There is cake, yellow and spongy, with smooth, buttery icing the colour of a robin's egg. Sherlock doesn't bother even picking up his fork, even as Cook tuts at him from across the kitchen.
Mother is in her room; Sherlock hasn't seen her in four days, and she hasn't spoken to him in twice that. Father's umbrella is missing from the stand by the door, gone along with his overcoat, two suitcases full of clothes, and the faint scent of musky, darkly floral perfume that Mummy has never, ever worn.
And Mycroft— stupid, useless Mycroft, who dragged Sherlock out of the room when the long blonde hairs (at least a foot longer than Mummy had kept her soft wheaten curls in years) on Father's jacket had been pointed out over Christmas dinner. Mycroft is somewhere else, likely gone back to Eton, but hopefully as far away from Sherlock as humanly possible.
Mycroft might be a lazy, fat, ugly tosser, but Sherlock knows (knows, for absolute certain, with greater faith than he has in anything else except his own senses) that his brother is clever.
"I thought you would know better," Mycroft had hissed at him, scruffing him by the collar of his jumper and pulling him up the stairs. Sherlock hadn't struggled nearly as much as he could have, stunned by his brother's unexpected betrayal. "For goodness sake, Sherlock, how could you be so foolish?"
Foolish is ignoring such blatant evidence. Foolish is pandering to comfortable lies, swallowing ignorance, keeping quiet when things are so very obvious.
If anyone is a fool, it's Mycroft. The only thing worse than being ordinary is pretending to be ordinary.
Folding his knees to his chest, bringing his heels up onto the seat of his chair, Sherlock has never felt so completely alone.