The Quiet Man

Conversations with Apples

“All right?”

“All right. Yourself?” Maybe I can just deflect.

She nods. “Fine.” She stares at her hands for a second. I should jump in, tell her I’m in a hurry. I haven’t picked up a single item yet. My trolley is completely empty. “Are you...” She stops. Am I what? She looks up again, and stares at me, hard. Like she’s trying to find something in my face. What? What is it?

“You know he isn’t a fraud,” she says. No beating around the bush here.

I shrug. Of course I know that. I don’t really know how to respond. “The media think otherwise.”

“But you know the truth,” she says. These sound like questions, even though they can’t possibly be. Her words turn up a bit at the end, like she’s asking me. You know the truth? No, no I don’t. I don’t know the truth of anything. I ask and I ask, but I’m going around in circles. I’ll never get an answer, and I’m no closer to closing the door on this. No. I don’t know the truth. I’m in the dark on this one.

“I don’t know anything anymore,” I tell her. It’s a bit too much information. I didn’t mean to be so honest. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” she says. “You know that he’s–” she stops. “That he’s trying to–” She sighs. “He’ll do anything for you.”

This is just weird. Is this some kind of–

Is she jealous? Is this her heartbreak spattering out at me?

He shares a bed with me, sometimes. Did she know that? Did she guess? He crawls into my bed in the mornings to talk to me when he’s cold, or when he’s bored and wants me to entertain him. He rests his hand on the nape of my neck while he scans my blog posts over my shoulder and I pretend to hate it. Is she jealous of all that? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only us, flatmates. Friends. My dreams are only dreams. She can’t know about those.

“We weren’t a couple, you know,” I tell her. God. Like I haven’t spent the last hour defending myself against this exact same argument. Sherlock and his feelings for me, me and my feelings for Sherlock, what does it matter now? He’s gone, Molly. Are you jealous? There was nothing to be jealous of.

Well, that’s not true, I suppose. From her perspective. He mocks me too, but I know he cares for me. He thinks I’m fantastic, he said so. That once, at least. He loves my attention, he loves that I adore him. He knows that I adore him. You know that, don’t you, Sherlock? It’s obvious, of course you do. I admire everything you do, in every possible way. You love it. You preen over it. I think you’re a little dependent on it, frankly. I think it’s why you want me around all the time. When you say something especially clever you turn to look at me, you wait for it. You count on my admiration to come pouring out. Brilliant, I’ll say. Genius. Amazing. That’s outstanding, Sherlock, really well done. Wonderful. Fantastic.

I love him and he loves that I do; she loves him and he had no time for her. He’s scornful. No wonder she’s jealous. I’d be jealous too.

“He’d do anything to protect you, John.”

What? What does that mean? How does she know about that?

She’s trying to compose her face. There’s something else there. What is this? “He would die,” she says, with the emphasis on die. “ Rather than see anything happen to you.” She looks at me like this means something. Like I’m supposed to parse it and continue her sentence, add the next link in the chain. Like it’s a puzzle piece or some secret code. A password. I don’t know it. This makes no sense.

Maybe she’s a bit cracked as well. It wouldn’t surprise me.

He’d die. Well, he did, Molly. He did. It’s not a future eventuality, it’s the past. What are you getting at? What do you want from me?

I haven’t seen her. We haven’t talked. She must be reading The Strand, though. She must be. She would.

There is a large set of comments that continue on from story to story about whether or not Sherlock is in love with me. They come up with lists of proofs: things he says, things he does. The way he turns back and looks at me. The way he waits. I read it, I look at all the new comments every day, but I don’t respond to those. I wait to see which side is going to win.

It changes day to day. Some people think it’s not Sherlock who was in love with me, it’s me who was in love with Sherlock. The last time I checked, that argument was winning. They have an impressive set of evidence culled from my blog and my stories. Turns of phrase, focus, the way I write about his eyes. The way I dedicate each of my stories to the not-so-mysterious S. Obvious, they say. It’s obvious. I’m only writing him to look as if he loves me back. I think they are probably right.

I bet Molly’s read them all; she must see herself in me. Unrequited love on display, constantly. The pain of it. She must feel sorry for me.

Or she doesn’t: maybe she thinks he’s in love with me, too. Me, instead of her. Unfair. Unfair entirely. I’m not gay. Sherlock doesn’t want a relationship. Love made pointless, drifting off into space, as if it never mattered at all. Well, now it doesn’t, in any case. Just a bit of history now, either way. Does he or doesn’t he, do I or don’t I, it doesn’t matter.

“You understand, John? He’d die,” she says again, like I’m meant to be capable of making sense of it. Which I am not.

Molly. He’s dead already.

He did die. He did die, Molly. What are you trying to tell me?

Am I supposed to understand this? He’d die rather than let something happen to me. What’s the suggestion? That he died so that I wouldn’t be harmed?

That makes no sense. I’m not in any danger. I wasn’t; it wasn’t about me. It was about him. I wasn’t even supposed to be there, he sent me away. He sent me away, then he fell. And I saw him. I saw him there, I saw him dead, and there was nothing else. There was no danger, there were no guns, no bombs, no threats, nothing. Moriarty had done his worst. He had ruined Sherlock without ever touching him. He had made a fool out of him, he had destroyed his reputation and his career. There was no more need for threats. He had what he wanted. He forced Sherlock to take the poison pill, because there was no one there for me to shoot. And I wasn’t there to pull the trigger. He played the long game, Moriarty did. He beat you in the end.

Maybe that’s why you did it. You can’t bear to be beaten. You’d rather die. And maybe that’s the only answer I’m ever going to get.

You said goodbye, you said, goodbye, John, and you spread your arms as you fell. As if you might fly. One last experiment with gravity. You’d prefer that to living with defeat. You’d rather die.

This isn’t fair, it’s not–

No. Not here. Don’t do this to me. Molly: just. Stop.

I’m not going to have conversations like this. Not at Tesco, not anywhere. This is an ambush.

I hold up my hand. The universal sign. It’s too much. Why is Molly doing this to me? Emotional agony in place of casual chit-chat in the shops: she’s breaking all the rules. We’re in public. It’s not my fault he didn’t love her. It’s not my fault. “I can’t.”

“John–” she’s about to say more, but stops herself. She bites her lip. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I need to go now.” That’s really all I can say.

“Take care,” she says. As if I ever could.