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The lady visibly melted in the presence of such a charming and attractive man. John confidently fussed over her taking on all I had taught him but also adding flair of his own.

I slipped away and returned with a glass of our finest brandy to sooth Mrs Reece-Hampton’s nerves after her embarrassing calamity. It did seem rather odd to be serving the rich but I was happy to do it knowing ultimately I was serving my own agenda.

I sat at my reception desk and wrote out the bill, sending it of course to Mr Reece-Hampton because to charge the lady herself would be most vulgar. As I heard laughter float out from the surgery, I knew that my inflated charges would happily be paid.

It was almost an hour later when our guest finally left. My friend had done better than I could ever have expected and, as he bade her farewell, it was clear that she had enjoyed her hour of attention and fuss.

John closed the door behind her and leaned back against it pulling at his tie. “Thank goodness, I thought she’d never leave. I’ve never spoken so much nonsense in all my life. No sum can be worth such professional degradation.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, presenting him with a copy of the bill.

“Heaven’s above Red! That’s preposterous. Mr Reece-Hampton will never pay that.”

“I thought I told you to trust me?”

“But that’s more than I would earn from five patients!”

“She is hosting a grand party tonight, I’m sure she will tell all her wealthy ladies about you and they will be beating a path to our door. You’re going to be a wealthy man doctor.”

Just as I had anticipated, that evening Mr Reece-Hampton’s servant brought the payment in full and a request for a follow-up appointment. An elated Doctor Watson dismissed the servant and jumped around the sitting room with delight.

“Thank you so much, you are quite a woman Red and I do believe that you have changed my life.”

“No John, today you have started to change it yourself. I just gave you the opportunity.”

My predictions for the business were well-founded and during the weeks following Mrs Reece-Hampton’s visit, our humble medical practice was visited by many of the local elite. Most were ladies with very minor health concerns and all were more than happy to settle the hefty bills I sent to their husbands. Various gentlemen came too, afflicted by rather more serious conditions, and gave John an opportunity to actually use his medical skills.

He started to treat less-wealthy patients occasionally too, ushering them in through the back door so as to not tarnish our image. He also began disappearing to the laboratory at St Bart’s, the place where he first met Holmes, to undertake medical research. John Watson was happy, his broken heart was mending, his confidence growing and he was turning into a healthy, energetic and confident man.

I was enjoying being part of that process but grief still lingered in my heart. I was starting to feel stronger and, occasionally even quite happy. But the feeling was precarious and still fragile. A thaw had begun inside me, starting to melt the ice of a lifetime, but the process was not without its difficulties. Days could pass without me thinking about those loved and lost, but then memories surfaced to hit me like a speeding train.

One night, as I sat on my bed during a bout of grieving, I saw it all again, the man I loved and the waterfall that was now his grave. I pictured my friend dying in a Parisian back-street without me being there to comfort him

All my life I had walked with death - an ever-present companion which I had cheated so many times but it had taken from me those I loved and left me alone almost as a punishment for laughing in its face. Perhaps death would have been easier than the pain of being the one left behind.

John walked past my room and paused at the open door. He looked into my face full of sadness and came to sit on the bed beside me. He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. I turned to hide my tears.

“Of all people, I am the last person you need to be brave in front of,” he said. “I thought we were friends?” he asked, echoing my words from that night the bailiffs came.

I looked back into his kind eyes and knew he was right. Pretence was pointless and it was too late to try to hide my emotions from him. I just let the tears flow and fell against him. I sobbed bitterly for those I loved and longed to see again. I cried for my life of pain, indulged my regrets, my guilt, and the journey I had travelled from child rape to miscarriage and love lost. John cradled me in his arms as I sobbed and sobbed.

He kissed the top of my head and smoothed my tangle of wild hair with his hand.

My sobs faded with the last of the evening light. My body relaxed and the tears began to dry. An unexpected realisation slowly dawned. I knew somehow that I would never cry over such things this bitterly again. This was the last time, the final indulgence. I accepted what was lost and understood that grief would always be within me. But, I was alive and had survived the most incredible adventures from birth to adulthood. Now was my time to find peace.

