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The front doors of Fortnum and Mason lock behind you. You were the last person in the Food Hall – your flight from Paris having been delayed, your scheduled evening activities have been affected – but you have accomplished the first of your plans.
The weight of the hamper and a bottle of claret (already at the right temperature) don't hinder you. You make your turn onto Duke Street and smile sweetly at the CCTV camera on the building opposite.
Even in his distress, he'll be watching. He is not a man who appreciates most surprises.
Two more blocks, the wind whipping around your bare legs, fluttering your coat; two more security cameras, at which you smile. The BlackBerry in your coat pocket doesn't vibrate. He'll accept your presence, then.
You not-quite-smile against your upturned coat collar, secret.
It has been eighteen months since he first crossed your flat's threshold, since he caught you and let you go in one smooth Holmesian movement. It has been eighteen months of almost daily texts and phone calls, while he runs Britain and you travel where you're needed. You have only seen him a few handfuls of times, however: a couple of G7 meetings; twice, long weekends in your pied-a-terre in Chelsea; once in Tokyo, once in New York City. And there was that memorable night in Davos (Room 312 in the best hotel there, Swiss chocolate and good Champagne from room service); after too long listening to grey men and women speak economic nonsense, after too long watching him politely simmer throughout one particularly enraging evening presentation on the euro, you'd gone upstairs to your shared room and texted him that you were in bed, naked and ready for him. He'd walked through the door five minutes later, and your hands, wrapped in 1000-thread-count Egyptian linen, were fisted on the headboard three minutes after that. He'd actually ripped the sheet when he'd come, silently, all-encompassingly.
Four times, however, you've spent a day and night in his St James fastness. You know where you're going.
A discarded newspaper, crumpled, half-torn, drifts near your feet. You can read bits of words – cide and genius. Three days old, then. Three days since the fall.
When you reach the all-but-concealed entrance in a Georgian facade very near St James Palace, you look up at the hidden camera. “Hullo, darling,” you say, your lips and mouth shaping the words with care. Then you bend down and brush your fingers against the hearts of the pansies in the huge urn by the door.
It's almost silent, the opening of that door – the silence of long-distance electronic control. You touch the cold metal edge of the door as you pass, dusting it with pollen, warming it. The door slams as soon as you're inside.
You make your way to the lift, punch in the code, shift your burdens. You take a deep breath. And then it's time.
Mycroft is standing there when the lift doors slide apart in his flat. He looks so tired, you think, so sad. He's in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat hanging open, and he's wearing the embroidered slippers you gave him for Christmas. He opens his hand, not yet touching you – “Anthea.”
“Darling.” You rest your fingertips on his lips. “I've missed you.”
His mouth moves in a kiss, in speech. “The El Fadil negotiations?”
“I have the night off. My assistant's on duty, but tonight El Fadil is apparently diving deep into the Parisian stews, bent on breaking all of Mohammed's moral laws in one go.” Your smile is tender. “I'll go back on an early flight tomorrow morning and start the talks again once he's sober.”
“My dear--” It's jagged hurt, his voice. Much more than he would want to reveal, more than you expected to hear.
With one swoop of finger, you caress his lips, make him quiet. “Three things, Mycroft, and then we'll only talk of it if you wish. One, after years of surveillance, I am well aware that your brother Sherlock is not a fraud. Two, if the talk got that bad, the press that unruly, it's because you let them. Which means there's a long game here, and.... Well, three, I am all but positive your brother isn't dead.”
He takes the Fortnum and Mason bag and the wine from you, sets them aside. Then he gathers you in, his thigh between your legs, his arms a circle of steel, his face buried in your shoulder. This close, you can feel the tremors. This close, you can only just hear, “You know me too well.”
“There are many ways I can take that, Mycroft darling.” You kiss him on his temple, there where the hair has retreated. “I choose to take it in the best way possible.”
“You should,” he says more strongly, and then lifts his head. His attempt at a smile is heartbreaking. “Now, what have you brought me, besides yourself?”
“Your favourites,” you say sweetly.
“I said, besides yourself.” That is spoken in the true Mycroft Holmes manner – a hint of condescension, a hint of mischief.
You dare to kiss his mouth then, kiss the smile deeper. “Well, let's go into the kitchen and see.”
He takes off your coat then, silently appreciates your simple black dress, and then draws you into the kitchen with your presents.
You have brought him smoked salmon, a morsel of West Country cheese, some sliced cucumber. You have brought him newly baked rye bread, and his favourite relish. Then you pour him a glass of claret, there in his immaculately appointed, sterile kitchen, and watch him eat what you've brought him. You steal a bit of cheese and a few slices of cucumber. You drink from his glass. You drink him in.
