It's an unfortunate fact of life, a mutation that spread over the whole human race, a piece of evolution gone wrong, a kick in the ass from… God? Mother Nature? A spaghetti monster that lives on the dark side of the moon? Who knows? But it is very real and has been for as long as anyone can remember and despite the various studies no one will give you a straight answer as to why.

Somewhere along the line the human body and the human mind had collaborated and played what was for some a blessing and others a cruel joke. As you aged you grew and you changed, that much was still true. Bones lengthened under muscles that developed and skin stretched to cover the complex structure. Hair grew from fair follicles planted as appropriate with some design, weather intelligent or evolved (whatever pleased you) But at some point, around the age of puberty you stopped. And it all ceased to have anything to do with biology at all.

It became a matter of the mind. Some, more sentimental, called it a matter of the heart. In either case - heart or mind - it became a matter of fact that the more one thought of oneself, the more "height" your self-opinion gained, the more physical height you gained, as if by proxy. And, the more others thought of you, the more physically attractive you became.

The beauty aspect wasn't always radical, although it had been known to happen, sometimes it was just... A subtle shift in the way your eyes shone or your hair fell… it was just something... Something that wordlessly said "I'm special, I'm loved."

It was a part of life, integrated fully into society. Not something worth making a fuss of until a celebrity break up left a once beautiful human being scrabbling for self-respect in a storm of media attention and even then, the storm was well contained inside gossip magazines.

Of course there were prejudices. How could there not be? How can you tell a whole civilisation of supposedly free-thinking beings that they need to be nice to each other and think well of themselves? The best thing to do was to just… carry on. So the world carried on. And such it was carrying on when John Hamish Watson was born in Slough, on the 13th of October, 1978.

Like most babies born to loving parents John was cooed over and cuddled. When he was older, he went to a school where the teachers thought him sweet and polite. He made friends quickly and easily and of course he had Harry, an elder sister who he adored, and who in turn, adored him. For all intents and purposes everyone assumed John Watson would be a perfectly normal and happy boy.

But then, when he was eight, John's mother got very sick and when the tall doctor said the word 'cancer' with that sad look in his eyes, John realised that there were some things that no amount of love could fix.

Elizabeth Watson died in 1986 with nothing that anyone could do for her, nothing John could do for her, except hold her hand and promise it would be okay when they all knew it would never be okay again.

The death of a loved one is a strange thing. Everyone reacts in different ways. But it can so often be the reactions of the people outside of the immediate circle that define how well we get through and for a time, it might have seemed that the accumulated friends John had acquired would see him though well enough. But as his father closed off with grief, and Harry discovered a hiding place in a bottle of clear liquid that dulled the noise, John's friends began to drip away.

Like all children born the same year as him, John stopped growing around 1991. But, unlike most of his classmates, he did not start again for quite some time.

His lack of growth didn't bother him much. It was just a confirmation that he was doomed to be a failure in life. If he couldn't even help his mother he figured he would never be one of the tall beautiful people plastered on billboards and blared on T.V. At school he began to keep to himself, avoiding the sniggers and taunts of the ones who shot up in height to even outgrow the teachers within the space of a few months. People he used to call friends…

After a couple of years, much to John's surprise, there was a shift. When he looked back, it had all started when he was 15. Figuring that, if nothing else, it would do to have some muscle on his side he joined the local rugby club. He threw himself into training, watching with fascination as his scrawny and useless limbs filled out. Burning with a need to understand how and why and how to get faster how to get better and stronger he stopped hiding at school and began to listen, began to study with a purpose. He discovered a gift for biology and it was incredible... It all felt like some sort of second chance, a bright light to the young boy trapped in a house with a father who was shut off and a sister off the rails, a house either too silent or too loud.

If Harry came in yelling at stupid am, he could hide inside a text book, block out the world with facts and figures and formulae... When he'd get home to his father slumped in his chair staring into space and not seeing a thing he could run away without guilt (or at least less guilt) the further his trainers pounded across the concrete streets and council estates of Slough the more out of breath he got the less his head was filled with those empty eyes.

And like a chain reaction other things shifted too, where there had been a void there were people... team mates who called him skilled. Teachers who called him clever... Girls who called him fit...

Gradually, but over the space of a year, John Watson grew a foot in height.

School became his safety net. Good marks meant praise. Praise meant he got to keep the warm and happy feeling that stopped him sinking under what was waiting behind the door of what he reluctantly called home. He worked hard, harder than anyone perhaps and of course they teased him for it, but as the papers came back time and again with shiny little red "A"'s at the top he found he had little care for the teasing, it was like a dripping tap in a bath already full of fond exasperation for the nerdy little rugby star. School was also a means to an end. Somewhere around the 'A grade' O-level in Biology he had decided that one day he was going to be a doctor. He had no illusions about curing cancer but he wanted to save lives. He knew nothing could bring his mother back but maybe if he could give a few people back to their families he could stop the feeling of uselessness that always teetered on the edge of his mind…

It came as a surprise to know one, except John of course, when the medical school acceptance letter arrived from St. Bart's in London. But once it did, over the space of a day, John Watson grew another two inches in height.