Chapter Text
The Blog of Eugenia H. Watson, Juvenile Delinquent
8 November
So. This is what it feels like to be one of those kids. You know, the ones always getting dragged to the headmaster’s office, spray-painting train tunnels, getting ASBOs. It’s interesting, in a way. Sort of like going undercover.
I am generally not a troublemaker. I mean, come on. My biggest obsession in life is chess. Is there such a thing as a chess hooligan? Hardly the first choice of teenage rebels. My parents have gotten called in for conference with my teachers, but usually it’s been about something I’ve done well, not something I’ve done badly.
So I’m sure my parents were more than a little surprised when they were called in to school today because I had slapped Lilly Bathgate across the face.
Yes, future memoir-readers. I am a violent criminal offender.
You may recall that Lilly Bathgate is my school nemesis. We all seem to have one, like they’re issued to us as standard teenage equipment along with hoodies and earbuds. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those desperate-loner kids who has no friends and gets harassed mercilessly. I get along pretty well at school. I’ve got close friends. My best friend Metsy, and then there’s Bryn and Marjorie and Delia, plus various satellite friends. Then there’s my non-school friends, like Zack and Colin. There are lots of different ways to be popular at Francis Holland. Being a posh blonde is just the most boring of them. So naturally, this is where Lilly Bathgate’s thrown her lot in, because she isn’t bright enough to think of a more interesting way to distinguish herself besides being a great stonking bitch.
She has a gang of clones who follow her about being even more boring than she is. Their sole purpose in life is to belittle anyone they deem inferior, which is everyone who isn’t them. If you’ve ever gone to school then you know what I mean.
I’m a fairly easy target. I wear secondhand clothes, play chess and have gay dads. Then there’s my scar, which was on extravagant display throughout my years of wearing Francis’s school uniform gray skirt. Not that any of those things are particularly freakish, but they’re enough to mark me as different, which is all that’s required. Those are Lilly’s most frequently-used points of torment.
Normally, I find it pretty easy to ignore her. There are two factors that let me do this.
First, despite her much-displayed status as a posh rich girl with cashmere jumpers and designer handbags, I know that my family’s better off than hers. Lilly’s father is a solicitor who apparently does something evil involving corporations and money, and they live in a des res and have expensive cars and a swotty summer home in the Cotswolds. Fantastic. As far as she knows, I just live in a flat on Baker Street.
What she doesn’t know is that Sherlock owns both 221 and 219. He bought them after getting a rather extravagant payday for having performed an unnamed service for someone royal. Mum and Dad both earn good livings, and Sherlock’s gotten famous enough for what he does that people sometimes hire him who can afford to pay him six figures, which they gladly do because they think it’ll buy his silence. They don’t know that he couldn’t care less about spreading about their dirty little secrets. He doesn’t concern himself with charging for his services, of course. Dad handles all his fees. I think it’s some sort of sliding scale based on income. Sometimes he works for free. He doesn’t care, as long as the case is interesting. But the point is that while we might live pretty modestly, the coffers are full, if you know what I mean.
The second factor that lets me shrug off Lilly is the very satisfying knowledge that I could make one phone call and her father would suddenly find himself working at his firm’s satellite office in Uzbekistan. That thought is what you might call a happy place. So when she starts in on me, I go to that happy place and imagine her tottering down the streets of Uzbekistan in her Louboutins.
I was not in the best of moods today. I had an exam in maths that I knew I was going to bodge up something awful. Also I’d been off my chess game lately. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t play, but sometimes you reach these plateaus in your understanding of the game where you just sort of stagnate until suddenly you hit a new level of awareness and you shoot forward. I was stagnating. The frustration was making my game all dodgy. Leonid had beaten me every game at last night’s lessons.
So there was that. I was also still working through in my head all the new information I had about my mother. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it and I still had so many questions. It was a little distracting. And I was deadly curious about the man Mum had left behind, the one she still loved. I had managed to ask Dad if he knew who he was, and he’d said no. Not sure I believe him. I have not yet asked Sherlock if he knows. I haven’t asked because he almost certainly does know, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to. Mum hadn’t wanted to tell me. She deserves some privacy, doen’t she? But oh my God the curiosity is killing me.