Afterward, he tells you to wait for him in the bedroom, he'll clear all this away. “Champagne to follow, or another glass of claret?” he asks.
“Claret,” you say, and smile, and walk away before he can see how sad he's making you.
Mycroft's bedroom opens onto his tiny rooftop terrace. Outside the French windows the roses in pots are lashed by late wind, petals drifting in the dark. You stand for a moment there, watching beauty be torn apart, and then turn to his room.
It's beautifully spare – a few heavy pieces from his country house, arranged harmoniously in empty space. On his bedside table he keeps the same orchids you love. (You wonder if he knew you were coming to him. You decide you don't care.) Next to the orchids is a framed bit of paper: you recognise your own handwriting.
On your last birthday he'd sent you your orchids, and a poem transcribed in his elegant hand on the finest, thinnest linen paper: a filthy poem by Robert Herrick, in which he'd inserted your name in place of the poet's Lucia. I dreamed this mortal part of mine/ Was metamorphosed to a vine,/ Which crawling one and every way/Enthralled my dainty Anthea....On his birthday, two months later, you'd sent him Cartier cufflinks – a vine of diamonds, winding over gold – and, transcribed in your own hand on the finest, thinnest linen paper, the last lines of Joyce's great epic.
This gift he has framed. Under glass, under the light of his bedside lamp, your words – someone else's words, made into yours –gleam. I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
“Anthea dear,” he says, and you turn to him, smiling. He stands in the doorway, holding two glasses of wine.
“Darling.” You unzip your dress, let it fall to the floor. His eyes darken as he watches. (He quite likes to watch, does Mycroft.) The lingerie you've chosen is black. Red, you think, is not the right note for him now.
Slowly he comes to you. One glass he puts on the bedside table, next to your framed words. One glass he brings to you. He dips his finger in the claret, draws a cool red line down your throat. When he kisses it off, you can feel the tears he can't quite suppress, hot against your skin.
“Yes I said yes I will Yes,” you whisper to him when he slides inside you, and he pushes your hair back with unsteady fingers and drives you both mad until all tension breaks, until you lie together while the wind whips the petals from the rose outside.
Afterward, you collect your phone and turn it back on. “Do you mind?” you say, already knowing the answer.
“Of course not. You must be who you are,” he says, and takes your phone from you and puts it on the charger next to his.
You fall asleep with him, wrapped up in his silk pyjama top and his arms, warm on a cold night.
In the middle of the night, however, you wake when he does. He's locked up tight until you cup his cheek in your hand. Then, almost so quiet you can't hear him: “I made a mistake, Anthea. And I told him too late.”
“Sherlock?” You kiss his chin. “Too late for what?”
“Too late to forestall the need for subterfuge, the contingency plans, the....” His words trail off. What comes next is anguish, unrefined: “I let him down.”
“Are you helping him now? Do you have a plan?”
“Yes, but--”
“Then hush.” You find his mouth with yours, swallow down all his self-recriminations. They won't help him in the morning. “Sleep, darling, for the love of God.”
“I don't actually believe in--”
“Oh, Mycroft,” you sigh, and it's not quite a laugh. “Go back to sleep, you brilliant fool.”
Amazingly, he does what you tell him.
He wakes you just before dawn, with a whiskery kiss and a murmured, “My dear, did I ever tell you that El Fadil has a particular weakness for his Oxford days? Brasenose, I believe. Speak to him of the Isis, speak to him of the High, and I think that will give you the right leverage.”
You make your eyes open, take in his thoughtful blue gaze in a grey room. He is, after all, the cleverest man you've ever known, and he's always given you just what you need.
After a shared shower and his brewing of Assam and toasting of the last of the rye, you touch him gently. “I need to go, darling. Have you everything?”
“I do, as it happens,” he says, and kisses you until you can't breathe. Then, as suddenly as he caught you, he lets go. “I'll ring for your car.”
He escorts you down in his magic mystery lift, opens the outer door to allow in cold clouds and the discreet purr of the town car. This time his kiss is his usual one, light and definitive, before he gently puts you on the other side of the threshold. “Be safe, be strong,” he says, and “Brasenose. It'll do the trick.”
“Darling,” you say, but the door closes before you can say anything else.
You brush your fingertips against the hearts of the pansies, blow a pollen-rich kiss at the CCTV, and then get into the car. It slides forward, toward Pall Mall, away from him.
You hold your phone in your hand for a long, silent moment. You whisper the words he keeps under glass.
Then, as the sun rises all the way, you bend your head to your BlackBerry. That is who he's taught you to be. You have work to do, and so does he.
Yes you said yes you will Yes.