It was the first time Sherlock had taken John to his childhood home. And John had been quite awe struck when he saw the sweeping driveway lined with trees leading up to the huge house, with its Gothic turrets and pink sandstone walls. Quite a revelation for a boy who grew up in a three bedroom semi in Sussex. He wasn't quite sure what to say. Sherlock peered out of the car window. Silently looking up at the old house, remembering.

"Mummy's away. In France. There should only be the staff left."

"You have staff?"

"Of course. That was my room up there." He pointed to a window overlooking the courtyard at the front of the house. "And that was Mycroft's." He pointed to a room further over and higher up, in one of the towers.

The interior was no less impressive than the outside. A grand staircase sweeping predictably upwards from a wood panelled hallway. Room after room, filled with expensive antique furniture, paintings, priceless precious family relics. John wondered how many had been broken in the course of Sherlock's childhood.

"We weren't allowed in most of the rooms when were children." Sherlock answered John's unspoken question. "It was like growing up in a museum. Aren't we lucky to have such nice things? But you can never touch them. Everything was look but don't touch. Even us." John knew he meant Mycroft and himself.

They walked past a gallery of family portraits. Here and there John could see Sherlock's cheekbones, Mycroft's nose, variations on the theme of tall and beautiful.

"Who's that?" John pointed at a picture of a man in hunting clothes who looked very much like a fat version of Mycroft.

"That's our Grandfather. Father's father. You can't help but feel sorry for the poor man's horse." Sherlock led John up the stairs.

"This was my room." The room was impersonal now, the scars John imagined on the walls freshly painted, the wooden floor scrubbed. The furniture simple. A metal bedstead, the bed made with fresh linen. A large wooden desk. Really nothing left to say it had ever been Sherlock's room. Something about that really bothered John.

The carried on up a narrower flight of stairs, probably right to the top of the house, where the walls seemed to take on strange shapes.

"This was Mycroft's room." Sherlock pushed the door open. The room was just as blank as his own. Slightly larger, with a fireplace and two beds instead of one. But no trace left of the boy that used to sleep there. It was strange to John, when his own bedroom at his mother's house had been more or less exactly as he had left it, right down to the Spandau Ballet posters on the wall.

"Were you happy here?" John thought how as a child he would have given one of his kidneys to have lived in a house like this.

"Once. For a little while." Sherlock looked around the room, taking note of the creaking floorboards and the sounds of the wind blowing down the chimney. "Mummy was very upset when she realised she was not going to have any Grandchildren. Mycroft did try. But as you can imagine it was a disaster."

"I'd rather not imagine actually." Sherlock was on his knees by the fireplace and he pulled up a loose floorboard.

"Mycroft's not so secret hiding place." Sherlock peered into the gloomy hole. "Empty. Like Mycroft. Like me. I really hate this place John. "

"They say home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in. But I think it's more the place where the people you love are."

John looked into the hole in the floor, wondering what Mycroft would have stashed away as a child. Wondering what would be important to him. He reached an arm in, ignoring the furry dust and cobwebs of centuries and felt his hand close around a piece of paper. As he withdrew his hand he realised he was holding a photograph, faded and crumpled with the years.

"See nothing's ever quite empty." The picture showed two teenage boys laughing, the taller of the two, his auburn hair sticking up untidily, had his arm around the shoulder of a shorter boy wearing a Raiders of the Lost Ark t-shirt. The shorter boy was holding a much younger boy in his arms, a boy with dark curly hair and strange shaped grey eyes, who was helpless with laughter as he squirmed. On the back in faded, neat handwriting: Christmas 1981. Mikey, Sherlock and Me. He held out the photograph for Sherlock to see.

"As I said. For a little while." For a little while the people he loved were in this house. But then they all went away. Sherlock looked at John, then at the picture, and then back to John. John simply smiled at him and took his hand.

"Come on Sherlock. Let's go home."