Daily Post: Big Day Ahead for Portia Adams
Pensive, looking out the window.
As followers of this blog know, I only do the Daily Post when I can relate it back to my writing, and today is one of those days:
“It’s the night before an important event: a big exam, a major presentation, your wedding. How do you calm your nerves in preparation for the big day?”
This immediately made me think about my detective’s ‘Big Day’ – namely coming out to all of London as the newest consulting detective to hail from Baker Street.
Portia has spent a lot of very comfortable time in the shadows – both growing up in Toronto and walking the streets of London. She doesn’t seek the spotlight, preferring to be watchful and observant in the background. This is true socially and professionally, so the day before her press conference I imagine this scene in the upper apartments of 221 Baker Street:
The sun is setting over London and Nerissa is watching me pace back and forth in front of my window.
Tomorrow everyone will know that the detective who has been aiding Scotland Yard for the past year is me. Tomorrow I will no longer be anonymous.
For the third time in the last hour I walk to my bed where I an outfit lays ready for me. My grandmother and my best friend battled over this look for the better part of the afternoon, my opinion neither asked for nor anticipated. All I asked from them was that the Portia Adams who walked out in front of all those reporters tomorrow be memorable and the opposite of my natural state.
They had looked me up and down, looked at each other, and then thrown themselves into the bags of clothes they had brought with them on this mission, my own closet dismissed entirely.
I looked back into the living room where Nerissa had finally given up trying to figure out what ailed me and settled in front of the unlit fireplace. She was right. I needed to relax. Tomorrow was going to be a big day and worrying about it would not make it easier to confront.
I took a deep breath and walked back over to the window between my bookshelves to watch the last rays of the sun light up the buildings of my new home. Tomorrow was the big day.