Her shopping is heavier than it looks. I can’t believe she carried it this far on her own, and in this weather. It’s a good thing I ran into her, really. It’s about to rain again. She’d slip and fall on the way to the high street and break her leg. You’d never forgive me if anything happened to her, would you. I don’t think you would. Who would take care of her?
She takes my free arm and tucks it in against her. She pats my hand. We smile at each other as if nothing’s wrong, as if nothing’s missing. We’re both such liars, aren’t we.
We walk together, as people do with their arms linked. I shorten my pace to account for hers, grip her shopping bag, and she leans against me slightly. That hip, of course. The damp: it must be causing her pain. She’s leaning against me and leading me forward at the same time. Herding me.
Is this a random meeting, or did I just fall into some kind of trap?
“Thank you so much, dear,” she says again. Her voice reminds me of you. Though: to be fair, most things do.
I hear her voice and I remember odd little things, like her calling your name from the door, or her complaining about your experiments in the kitchen, or her offering you a cuppa. You leaning down to hug her, you wiping your feet on her mat. Impossibly perfect memories. It’s a cliche: people never truly appreciate what they’ve got until it’s taken from them. But I usually did. Most of the time.
It’s a funny thing, being reminded like that: it hurts me and comforts me at the same time. A little tug of war that never really stops. Comfort and pain, comfort and pain, layered together until I can’t feel the difference anymore.
One day, maybe, I’ll be numb to it. But I’m not yet.
It’s not that funny, I suppose.
She squeezes my arm a little. I smile at her, but I think she sees through it. She wants to take care of me, like she used to take care of both of us. “Why don’t you come back home with me? I’ll make you a cup of tea, how about that?”
Oh. This is definitely not an accidental meeting. This is a trap, isn’t it. She must have known I’d be here, it’s the closest I’ll come to 221b. My patterns and habits betray me again; I circle around in the mornings, after I’ve written for a little while. When the silence gets to me. My habits are observed even now. By whom?
So she found the heaviest pans should could find and bought two, and stood here waiting for me, did she? She knew I’d stop, she knew I’d help. And what’s meant to happen next? I’d carry her shopping home, of course; it’s only a few streets away. A cup of tea in her kitchen, a heart to heart. She’d lead me back up the stairs, drop me in the sitting room like a terrified cat and wait for me to come back out from under the sofa. She’d wait for me to cry, and then pour me a drink. As if that will make this easier, or better. As if that would bring you back.
She’s persistent, I’ll give her that. The steely determination of a motherly woman in her seventies: not to be trifled with. It’s a bit hard to tell her no. She thinks she knows what’s best for me. There’s a lot of things she thinks she knows.
“Oh, not today, I’m afraid. I’ve got an appointment,” I lie. “I’ll get you a cab.”
“Let’s walk a little further,” she says, like I’m a child she needs to goad. “Just a little further, all right? It will be so much cheaper for me if we just walk down the road a little.” I should have seen this coming.
Not yet. I’m not ready to go back.
I don’t really know why she wants me to come back at all. Shouldn’t she just rent the place out to someone willing and able to pay? That isn’t me, not any more. What is it, pity? Nostalgia? Some misplaced sense of duty? Did Sherlock leave her a pile of money to house me in perpetuity? No. You wouldn’t do something like that, would you.
Anyway, I have access to your accounts. You’re not paying the rent anymore either.
I suppose she was never much of a business woman to start with, renting the place out to someone like you. She knew what you were like. It’d be hard not to know. She knew you. Before I did, back before. You might have been even worse then. With a drug habit and no one to keep an eye on you. Was there someone keeping an eye on you? Like I did?
“I saw your story in The Strand,” she says. Oh. Right. Of course she did. All her friends probably brought her copies immediately when they saw that there was a Sherlock Holmes story in it. Awkward: if it were someone else, writing stories about you, blithely publishing them for the world to see, leaving them for me to run into by accident in a shop, I’d hunt that bloke down and punch him in the face. No question. That was thoughtless of me. I should have warned her. “It’s a wonderful story, John! Congratulations!”