Such was the distracted state of my brain this morning – Mum, chess, maths -- when Lilly sodding Bathgate decided it was time to wind me up, yet again. As I’ve said, usually I can let it roll off my back. But as I’ve also said, I wasn’t at my best today. Not by a long shot.
I was in the sixth-form common room in search of coffee when she strutted up to me with her lookalike pals. “Morning, Genie,” she said, all sweetness and syrup.
I sighed. Don’t be fooled by the Posh Girl’s innocent appearance and friendly demeanor. She is a master of misdirection. “Lilly,” I said, maintaining an air of neutrality. Not that it would help.
She was sporting a tartan plaid skirt and a cashmere twinset. What a cliché. We’d been back at school for over a month now and I’d not seen her wear the same outfit twice. The ability to wear one’s own clothes was still a bit of a novelty for us. Lilly and I are both sixth formers now, which means we no longer have to wear the hideous Francis Holland school uniform (which features an unflattering shirt of eye-searing pink), so what one is wearing to school is still a matter of conversational import. Today I was wearing cargo pants, an old t-shirt with a Dalek on it and my favorite cardigan. It was nubbly cable-knit with patches sewn on it. I’d found it in a shop on Tottenham Court Road.
“Was that your mum I saw you with this morning?”
“Yes.” Mum had walked with me to school this morning for no particular reason. Sometimes she does that when she’s taking the Tube somewhere first thing.
“Why didn’t she drop you off in a car, then?”
Where was she going with this? “I live around the corner, Lilly.” As you’re well aware, you dim twat.
“Oh, that’s right. With your gay dads.” She laughed, a bright peal of delighted glee.
I fetched a deep sigh. “Yes. For the millionth time. With my gay dads.”
“And your mum.”
“Would you like me to draw you a flowchart? Yes, with my mum, too.”
“I just didn’t know that they rented flats to freakshows.” More gleeful laughter. Her clones elbowed each other and sniggered.
I glanced around the room. Myra Breckenridge was over by the vending machines. She looked at me and rolled her eyes, making a wank gesture with her left hand. I smirked. Lilly was popular in a surface sort of way, more or less because she declared it to be so and nobody really wanted to contradict her too loudly, but just about everybody thought she was a stroppy cow. “Well, our money spends, us freakshows,” I said.
“Your Mum. She a fag hag too?” Lilly said, her voice dropping a bit.
Fury was bubbling up in my chest in spite of myself. Lilly usually focused most of her unpleasantness on my notoriously gay dads, or on me myself. Mum had not been one of her traditional targets. And given what I’d just found out about my mother, today was not the day to start dragging her into it. “Shut it about my mother,” I snarled.
Mistake. Now she knew she’d found a sore spot. “She’s quite smart, your mum,” Lilly said. “Bet she’s not so keen to have a slobber for a daughter.” She raked her eyes over me. “Nice jumper. Dig that out of the bin, did you?” I just stood there, pretending to be totally focused on my coffee-making. I didn’t trust myself to say anything. “Bet she’d rather not bother with you,” Lilly said. “She’d probably be able to find herself a bloke if she weren’t stuck at home with you and the poofs. Or maybe – maybe she likes it,” she said. “I bet she gets off on it. She stick around because she likes to rub off and watch your dads on the job, then?”
That did it. I snapped. I’d done it before I even realized I was going to.
A bit of an uproar went up in the common room. Lilly staggered back with her hand to her face and my own palm was stinging. Wait, what? Did that just happen?
“You hit me!” Lilly exclaimed, a look of astonishment on her face, like she’d thought she was encased in some sort of force field that would shield her from any and all retribution. I’d be willing to bet that nobody had ever laid a hand on Lilly Bathgate in anger in her life. Not a very enlightened response, I know, but I couldn’t help but feel a sort of grim satisfaction at having been the first.
Myra Breckenridge was instantly at my side with one arm wrapped around my shoulders, probably to restrain me in case I decided to have at her again. “Oh shut your face, Lilly, you were bloody asking for it,” she said.
“Did I just do that?” I said.