John pulled a blanket over us and we lay together on my bed, listening to each other breathing just as we had done in Switzerland. A close bond had formed between us as we had both witnessed each other’s weaknesses and cried in each other’s arms. I slept soundly until the morning sunlight flooded the room with its happy haze.

John was spending increasing amounts of his time on research and writing papers. One was published in a medical journal and he was offered a lucrative part-time surgical post at St Bart’s which brought in a healthy income. I started to make cautious plans to expand our business.

John loved his new-found success and had grown into a very confident and capable man while retaining all his warmth and genuine nature. He had much humour and even a little flourish of eccentricity which made him an enjoyable companion. We went to the theatre, read books and played chess together, argued about his reluctance to rise before nine and the noise I always made rising at six.

We ate together and told stories into the night about our past lives. I told John things I had never told anyone before. He alluded to family secrets and his troubled relationship with his father. He also told tales of his military service.

I had no idea of my birthday so we invented one. As a birthday gift John bought me a chubby Bassett hound puppy which I called Sandy and took everywhere with me.

One evening, I was sitting at my desk and a heavy clang on the doorbell sent our newly-appointed maid, Tilly, rushing to answer.

John was on the settee reading the newspaper. I heard a vaguely familiar male voice then Tilly came in and handed John a card. He passed it to me and I regarded the name with much surprise.

“Do you wish me to send him away?” John asked, “I’m quite happy to after the way he spoke to you.”

I was inclined to accept this offer but I was also rather curious and asked Tilly to bring in our visitor.

We stood side by side awaiting his entrance with Sandy at my feet, presenting a united front in case of hostilities. But the man Tilly ushered into the room was of a changed disposition since our first encounter.

Mycroft Holmes stood before us with his head bowed, fidgeting nervously and looking rather pale.

“Before you ask me to leave, as you have every right to do,” he said, finally looking up, “I have come simply to apologise for my rude manner and ask only that you can find it in your heart to forgive a foolish old man who now has neither friend nor relative in this great city.”

He shuffled towards me and John intercepted protectively. Mycroft ignored him and continued forward.

“Please,” he cried, reaching out a chubby hand in my direction, “tell me about your relationship with my brother. Now that he has gone you are my only hope of ever understanding what sort of a man he really was. Through knowing you I can perhaps know him. It is too late for me to learn about him any other way.”

Exhausted from such an outburst, Mycroft sat down heavily upon the settee. He looked in his pockets for a handkerchief to wipe his glistening brow then gave up and started to weep softly. John and I just looked at each other in complete bewilderment.

Finally, I took a deep breath, grabbed a handkerchief from John’s smoking jacket pocket and sat beside the crumpled big man. I handed him the handkerchief while John poured him a drink.

“You are most kind,” he said, wiping his eyes, the very eyes that so reminded me of his brother.

“Though I appreciate your apology Mycroft and do understand that grief can cause a person to act in most unexpected ways, I do not think you are in a position to ask Red to tell you anything about such a private matter,” John stated, protectively.

Mycroft turned his sad, watery eyes towards me and spoke his words with much emotion.

“You possess tremendous spirit Miss Red. I knew that if my brother was ever to feel love, it would take an extraordinary woman to prise it out of him. Just looking at you, I understand him better already. Please, I will not judge, I give you my word.

“There is so much I do not know or understand and I hope most sincerely that you can help me.”

“This is not appropriate,” John interjected sternly, “the grief is still raw and you are a stranger to Red, what right have you to force her to tell you anything?”

Mycroft managed a weak smile.

“You have become a confident man doctor, no longer in the shadows.”

“Indeed, and I am more than prepared to protect my friend from this intrusion. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. I have always had great respect for your capabilities Mycroft but just as it could be with your brother, you lack sensitivity.”

I watched as Mycroft’s keen, furtive eyes started to dart around the room, bouncing from one object to the next. I could almost hear the voices in his great brain whispering the connections and the inner mechanisms creaking as they processed the information and started to store it away. It was a mechanical process.

