AN: I'm pretty proud of this chapter, over all. Let me know what you think! I really hope you like it :)
/ / FRIDAY - Morning (cont.) / /
Jack knocked on the door of 221B The Esplanade that morning with some trepidation.
He had behaved stupidly the last time he'd seen Miss Fisher; dismissive and rude. But he had just been so frustrated with her. Why had she tried to keep her brother hidden away from him? Why did she feel she couldn't confide in him? Her brother returned after twenty odd years and yet she hadn't trusted… He closed his eyes. It was that kind of thinking that had brought him here, like this. With flowers!
They were just from a local girl on a market corner, nothing extravagant; but looking down at the bouquet in his hand now he was wondering if perhaps he shouldn't have. It was second nature to him really. He'd bought flowers for Rosie all through their courtship and marriage. He could still remember his mother telling him the meanings of different flowers as a child. With the right bouquet you can tell a story, she would say, and Jack often did. He used flowers to represent his sorrow for a loved one passed, or love and strength on his mother's birthday.
But perhaps it was wrong for Phryne.
They needed to talk things through properly, needed to be on the same footing. Jack looked down at the flowers and sighed. It had been so long since he'd done this, but, he considered, she did enjoy beauty. And these were rather nice flowers. She would probably like them. He hoped she would like them.
The door was opened then, interrupting Jack's thoughts, and Jack took a steadying breath.
"Is Miss Fisher home?" he asked.
"I'm afraid she isn't this morning, Inspector. She and Mr Fisher went on an outing. They didn't give any indication of when they might return."
Jack bit back a groan and cursed internally.
"Uh, might I come in? I have these for Miss Fisher, when she returns; and I'd like to, if I may, write a small note?"
"Of course."
Mr Butler took the flowers and led Jack into the entrance hall. Jack removed his hat and was left to wander into the parlour alone. At the desk by the far wall he found a fountain pen and some of Phryne's own embossed paper.
Letter writing had never been Jack's strong suit, but he settled on a few short words he thought may give them the opportunity to fix things, together, and was folding the page neatly in half when Mr Butler returned with a crystal vase beautifully displaying the bouquet.
"I will let Miss Fisher know you called on her," Mr Butler smiled kindly, taking the note from Jack and placing it with the vase on the dining room table.
Jack donned his hat again, bid Mr Butler a good day, and left. He still had a case to solve, and absolutely no leads.
/ / /
"All I'm saying Phryne, is that she has to know something more." Orpheus exclaimed as Phryne unlocked her door and stepped inside.
"And clearly something is stopping her," Phryne argued. "Orpheus dear, do you really expect she'll tell us anything more than she already did?"
"Not to me, but you Phryne, you could appeal to her. Lady to lady!"
Phryne stopped in her tracks and turned to face her brother with a slight frown, "Lady to lady?"
"I didn't mean-"
But Phryne had just remembered something. "No," she cut him off, "you just made me think. Lady to lady... I need to call Mac!"
With a grin Phryne rushed to the phone, "Queen Victoria Hospital, please," she asked the operator, "Doctor Elizabeth Macmillan."
Orpheus stood in the parlour doorway with a confused frown, watching his sister as she sat down, waiting for her call to connect through.
"Mac? I need a little favour," Phryne smiled, her voice drippingly sweet. "Exactly how close are you and your Nurse Verity?"
Five minutes later and Phryne had persuaded her friend into some dirt digging, and invited her to dinner.
"If Verity Lane knows anything more about Celia's baby, Mac will find out."
"Thank you."
"Yes, well. We will see what she has to say, won't we?" Phryne shrugged. "Now I believe I promised you a drink. Mr Butler! Two of your best cocktails are in order I think!"
She stepped passed Orpheus in the doorway and lounged herself in an armchair, pulling at the fingers of her gloves before removing them and casting them to one side.
Mr Butler appeared with a tray, and Phryne reached for her cocktail with a brilliant smile, thanking the older man generously.
"Inspector Robinson called," he said in return, "he left a note for you. It's with the flowers in the dining room."
"Jack brought flowers?" Phryne jumped easily to her feet, spilling not a drop of her cocktail, and strode across the hall to the dining room.
Orpheus followed, leaning against the door frame. "Why do you entertain that man?" he asked.
Phryne sat at the table and reached for the vase, burying her face in the scents and smiling. The purple hyacinths sat prettily between white orchids, and she was touched that he had made the effort to buy her such a beautiful display.
"Why shouldn't I?" Phryne asked, "he pleases me."
"He's a policeman."
"And I'm a detective."
Orpheus rolled his eyes, "Coppers are coppers, Phryne. They're all crooked somehow."
"Not Jack," Phryne looked over her shoulder, pointedly meeting Orpheus's eye. "Jack Robinson is the most honest man I've ever known."
"He doesn't trust you, Phryne. He doesn't deserve you."
"I will decide that for myself," Phryne said simply, sipping her cocktail and tucking Jack's note under her arm. "Please excuse me. I'll be down in time for dinner."
And she stood, pushing past her brother and striding up the stairs to her boudoir.
/ / /
Phryne,
I behaved like a fool. I will trust from now on, that you will come to me with your secrets only when you are ready. But please, trust in me to listen and help you in any way that I can.
Yours,
Jack.
x
Phryne read the words through twice, throwing herself back onto her bed with a bounce. She'd almost forgotten she was supposed to be mad at him. In fact she was still mad at him, but she felt the desperate need to forgive him and pull him back into her arms and her bed and... She huffed, dropping the note off the side of the mattress and staring up into the ceiling like it might have some answers for the way she was feeling.
When had she come this reliant on a man? When had she allowed herself to become so... vulnerable?