“You fucking cunt!” Lilly snarled, and made as if to launch herself at me. Her clones held her back, but they didn’t have to hold very hard. It was just for show. No way was Lilly Bathgate going to get into fisticuffs with the likes of me. Not and risk her manicure. “You broke my nose!” she wailed.
“Oh, I did not,” I said. “It isn’t even bleeding.”
“Come on, let’s go to the nurse,” one of her clones said. “And the headmistress!”
I sighed. “Oh, bollocks.”
A little crowd had gathered round me by now. Bryn elbowed her way to the front. “Bloody hell, Genie! What made you finally pop off on her?”
“I don’t know.”
“She said some abominably rude things about Genie’s mum,” Myra said. “Might’ve popped her myself if it were me.”
Bryn shook her head. “Well, you’ll be spending some time in the headmistress’s office today.”
I sank down on the nearest chair. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“You’d just had it,” Myra said, crossing her arms. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Oh God, Ms. Dunedin’s going to ring my parents,” I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands. “What if I get expelled?”
“You’re not going to get expelled. Remember last year when Kate Mosby and Big Edna got into it on the netball pitch? They just got a stern talking-to and a two-day suspension. And they bloodied each other up a lot worse.”
The common room door opened and the deputy head walked in. She was looking at me with a half-angry, half-bemused expression on her face. “Eugenia, with me,” she said.
“Cor, that didn’t take long,” Bryn muttered.
“You watch yourself. Lilly’s father is some kind of man-eating solicitor,” Myra said.
I smirked. “No worries. In the contest between parental heavyweights it’s advantage Watson. Trust me.”
So there I was in Miss Dunedin’s office. She looked very confused. “Genie, I’m frankly astonished at this behavior from you.”
“Me, too.”
“You’ve never had any kind of disciplinary problem, let alone fighting,” she said, her lips curling in distaste over the word, as if such a thing were insupportable in her school.
“I wouldn’t call it a fight.”
“Lilly says you struck her.” I didn’t say anything. “Genie, I’m aware of what goes on in my school. I know that Lilly has made you a particular target. She’s been spoken to about her own behavior. I can only assume that she went too far with you today. Nevertheless, your response is completely unacceptable and I can’t condone it.”
“I can’t either, Miss Dunedin.”
She sighed. “Well, I’ve spoken to your father. He’s on his way. Lilly’s parents have requested a meeting between all concerned parties.”
Oh, great. The Bathgates. Maybe we weren’t done with the violence yet today.
Miss Dunedin put me in a lounge to wait. I didn’t have to wait long.
Dad walked in looking like a thunderstorm. He sat down facing me and just stared at me for a moment, like he didn’t know where to start. “Eugenia Watson, please explain to me why I’ve just been called away from work to come deal with the fact that you’ve slapped one of your classmates? I thought someone was having me on for a moment. Surely my daughter wouldn’t do such a thing.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “She pissed me off, Dad.”
“So you hit her? Genie – I don’t even know what to do with that.”
“I didn’t mean to! It just sort of happened! Haven’t you ever been so hacked off that you just sort of lashed out?”
“What on earth did she say to you? Do you really have such a short fuse?”
“It wasn’t just today!” I exclaimed. “Dad, she’s been at me for years! Day in and day out!”
He looked shocked. “What? Are you telling me that you’ve been bullied by this girl for years and you never said anything?”
“What would be the point? I can handle it.”
“Clearly you can’t, if you hauled off and smacked her! What has she been saying to you?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter! It matters to me! What is she…” He stopped abruptly. I glanced at him and looked away quick, but not quick enough. “Genie – is this my fault?” he said, quietly. “Are you getting teased for having a gay dad?”
“If it weren’t that, it’d be something else, Dad.”
“Oh, Christ,” he said, rubbing his hand over his face. “We thought we’d avoid this by sending you to a girls’ school.”
“Seriously? You thought girls were less likely to torment their peers than boys?” He looked so upset, I damn near forgot about my own possible expulsion. “Dad, kids get teased for all sorts of things. For being fat, or for being crap at sport, or for forgetting the words to the school song at assembly. So I get it for my gay dads. I also get it for my scar and my chess playing.”
“Girls tease you about your scar?” His face was darkening with anger.
