𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄, sherlock holmes

𝐈𝐈𝐈 . . . UNKNOWN NUMBER!

"ANNA?" JOAN HELD UP POPPY'S PHONE high above her head, calling across the cafe to Poppy who was balancing a round tray full of steaming mugs of hot beverages in one hand and a small note-pad in the other. Poppy turned around in response, tucking the pad of paper into the small pocket of her dress with the biro stuck amongst the hair piled atop her head, and she placed a mug of tea down infront of the customer behind her. Ultimately it caused a shift in the balance of the tray and Joan leapt forwards instantly, holding the tray up to stop a potential catastrophe from occurring.

Joan handed Poppy her phone as she took the tray into her own hands, saying "It started to ring, thought it might have been urgent. I remember you saying that you had to call the doctors recently and assumed that they'd rung you back. Anyway, here you go. If you want . . ." The rest of Anna's words were drowned out by the hiss of the large coffee machine, preparing three drinks all at once.

"Thanks Joan," Poppy took the phone and clicked it on, the screen illuminating her face as she pointed to it, "I'm just going to pop outside for a minute so I can ring the number back. I can't hear anything in here!"

As a sign of acknowledgement, Joan stuck her thumb up in the air and Poppy hopped around the counter with her leather jacket draped over her shoulders to try and keep the brutal November cold from nipping at her exposed skin. Goosebumps began to appear as soon as the door to 'SPEEDY'S' was pulled open and she tugged the jacket closer to her chest.

Poppy leant against the window with one foot tucked behind the other, surveying not just Baker Street but the recent calls list on her phone. Apart from a few spam calls and unopened voice-mails from numerous agents with aliases like her own, Poppy spotted nothing out of the ordinary in the small, pixelated screen.

Until she continued to refresh the page, noticing a name highlighted in red with a time, five minutes after she'd taken the device from Joan's hand and a 'missed call' notice. The contact read UNKNOWN NUMBER in block capitals, but there was no voice-mail in her inbox. Nothing there to signify anything of dire emergency.

'It's probably just another cold caller,' Poppy thought as she clicked the screen off and it turned black once more, 'They'll stop when they realise Hannah Newbury isn't even a real person.' Poppy stood outside of the cafe for a few more minutes, constantly reaching for where her pack of cigarettes used to be in her leather jacket. But there was nothing there.

Of course there was nothing there.

She was giving it up, and it meant she couldn't have crippled lungs as bad as Theo in the future.

As she was deliberating between running back down the road and to her own home to see if Theo had left any cigarettes anywhere around the house ( she sincerely hoped that he had not, because he had promised to help her on the tricky road to recovery and Poppy would have been crushed to find out the promise had been hollow ) Poppy caught sight of a figure emerging from the black front door of 221B just to her right.