It was a delicious day outside; clear blue sky and sunshine, quite unlike autumn really. Wandering along the row of hedges, DI Jack Robinson heard something familiar, the delightful sound of Miss Fisher daintily galumphing around.
'Drat!' Accompanied the sound of tearing.
Jack peered through the hedgerow. A flash of red caught his eye.
'Are you alright Miss Fisher?'
'Jack! How nice to hear you. I'm entangled.'
'Stay there.'
He sped round and doubled back to find her. It didn't take long. There in a bramble patch was Miss Fisher, captive to the thorns. Her checked red blanket was caught and her black wool trousers were embedded. She looked up and her smile was like sunlight breaking across the lake waters. Jack couldn't help but respond. She brought that out in him like no other. Having gallantly rescued her from the terrible pinpricks, (Oh thank you Jack) he noticed her half full basket, glistening with deep dark berries. Miss Fisher had been blackberry picking. He couldn't imagine the Honourable Phryne Fisher doing something as normal as blackberry picking.
'I was going to bring Jane along but her friends dragged her off to something far more exciting, like hanging out in town and watching the boys go past. So, by myself I went.'
Jack thought it was utterly charming.
Even more so when she suggested that he join her in filling up the basket. Making a careful pile of coats, he rolled up his shirtsleeves (Phryne's eyes popping with discretely camouflaged glee at seeing a little more of the Detective Inspector) and got stuck in after she exclaimed that Mr Butler was adept at removing stubborn stains from shirts. They worked in companionable silence until the basket was nearly full. Then she proposed that they sit down in the grass for an impromptu picnic, using her blanket which she had used to protect her arms from the thorns. Producing a flask of water, she doused to cleanse and they sat there contentedly popping blackberries in their mouths. Jack wondered what his superiors would say if they saw him now, purple stains on his shirt and tongue. It was a marvellous pastime. Jack wondered how she'd thought of it.
'We used to go blackberry picking when we were young.'
Jack tried to think of a time when Miss Fisher was ever young. Or innocent for that matter. He wondered out loud. She smirked.
'We've all been that once in our lives, Jack.'
She drew an appraising eye over him. She was dying to know what boy Jack had been like. He too had been fresh and unassuming before war had ravaged his innocence.
'Were the blackberry bushes on common ground?' He asked conversationally.
Phryne pouted. 'I saw no fence. We weren't stealing anything.'
'Mhm.'
Jack was about to smile when he realised that we meant Phryne and her sister Janey. Janey who met a grisly end at the hands of a maniac. A cloud came over her as her thoughts drifted off to the memory of what was then, forever young. He sensed it and clammed up. He had no wish to ruin the atmosphere.
The sun came out, gracing them with warm rays of melted gold. She turned to him and suddenly smiled, a porcelain doll with eyes of jade glass. And he thought he could drown quite happily in them.