A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(21)

I took a calculated risk. “Matilda?”

“It’s all her fault,” Anwen said, and a moment later, began to cry.

The kettle went off then, a punctuation mark.

She startled back to herself. “Where’s your toilet?” she asked, and I pointed down the hall in defeat.

Anwen returned from the bathroom with her blank expression back in place and a fresh coat of mascara. I made a mental note that she kept makeup in her bag. A girl interested in maintaining her mask.

That mask remained firmly on after that. “It’s not that I hate Matilda,” she said. “Hated? I don’t know if she’s even still alive. But she and I were never friends. She was really only into Theo. Anyway, I have trouble with that—making friends with girls. I’m not really sure why. Guys are just easier.”

I raised an eyebrow. I despised this attitude, how it shoved all girls together into one category, how it carried the smug suggestion that male friendship was better.

“We should really start rehearsing—don’t you have a lecture at two thirty?” Unfortunately, I did.

“Oh God,” I said. “Do you mind if I watch the time on your phone? I don’t know where mine is.”

I took it from her and settled in at the kitchen island. “You’re low battery,” I said, pulling a cord from my pocket. “I’ll charge it for you. Whenever you’re ready—go ahead!”

Her Ophelia monologue was excellent. “‘As if he had been loosed out of hell / To speak of horrors,’” she whispered, a hand up as though Hamlet’s pale face were there before her. Ophelia was a vulnerable character, a girl driven to madness through her beloved’s disregard, and I hadn’t thought someone as self-possessed as Anwen could pry herself open that way. And yet, in my living room, her red curls crackling around her, I had the sense I had whenever I watched someone transform, onstage or elsewhere. That a quiet door had been opened somewhere, that a wind was coming through.

I performed mine for her—from after Ophelia had lost her mind, when she rants and sings in Hamlet’s fourth act—but I did my worst version, all rolling eyes and mock-rended clothes. I wanted to see what kind of notes Anwen would give me, if she would be honest.

She wasn’t. She told me I was “great,” cast another careful look around my flat, and exited, as it were, stage left.

I had approximately ten minutes to do the following things:

Ensure that the text messages between Anwen and Theo that I downloaded off her phone (when I’d taken it to charge; she really should have been more careful) had made it safely to my inbox.

Confirm the appointment I had just made for tomorrow morning.

Decide what the girlfriend version of myself would possibly wear to dinner with Watson that night.

A dinner. Somewhere nice.

What version of myself could I construct before then that could be even passably acceptable?





Nine

I WAS EARLY FOR DINNER, SUPPOSING THAT WATSON would be late, as he so often was.

The restaurant he’d chosen wasn’t a fancy place, though I will be the first to admit that my standards weren’t exactly standard. I had spent my childhood attending stifled, terrifying dinners at any number of Michelin-starred restaurants across Europe. I had beheaded many tiny cauliflowers and broccolinis while my father stared me down across a white tablecloth. This was not that. Neither was it counter service. It was the sort of place where the waiters wore white shirts tucked into denim, and the menu featured no fewer than four tarted-up versions of macaroni and cheese. At least that was what I could tell from the website, which I’d scanned (rather nervously) in the back of the taxi.

I would arrive early. I would settle into our table. Watson would approach. I would then say, “Hello, Watson,” and then I could ask him about his day.

This is how people behaved. For two hours, I could behave like a person.

Only Watson was not late. He was waiting for me on a bench in the vestibule, toeing the gray-washed hardwood floor.

“Holmes,” he said, standing as I walked through the door. “I think our table’s ready.”

“Hello, Watson,” I said. (That much I could manage.)

He had on his brown leather jacket and a white shirt, open at the collar. He looked very much like himself. Was that a good thing? Should I have imagined he looked different? I searched myself for the sort of response I was meant to have in this scenario, a first proper date with the boy that I cared for. Should he have a golden sheen around him? An inner glow? Should he be looking at me as though I were a treasure, or a princess? Biting his lip? Averting his eyes?

Should I be imagining us doing this—dining out at strangely posh comfort-food restaurants—for the rest of our lives?

I was spiraling. I took myself back to what was in front of me. Watson looked handsome, in the way he always did, which is to say clean but not manicured. The only difference was that he smelled a bit like cologne. Something, again, clean, like water if water had been supercharged into having a smell. Perhaps he’d made an effort. Was that exciting?

I was excited, I supposed, in the way in which I wanted to throw up from nerves.

I realized then that I had been standing in front of Watson for forty-five seconds without saying a single word.

“Miss?” The hostess hovered behind him. “Um. Your table’s ready?”