When I got home from work, my wife Mary, who was still on maternity leave to care for our baby daughter Holly, asked me cheerily how my day was. Then she looked at me more closely and anxiety clouded over her features.
"Oh John, what's wrong?"
I didn't want to tell her. I knew she wouldn't believe that Sherlock had survived. I didn't want her to test my certainty that Mycroft was lying.
"Nothing. I'm fine."
"John, I can see you're not." I suppose my emotions must have been written all over my face. Sherlock always said I was easy to read. I didn't want to lie to Mary so I admitted the cause of my discontent.
"Mycroft called me at work. He says Sherlock's dead."
"Oh God. Oh no. I'm so sorry. I'll miss him so much."
"It's not true. Mycroft was lying. Sherlock is alive."
"I know what happened last time." Mary clearly understood my train of thought. Yet she doubted the conclusion I'd arrived at. "But he... he wasn't immortal. We knew- he knew- that this mission was dangerous."
"But not too dangerous for him!"
"John, why would Mycroft lie about this?"
"The same reason as last time. Sherlock told him to."
Obviously seeing I was not going to alter my view, Mary changed tack. "Did Mycroft say when the funeral is?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Will you go?"
"No. I've already attended one unnecessary funeral for Sherlock. I'm not making a fool of myself again. I know he's alive."
"Don't you think he'd want you to go?"
"Oh, sure. He does. He wants everyone to go and cry and mourn. He wants us all to say how much we miss him and how wonderful he was. He's always been so arrogant," I said bitterly. Mary gasped at that last bit. Her eyes were wet with tears.
"I'll have to go on my own then..."
"If you want to go to the funeral of someone who's still alive, be my guest."
As I left the room in anger, Mary looked after me with a mixture of sadness, confusion and pity. I had previously believed that, as our relationship had survived my wife shooting my best friend and admitting her past life as an assassin, our marriage was invincible. But in that moment I wondered whether her believing that Sherlock was dead could tear us apart.
I missed him so much. Life without him felt incomplete. I enjoyed my job. I loved my wife and daughter. I had friends who, unlike Sherlock, couldn't make me want to kill them just by opening their mouths. But it was all so dull, so commonplace. Since he'd left, he kept intruding on my thoughts all the time. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I couldn't help but think that I'd much rather be running through the streets of London with him, hunting down a thief, or risking my life to catch a vicious criminal, or watching his complex mind at work on some gruesome and improbable murder.
I knew that these thoughts were insane. I mean, what kind of person wishes that they were risking their life? Maybe Sherlock had turned me crazy. Or maybe I'd always been like this. What was it that Sherlock had told me? You are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You are abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people. Once again, he'd been right. I only ever realised how much I needed danger until it was taken away. I'd felt a similar restlessness in the interlude between when I returned from Afghanistan and when I met Sherlock. Underneath the grief, I'd felt it after he had faked his death. In more recent times, I had only kept insanity at bay with the reassurance that he would be back in six months- he had informed me that Mycroft had said so.
When the six month mark came and went, I told myself that even Mycroft couldn't be totally accurate, but Sherlock would certainly be back soon. Now, even though I had dismissed the idea of him being truly gone, I wasn't sure I could cope with his disappearance. Who knew how long it would take him to get round to returning to London now? For how long would I have to survive this tedious normality?
As I lay in bed that night, after an evening of awkwardly ignoring discussion of the person who was on both mine and Mary's minds, my thoughts turned to Sherlock's last funeral. My memories of it were blurred. But that was not surprising; for me the whole occasion had seemed blurred even whilst it was happening, for I had spent the entire time trying to hold back tears, not very successfully. I knew that I had stood up to speak about Sherlock, but had no idea what I said. How could I have ever expressed what I was feeling that day? The turnout had been good, although not worthy of such a great man. Despite being supposedly discredited, Sherlock still had plenty of people grateful for the things he had done. I so remember that someone had played a composition of Sherlock's on the violin and everyone, save Mycroft, had cried.
Even with my knowledge of Sherlock's certain survival, I didn't think I would be to manage all that again. That, not anger at Sherlock, was the reason I had told Mary I wouldn't attend Sherlock's funeral.