It was incredibly inconvenient and thoroughly frustrating. Jack had been as he said, foolish and hurtful, and yet even now she found she had curled herself around his pillow in her bed, and was slowly breathing in the scent of him, wishing she hadn't missed his calling by. Damn him. Damn men; and damn these feelings.
But Jack was a good man. A loyal, kind, loving man, and she knew he cared for her greatly. She would forgive him, had already started to forgive him. But, Phryne thought with a sudden smile. Jack didn't need to know that. Not yet, anyway.
Grinning mischievously at all the little games she could play with her favourite Inspector, Phryne closed her eyes and let herself drift off into a very pleasant afternoon nap.
/ / /
That evening Mac waited until after she had finished Mr Butler's rather delectable dinner, followed of course by a delicious apple pie and a drink in the parlour before allowing Phryne to bring up the reason for her presence there at all. With a glass of good bourbon in hand, and the fire crackling pleasantly to her right, she peered at Phryne across the room and sighed.
"Oh all right, ask me what you want to know," she said, having sensed the questions on the tip of her friend's tongue long enough.
"Did you speak to your Nurse Lane?"
Mac nodded, "I did."
"What did she say?" Orpheus asked keenly, sitting on the edge of his arm chair and leaning in, like the answer might miss him completely if he wasn't close enough.
Taking a sip of her drink Mac shifted in her place on the chaise lounge. "She took a fair bit of convincing, you definitely owe me a few favours."
"Yes, yes, yes; of course Mac. But did she have any information of use?"
"She admitted to lying to Celia. The girl was just a child, unlikely to be able to provide for the babe, and her mother -very disapproving as you may suspect, and poor enough she begrudged the idea of another mouth to feed- found a family willing to pay her for the baby once it was born."
Mac paused and took another sip of her drink. "Celia delivered at home, with some complications, and Verity was paid a small fee to take the baby straight from the room, and deliver it to it's new parents. Then she and Celia's mother told the poor child the babe had died."
"So what happened?" Orpheus asked, "to the child?"
"I don't know. Verity gave the child to the chosen parents, and presumably they had a birth certificate created under their name."
"And Celia never got to see her baby," Phryne considered. "How awful."
"Can you tell us anything else?" Orpheus pleaded, "Anything to help us find her?"
Mac sighed. "All I add is Verity thought the new parents may have been called Baker. Or Barker. She couldn't be very certain."
"Thank you!" Orpheus flew from his seat to take Mac's free hand and raise it to his lips, "Thank you."
Mac frowned down at the gentleman, "Yes well," she said, pulling her fingers free from his grasp, "you can repay me by doing the right thing by Phryne."
"Of course."
Orpheus stood and returned to his chair with a grin. He turned to his sister to ask their next step, and found her staring curiously into the fireplace, deep in thought.
"Baker..." she murmured.
"Or Barker."
"No," Phryne shook her head slowly, "no, today, when we were looking for Ivy's birth certificate. I think I remember a certificate with the name Baker on it. Joan Baker?" She looked up suddenly and met Orpheus' eye.
"We will look her up tomorrow, Orpheus. Now that we have a name to go off, finding her should be relatively easy."
"And then what do we do?"
Phryne bit her lip, "To be perfectly honest, I don't know. But I'm sure something will present itself. Until then, I suggest an early night. Tomorrow is bound to be emotional, you'll need rest."
Orpheus nodded, surprising Phryne a fraction when he listened to her and stood, bidding goodnight to his sister and her friend before retreating from the room.
"You certainly have him trained," Mac said.
Phryne shrugged, "He's desperate to be forgiven. And desperate to find his daughter. I'm not sure which he wants more."
Elizabeth looked at her friend from across the top of her glass, frowning curiously. "What did that brother of yours do, Phryne? Never heard you mention him until yesterday."
"He abandoned me," Phryne murmured, looking down into her lap awkwardly. "I was only five when he first moved away. He'd been my best friend, and he moved to Sydney. I missed him so terribly, and then years later when Janey..." She swallowed, "When Janey disappeared, Orpheus came back. I was so happy to see him, thought he could fix everything; that he'd find her and then he'd stay and we'd be happy. But he left again, and nothing was ever the same. We moved to England a year later, and I never saw either of them again. Until Monday."
She looked up and sighed. "Sixteen years of silence, Mac and then he knocks on my door. I don't know if I should trust him; but I've missed... He used to give me such wonderful hugs. All my troubles would just melt away, I was completely safe from the world. From my father, and the older boys in our street, the neighbour's feral cat."
Mac lowered her glass and leant forward in her seat, speaking softly and carefully. "Be careful, won't you, Phryne?"
Phryne offered her friend a smile, the slightest hint of tears glassing her eyes. "I always am," she whispered thickly, grateful for her friend. "I think I might go to bed myself, Mac. Shall I walk you out?"
The older woman nodded and finished her drink in one last gulp before standing and walking with Phryne to the door.
Spontaneously Mac pulled Phryne into a hug, then she stepped back and retrieved her hat.
"Goodnight, Phryne."
"Goodnight, Mac. Thank you."
The doctor nodded, smiled, then left.
Behind her Phryne closed and locked the doors, then moved through her large house to her bedroom.
What she needed, she realised as she slowly pulled off her clothes and jewellery, was Jack. Jack with his wise words, his quick dry wit. His soft kisses and warm embraces. His love and affection and strength at her side, holding her strong against so many of her demons. She sighed, feeling unpleasantly empty and numb. Apathetic as she slid into a silk night dress and padded over to her bed. She would see him tomorrow, Phryne decided. She would go to City South in the morning and kiss him until she couldn't breathe, and then she would leave. Just in case he got the impression she needed him.
Phryne Fisher didn't need anyone. She just occasionally preferred their presence.