a sip from her champagne flute.
- Yes.
And there it was still, dark blue, but still shiny, rarely used in London. In fact, he wasn’t able to recall the one time she had seen her driving it. He would ask her later. He waited a bit as someone had just come in with a car and parked and slid into the apartment block where her flat is before the door closed behind the neighbour that had just arrived. He climbed up the four flights of stairs and knocked. He didn’t want to ring the bell so as not to startle her or make the other three flats on the landing aware of his presence, a late visitor, and a recognizable one as such. Molly was too fast asleep, and her bedroom door was partially closed so of course she did not hear it. He waited and knocked again, this time a bit louder. Nothing. Not a single movement inside. Toby, her cat, had heard it and had lifted his head from the comfortable loaf position he had at her feet on her bed, but decided against waking up his human servant. Sherlock felt the need to take a deep breath. He put his hand on his pocket and took out his pick set. He weighed the pros and cons of breaking and entering into Molly’s apartment and the click on the lock felt like approval enough. He walked in quietly. If she were asleep, he would prefer to go in and out unnoticed. If she weren’t there and someone had indeed hurt her, stealth would be an advantage as well. Toby decided to be on the safe side and walked to her bedroom door prying it open with his paw. Toby walked up to the tall stranger advancing in the dark and meowed at him, nothing too menacing. Sherlock crouched down and Toby, the traitor, approached his hand for a good in-between-the-ears rub. The orange streetlight was seeping through Molly’s window and Sherlock could see her calm face fast asleep on the bed. He had seen her in different lights but never under the warm calm glow of night city lighting. He was used to her lifeless mien under the neon lights at the morgue, or the warmer tone of the neon lighting in the lab. And it was normally the other way round. It was normally Molly who would be staring at him. She had caught her countless times staring at him while he was working with her microscope, or testing whatever he needed to or wanted to, or just looking at him because she had nothing else to do. Sometimes she would act all flustered and quickly cover up the act, but lately she had become increasingly self-reliant and did not even apologize. Are you okay? Don't just say you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one can see you. He wasn’t sure why he had said what he said. But you can see me. Didn’t she just? Her microscopic eyes beyond 20/20 vision would see through him with electronic precision. This insight always caught him out. It was probably not the first time that Molly had disarmed him with a simple short sentence, and it wouldn’t be the last. But I don’t count. It had bothered him for days that she believed that. And it had taken him months to correct her. You do count. You've always counted, and I always trusted you. Even now, he trusted her. The problem was not one of trust. It was one of vulnerability. His trust made Molly vulnerable. He let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t know he had been holding. That is why he had felt the need to leave his apartment and make sure that Molly was okay. Toby went over to his food bowl. Sherlock took the food quietly from the kitchen counter where it was sitting and poured just a tiny bit. He had definitely earned the cat’s trust now, and he slipped out as quietly as he had come in. Once outside, he leaned against the wall before kicking off and heading into the streets lifting the collar of his coat. If this is how it was going to be from now on, he needed a plan.
Molly woke up in the morning to Toby gone. He would not normally leave in the middle of the night because he was fond of his breakfast bright and early. She yawned, stretched and grabbed her phone to see Sherlock’s missed call and messages. She was surprised and touched she couldn’t deny that, so she answered back immediately.
‘Sorry, was asleep. I must have been knackered because I was gone like a light. All good. Hope I didn’t worry you too much. All good with you?’
He hadn’t slept at all and as the message came through, he opened his eyes and read it.
‘Yes’
She read annoyance in the curt response.
‘Are you mad at me because I didn’t pick up or something?’
‘Why would I be?’
'No reason, just checking.'
'I’m not. I’m glad you are okay. I’m okay.'
'Good'.
There were very few people in the world who could annoy her with a single monosyllable and Sherlock was definitely one of them. She got up and decided she needed a run and a swim and who knows what else to shake this… whatever it was that she was feeling right now. As soon as her toes touched her slippers, Toby showed up at the window demanding food and purring at the same time. ‘Ah, here you are, late night?’ She shook her head at the cat and left. She didn’t know that the cat had now a secret, a secret he shared with Sherlock Holmes.