“Of course! That’s what I mean! Anything’s fair game.”
“I never would have thought that kind of thing went on at this school. It’s always seemed so nurturing and cooperative. Aren’t you all in some sort of sisterhood with each other?”
“Most of us. And it is. But I don’t think you get four hundred teenage girls together in one spot and escape having a few cracking bitches in the mix.”
“Why, why haven’t you ever told us about this?” His eyes were imploring me.
“You really want to know?” He nodded. “This is why, Dad. Because you’d blame yourself and try to fix it and you can’t. You just can’t. Honestly, it’s none of your business. This is my thing. I can handle it. I can handle it better than some of the girls. You know another of Lilly’s favorite targets? This little fourth-former who’s on support, Maisie Jones. Her mum works as a cleaner, she’s got no dad because the bastard scarpered. The girl’s bloody brilliant. She’s two years ahead at maths and does these amazing watercolor landscapes. But Lilly slags off her shabby clothes and her sparse lunches and it’s gotten so bad that I’ve seen her crying in the loo sometimes. And then she’s got to go home to an empty house because her mum works late shifts cleaning. Sometimes I just want to bring her home with me and cuddle her. She’s who ought to be looked after, not me. I’ve got friends and three whole parents at home and an uncle who could send everyone who looks at me crossways to Siberia. So she can slag off my dads and my mangled leg all she likes if it makes her feel big and important, because stuff her, that’s why. It isn’t fun but I can take it.”
Dad was staring at me. “God, Genie. How are you not ruling the world yet?”
I grinned, but my cheeks heated up. “Give me a few years, Dad. Got to get my driving license first.”
He laughed, but then he seemed to remember why we were here. “What was different today, then? Why’d you go off on her?”
“She started in on Mum,” I said, feeling myself getting angry all over again. “After last weekend I’m feeling a bit protective. She said – some nasty things. I guess it was the last straw.”
Dad nodded. “Well, there are going to be consequences, I’m sure. But I’m also going to make damn sure this situation with this girl is addressed.”
“Just leave it alone, Dad. I’ll take my knocks.”
“I will not leave it alone. You can tell me you can handle it but I’m your father and I won’t sit around and do nothing when my girl’s being harassed daily. I’ll have a word with this girl’s parents, at the least.”
“They’re a pair of toff nightmares, Dad.”
“Great. My favorite kind.”
Just then the door opened and Sherlock swooped in. Can’t he ever enter a room normally? “Who’d you beat up, Genie?” he said, rubbing his hands together in delight. “Is there video?”
Dad executed what I must characterize as a truly cartoon-worthy facepalm.
Before we could brief Sherlock, Miss Dunedin came in and told us that the Bathgates were here, and we should all come to the conference room. I got up, a little knot of dread in the pit of my stomach. “Is Mum coming?” I whispered to Dad, praying she wasn’t.
“She’s in court, I can’t reach her.”
“Good.”
Miss Dunedin and the school counselor were in the conference room with Lilly and her parents. They looked about as you’d imagine they’d look. They all turned and looked at me like I was a bug to be squashed. Dad was eyeing Lilly, who was wearing her best innocent-princess expression. God, she really is a pro. Even her posture was different, making her look smaller and fragile, quite unlike how she usually struts about leading with her chin.
Mr. Bathgate looked primed for confrontation, but Dad’s always one to try diplomacy, so he extended a hand. “Dr. John Watson. I’m Genie’s father.”
Mr. Bathgate hesitated, then shook it, perhaps realizing he’d look like a right tosser if he didn’t. “Reginald Bathgate. This is my wife, Celia.” Mrs. Bathgate nodded stiffly.
“This is my husband, Sherlock Holmes,” Dad said. Mr. Bathgate barely glanced at him. Sherlock just stood there with one eyebrow arched to the heavens.
“Let’s all sit down,” Miss Dunedin said. We all did, Lilly and I both flanked by our parents, directly across the table from one another. Lilly’s face bore no trace of my rather unprofessional blow. I must not have hit her very hard.
Mr. Bathgate wasted no time. “Before anything else is said, I want it very clear that I want this girl expelled for her assault on my daughter. She is a menace.”
