Prologue

I've always nurtured a love of books; for stories, for fictional characters. In life, stories are forgotten, memories fade, and people leave. But not in books. No, in books, the stories never change; they remain a constant factor in an unstable reality. The characters are loyal to you and to you alone they are faithful until the end. Whether it's been minutes or years since your last encounter, you can rely on fictional characters to still welcome you with open arms; undemanding and unassuming. With my mother owning a bookshop in my home town of Plymouth, and my father an apparently renowned author in the States (I wouldn't know for sure; my father moved to New York before I was born. Though I'm supposed to bear a strong physical resemblance, according to the photograph I once found in my mother's drawer.) I had no doubt that my love of books and literature was innate within me, and certainly from a very early age I would love nothing more than curling up in the armchair with an adventure story book; filled with thrilling discoveries and brave heroes.

But it was not until I was nineteen, and living by myself in a flat in London, that I discovered that my real passion lay not solely in books, but in biographies.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation.* For in biographies they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Through the written word, we can still feel them, still live alongside them. And more importantly, they can live alongside us.

When I was halfway through my degree at University College in London (an embarrassingly dull choice of English Literature with the pretentious splash of a minor in creative writing) I discovered that I not only enjoyed reading biographies of idols both past and present, but that I wanted to write them too. I wanted to be the one responsible for giving people an insight into others' lives; for rediscovering somebody whose life story had long been forgotten.

I set up my first (and largely unsuccessful) blog, where I wrote brief biographies of depressingly mainstream idols using no doubt suspect internet sources. My prose was an unattractive combination of hyperbole and sarcasm that I thought, or pretended to think, was very funny. After several somewhat wasted months of work on this blog, I decided that I needed a new angle. I was responsible for any great rediscoveries, and I certainly wasn't giving anyone any insight. Anything I wrote had been written a thousand times before, albeit without my bizarre and so-thought 'witty' take on it.

So I hit the streets, abandoning for a brief spell my degree, which was taking me nowhere, and my friends. Or, rather, as I didn't really have friends, my fellow college intellectuals. I abandoned these in an attempt to discover a hidden gem whose life story I could scribe and whose discovery I alone could be held responsible for.

I had written; The Beggar's Cap-A True Telling of Life on the Streets in Present Day London, 'Would You Like Fries With That?'-Tales from Everyone's Favourite Burger Bar, and A Really Rubbish Story-What Your Local Bin Man Really Thinks About Lugging Litter, when I finally stumbled across a name on the internet; a name that would haunt me forever more.

Had I known it at the time?

No, of course not. At the time, it had been merely some text on a screen. A name. Someone's identity. Just as insignificant as my own name printed at the top of my embarrassing attempt as a biographical blog.

Except I think I knew even then that this name meant much more than that. For as a read it, a shiver went down my spine, and the fine hairs on my arms stood up. I knew I'd found them. After months of trailing around writing about homeless beggars and fast-food workers, I knew I'd finally found what I'd been waiting for. My hidden gem. Or, as it transpired, not so hidden. For they lived in one of the flats just down the road at 221b Baker Street.

And their name? Their name was Sherlock Holmes.

*Taken from Diane Setterfield's Novel The Thirteenth Tale, because I just loved how she described how people continued on after death in books.

A/N-Any reviews would be lovely! I'm hoping to really get this fic flowing soon