Just a little conversation that popped into my head and begged to be written down. Set sometime soon after the end of series 4.
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"Were you happy, you and Mei Lin?" Jean scarcely knew why she asked the question. No good could come from knowing the answer, could it?
Lucien hesitated. Should he give her the answer she probably wanted? But he didn't want to start life with her on a lie. So he chose the truth.
"Yes, for a while. She was so different to anyone else I had met. A Chinese woman who spoke as if she were English. That mix of cultures; I loved her for it. Before the war, for a while, I thought I'd never come back to Australia, that I'd be happy to live in China, Singapore, wherever the army sent me, as long as she was with me. "
"Ah yes, 'more British than the British', that's what she said her family were like." Jean smiled at the memory. She moved closer to him on the seat in the sunroom, her hip touching his.
Lucien looked at her in surprise. He didn't know they had had that conversation. "Yes, they were. But I don't think I was enough for her in the end. She loved partying, excitement...perhaps motherhood tied her down too much. And then of course she slept with Derek Alderton."
"Did you know?" This was the question she had been wanting to ask ever since Lucien mentioned it to Hannam in front of her.
"Not at the time, not until the night at the Soldier's Hill when Mei Lin told me Derek was blackmailing her." Perhaps he should have seen it, he thought, with hindsight. But he was glad he hadn't known during the time he spent in the POW camp with Derek. He would have been tempted to let him die.
"So, yes, I loved her and we were happy, for a short time at least. And she's the mother of my daughter, so I'll always love her for that. But I could never be happy with her again." He smiled at Jean and kissed her cheek. "Not now I've met you."
She smiled and looked away, thinking over what he had said.
"And were you happy with Christopher?" He stroked her hair, running his fingers through the curls at her neck.
"We were very young - only eighteen when we got married. Yes, we were happy then, but it feels as though I was a different person in those days. When the boys were little we were very happy, I think, but farm work is hard and took all our time and energy. In the end I felt stifled by it, but Christopher would never have done anything else."
Jean stared out across the garden, not seeing the plants she had tended there, but in her mind's eye she instead looked over the wide fields of the farm she had loved, and then hated.
"I always loved Christopher, I think, but I wasn't always happy. He gave me two sons and I'm grateful for them. But it was so hard after he died, trying to keep the farm going, and dealing with Jack...I almost hated him for dying and leaving me." She laughed, rather bitterly.
"And this time round?" He had to ask.
"I'm very happy. But this time I know it won't all be perfect. And that's fine, because we love each other," Jean said.
"Yes, and one day one of us will be left alone again." He grinned suddenly at the morbid turn this conversation was taking. "So I intend to make the most of all the days I get to spend with you." He touched her cheek and kissed her slowly, and he felt her smile against his lips.