She doesn’t seem upset. She seems pleased. I didn’t think she’d read The Strand. It’s my first real publication: one of your stories, Sherlock. I liked that story, "The Gloria Scott." I’m telling all your stories, even then ones from before I knew you. The stories you told me on rainy days; bribery and codes. Secret lovers and murder. Everyone loves those.
It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe in you. They still love your stories. They want to publish one a month. I just signed the contract. Maybe they want the controversy, I don’t know. They’ll strike while the iron is hot, I suppose. Bit of crime fiction from The Man Who Was Lied To, Companion To The Psychopath, The Man Who Didn’t Know. The public appetite for me and my stories hasn’t gone off. Not yet, anyway. Bit of a surprise to me.
“It was an old story,” I tell her. “They approached me. You know, because of the news, I guess.”
“It’s nice to read your writing again,” she says. “I’m glad you’ve gone back to it. I’ve missed it.” She’s a bit wistful, I think. She misses him too. Of course she does. “He jumped right off the page, John. It was like he was back for a minute.”
I swallow hard. I don’t really want to talk about you.
She pats my hand again. “He’d have liked that.”
I put the bag in the cab along with her, and she looks at me with eyes I can only describe as pleading.
“You’re welcome back any time,” she says. “You know that.”
I try and smile at her. There’s just nothing more I can say. The driver starts the engine, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
You can tell when someone’s looking at you. You can feel it. As if their eyes actually caress you. You never believed that, you thought it was funny I thought so. A man’s gaze isn’t a physical thing, you’d say to me. It’s not something you can feel. But I can. I turn my head to see who’s staring at me.
Up the road a bit, a man in a long coat. The cab drives off, and there’s a rumble of thunder. And a man in a long coat, watching me. Hands in his pockets, collar up, curly hair. Dark hair. A slim silhouette at the end of the street. He turns on his heel, and his coat flares out behind him.
Sherlock.
Is that you?
It hits me everywhere at once; like a clapper hitting the inside of a bell, one glance up the road and my entire body is ringing. Sherlock. Oh my god. It’s you.
How can that be?
It doesn’t matter.
I run. I run as fast as I can; I saw you. Sherlock, wait. Wait for me.
Utter delight and terror must run along the same nerve endings: they feel so close to the same thing.
A dark coat, curly hair: I wrote about you and you came back. Did you see it, I dedicated it to you. “For S.” And I felt, at the time, like maybe it was the only way to say anything to you. A dedication, one little line under the title. Did you see it? Did that make you come back?
First I’m going to hug you, and then I’m going to pummel you.
Run. How can this road suddenly be so long? I can hear my breath in my ears, I can’t hear the traffic, I can’t hear anything else. My breath, and my voice. Sherlock, Sherlock. An incantation. You came back.
Your bloodied face, that pool of blood. My eyes are watering. How can this be? I don’t care, I don’t care. Sherlock, wait for me.
It’s a busy street; lots of people. Lots of dark coats. Men, women, prams. A wolfhound on a leash. A man delivering parcels. Dark coat, curly hair. Where? There. Down a side street. Run.
“Sherlock!”
You don’t turn. You don’t look back at me. You keep walking, as if I don’t exist. As if I’m the one who fell, I’m the one who hit the pavement and died. The imaginary one, locked into a terrible alternate reality where you don’t exist anymore.
“Sherlock, you bastard!”
You turn, and I’m ready to tackle you to the ground, but no. A beard, glasses, short face.
No.
It’s not you.
Someone who only looks like you from a distance, from behind, and is glaring at me like I’m mad and possibly dangerous.
I stop short. I feel like my lungs have been pulled out.
“Sorry,” I manage. “Thought you were someone else.”
He glares at me, nods, and then walks away.