Miss Dunedin put out a hand. “Mr. Bathgate, the situation will be addressed, but this is Genie’s first ever disciplinary episode.”
Dad jumped in. “And I would like it addressed that my daughter has been subjected to a nonstop campaign of harassment by your daughter going on several years, Mr. Bathgate.”
Lilly’s father looked legitimately shocked at this. “That is preposterous. My daughter is a model student.”
Miss Dunedin frowned. “On the contrary, Mr. Bathgate, Lilly has been disciplined several times for verbal harassment of other students. Were you unaware of this?”
He flapped a hand like it couldn’t possibly matter. “So some girls have been teased. Who hasn’t? It’s all harmless fun.”
“Harmless fun?” I couldn’t help but put in, astounded. “Is it harmless fun for Maisie Jones to cry in the loo every day? Was it harmless fun when Tobie Markham actually transferred because she couldn’t take the crap she got about her psoriasis every day?”
Miss Dunedin looked astonished. Yeah, she knows what goes on in her school, sure. She doesn’t know the half of it.
“Lilly isn’t responsible for the emotional problems of other girls,” Celia Bathgate said, every word rimmed in ice. She looked from me to Dad to Sherlock. “Dr. Watson, perhaps your daughter would have an easier time among her peers if you provided her with a more wholesome home environment.”
Sherlock chuckled, the first sound he’d made since we entered. Everyone stared at him.
“May I ask what’s funny, Mr. Holmes?” Mr. Bathgate said.
“I find it ironic that your wife is extolling the virtues of a wholesome home environment while she’s having it off with the gardener and her massage therapist. And you, Mr. Bathgate. Have you told your wife that you’re under investigation by Interpol for international securities fraud?”
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
So it took about ten minutes to calm everyone down, during which time Dad had to physically block Mr. Bathgate from attacking Sherlock and Mrs. Bathgate had the phoniest-looking hysterical crying fit I’ve ever seen. Lilly looked mortified, and Miss Dunedin finally had to threaten Mr. Bathgate with being hauled out by security if he didn’t calm down.
In the end I had my afternoon free periods taken away for a week and got a letter put in my file for slapping Lilly, and I’m grounded for two weeks except for school and Leonid. I also have to go to an anger-management class, which is ridiculous but I’ll do it. Lilly has to go to some sort of seminar about why she shouldn’t be a total bleeding monster to everyone. Lilly and I are also to keep our distance from each other. No problem there. Mr. Bathgate made some noises about assault charges, but Sherlock said something quietly into his ear that made him turn white and splutter and back the hell down.
Like I said. In the tournament of parents, I’ve got top seed.
Miss Dunedin thought it’d be a good idea if Lilly and I both went home for the day. Dad, Sherlock and I walked back to Baker Street together. Girls kept giving me the thumbs-up as we left school. I tried to maintain a contrite countenance but it’s going to be hard to keep it up if I’m the new folk hero.
“That was fun,” Sherlock said, merrily bouncing down Baker street. “Let’s do that every week!”
Dad was still trying to parent me. “Genie, violence is never the answer.”
“I slapped her, Dad. It isn’t like we went ten rounds with brass knuckles.”
“It doesn’t matter. I thought I taught you better than that.”
“You did. I’m not proud of it, Dad. It’s just…” I sighed. “Sometimes you just have to smack a bitch, you know?”
He was startled into brief, reluctant laughter. “I can’t formally endorse that sentiment,” he said.
“John, need I remind you of the times that you yourself have resorted to force?” Sherlock put in, smooth as silk.
“In self-defense! Or defense of bloody idiotic detectives who don’t know better than to get themselves into situations requiring force to resolve!”
“Technicalities.”
We walked up to 221 and up into the lounge. I dropped my bag on the floor and flopped down on the couch. “I’m sorry, Dad. I really am.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m disappointed in what you did. But…” He sat down next to me and took my hand. “I’m not, I’ll never be, disappointed in who you are.” He smiled.
“Thanks,” I whispered. His disappointment is probably the worst thing I can imagine.
“Oh, and if you want, you can bring little Maisie Jones home with you any time you like.”
I just hugged him. You know, I think I might just do that.