There was no-one waiting by the college gates.
Gone, again. Joan took several deep breaths. Sherlock was simply absent, either mentally - always scouring the bewildering range of news and magazines he had surrounded himself with - or physically, as now, when she had specifically asked him to meet her at the dorm room of the missing boy so that she could explain the breakthrough.
She had started well, walking along the street with him at her side, and then he spun away saying he would just be a minute. She had waited as he sprinted back in the direction of the house.
He had not come back.
She was growing tired of the feeling that she was on some awful blind date, except her date kept excusing himself and crawling out of the bathroom window.
She stood by the subway entrance and sent him a furious email, and then another one.
Then she calmed herself, dialled his number, and when - of course - he did not pick up, left him a steady-voiced message explaining where she would be and asking him to meet her there.
And here she was, being stood up all over again.
If a girlfriend did this to her she would let it be known that this was poor behaviour. If a boyfriend did it, that would be game over unless a very impressive rabbit could be pulled from a very glamorous hat.
But Sherlock was neither.
Suddenly she was worried about him. He had been her client. Was he on the verge of relapse? This business with the letter from Irene... Was it sending him back over the precipice?
Why was he ignoring the case?
She admitted it to herself, waiting with her phone in her hand outside the college where they had searched the missing boy's bin: Sherlock failing to treat her like a woman, a friend, a lover, was a lot less surprising than his abandoning the case.
That could mean only one thing.
She stuck her phone into her coat pocket and began to run.