I saw the sweat start to trickle down his brow and the panic flicker across his face, so subtly that it would be imperceptible to anyone else. I had seen that tension before, and though I would never truly understand it, I knew that I had the power to stop it.

“Look at me,” I firmly instructed Mycroft but his eyes continued their processing of the room as John insisted that he should leave.

“Look at me,” I implored again, touching Mycroft’s hand slightly, and finally the bright little eyes turned back to me. He stared into my icy blue eyes, frantically holding onto my stare until the flickering of his pupils finally stopped. His breathing slowed and shoulders relaxed. I could almost hear the racing mechanisms in his head slowing back down.

“How did you know?” he whispered. John was too busy striding around pontificating to notice what had just occurred.

“Why don’t you walk Sandy?” I suddenly asked him.

“What?” he replied, abruptly ending his pacing as he turned to face me.

“Sandy, he needs a walk. You could take him now.”

“It’s raining.”

“So take an umbrella. Go on, please, I’ll be fine.”

“But...”

“Now, please, before it gets too cold. I insist.”

Reluctantly my friend agreed and after much huffing finally strode out into the early evening leaving me alone with Mycroft.

I rose and poured myself a drink before settling into an armchair opposite my visitor, curling my legs underneath me and cradling my glass.

“Your brother once said to me that he didn’t really see people, just connections between objects. People were simply another object in the room to him, to be observed and analysed the same as everything else. It was a compulsion, to observe. I was the only person he ever really saw. When he looked at me the world stopped.”

I took a huge sip of brandy to help me swallow down the lump forming in my throat. It was quite inexplicable but I felt an overwhelming desire to tell Mycroft my story, a connection to him which made me trust him.

“It was the same with my late husband, Professor James Moriarty. His compulsions gave him terrible fits and I was the only one who knew. He would look at me and I could bring him back.”

I paused momentarily wondering if I should continue, knowing that I was about to reveal to a virtual stranger my criminal past. I looked into Mycroft’s sad little eyes and resolved to continue.

“Professor Moriarty killed your brother and I lost his child, your own niece or nephew, the night Sherlock died. I will never be the same person again.”

I stopped to sip more drink and waited for the anticipated outrage, the barrage of questions, but they did not come.

Mycroft’s eyes were full of tears.

“I’m so, so sorry,” was all he said.

He leaned back in his seat and I let the silence settle between us for a while. Rain splashed against the windows and the fire crackled reassuringly.

Finally, I felt ready and began to tell my story from my first meeting with Holmes as a street child, through to our journeys across France and ultimately to Switzerland. I was completely open about every twist and turn of the adventure. Mycroft listened carefully, his eyelids half drawn over his distant eyes, looking much as his brother did when concentrating intently.

An hour or so passed. John returned damp from the rain and Sandy settled in front of the fire, a furry wet lump prostrate at my feet. John paced around in agitation for a few minutes until finally turning to our guest.

“Mycroft, please, you must understand how dangerous the consequences would be if you betray Red’s confidence. You really had no right to hear such intimacies and she has taken a grave risk in telling you.”

“Don’t interfere John, don’t you trust my judgement?” I snapped, irritated by his anxieties.

“The crimes you are speaking of could see you hang. I would have thought that discretion was paramount.”

I turned to Mycroft and looked at him most earnestly.

“I loved your brother, Mycroft. If he had intended me to hang he would have taken me to the gallows himself. My continued existence and liberty should be proof enough of his wishes, which I am sure you will respect.”

Finally, once I had fully purged myself of all I had to tell, Mycroft took to his feet and replaced his top hat.

“I thank you most heartily for your candour. Indeed, I have never encountered anyone with such a ferocious survival instinct and passionate honesty. You have given me much to consider and I must now leave to think on all that you have said.”

With that parting statement, he wearily headed to the door, his eyes full of a deep sadness.

“I’ll show myself out,” he declared, and a few seconds later we heard the front door close heavily behind him.

John checked to make sure he had gone then walked back into the room in a most distressed state.

“What were you thinking Red? Mycroft is a man of the Government, he could go straight to the authorities with the information you have given him tonight.”