As always, these are not my characters, I'm just taking them out to play, and I promise to return them unharmed.

This is just a bit of frippery, occurring some time in series 3. Hope you enjoy it x

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Was it possible to hate an inanimate object?

Lucien glared at the phone, rubbing his forehead in frustration. Until quite recently he had not noticed that the phone and the door knocker were conspiring against him; but since the day Jack left, the day Jean cried on his shoulder, he had found that whenever they got a bit closer, when ever he was tempted to kiss her, the phone rang. Or whenever he started to tell her what was on his heart, someone came to the door.

Plenty of people didn't even have a phone. Lucien envied them their peaceful lives. But he was a doctor, and patients expected their doctor to be available. What if there was an emergency? No, getting rid of the phone or unscrewing the knocker from the door wouldn't work.

And he and Jean were tied to that phone by threads of obligation. Neither of them could ignore a ringing phone. "I'll get it!" rang out several times a day as one or other of them scurried to answer, ruining every tender moment, or so it seemed. Pavlov would have loved to watch them, the only thing missing was the drool.

Now he just wanted ten uninterrupted minutes to talk to her, to tell her how he felt, to kiss her gently and hope she would respond. Was that too much to ask? In frustration he thumped his desk, making the phone jump slightly and clatter noisily as it landed. He would defeat his Bakelite enemy, somehow.

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Jean groaned inwardly as the phone rang again. Her life was ruled by the tinny bell of that infernal machine.

Of course, she was Lucien's receptionist, so answering the phone was only to be expected. For years she had hurried to the door or the phone, dealing with worried patients and demanding policemen, and in old Dr Blake's day it had never annoyed her.

But now she was frustrated. Every time she thought she saw that new look in Lucien's eye, they were interrupted. Was she imagining it? Something seemed to have changed recently; instead of looking at her without seeing, now he looked right into her, asking a question with his eyes.

She suspected the question might be "Are you ready yet?" or "Do you feel this too?" But every time, or so it seemed, the evil tyrant on his study desk demanded their attention.

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Months later of course, the questions were finally asked and answered on a bus. As they travelled away from Ballarat, away from the phone, the house, the lodgers and their work, at last they had time. They could hold hands, sit together in silence, and eventually say everything they had been wanting to say for so long.

As the miles rolled past, Jean dozed on his shoulder, and Lucien let his imagination wander.

Maybe he could invent a machine to answer the phone? Surely lots of people would want one; businesses, families, all sorts of people. He would look into it as soon as he got back to Ballarat. As he drifted into sleep he had one final thought.

He would advertise his invention to doctors first - doctors who were in love with their housekeepers. He couldn't be the only one, could he?

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And, yes, the answerphone had been invented by 1960, but I don't think anyone except big businesses would have dreamt of owning one at that time.