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Jack sat at his desk, piles of paperwork scattered across the surface as he worked through reports methodically. He didn’t look up at Bert, who was pacing the room impatiently and grumbling about Jack’s intransigence. In the reception, Hugh was updating the registers and minding the silent desk.
The clock ticked closer to midnight, and still Jack worked on. The pages in front of him were nonsense but he had to finish them. Every time he looked up at the clock, his attention returned inexorably to the page. When he really focused the words formed themselves into scraps of poetry or lines of bloody Shakespeare, and all he did was scrawl his signature at the bottom of the page and move on to the next one.
Midnight came and went, and the phone stayed silent. Bert did another circuit of the room, and Jack’s hand carried on across the page. He tried to force himself out of his seat and towards the door, but his body didn’t respond to his instructions. It kept on going through the motions, just like Bert and Hugh.
Five past, and still no call. Dread churned in Jack’s stomach. His signature, never all that presentable despite his best efforts, was now nothing more than a scribble with the way his hands shook.
Suddenly, finally, the scratch of his pen and then tick of the clock were drowned out by the shrill ringing of the phone. Instead of the one in reception, it was the one on Jack’s desk. The clock now read a quarter to one. He stared at the phone in trepidation and reached out to lift the handset.
“Jack Robinson speaking.”
“Sir,” Hugh’s voice said, even though the Hugh in reception was silent, “there’s been an explosion at the Turkish bath palace on Lonsdale Street. All fire engines called to attend.”
He could feel the heat of the flames on his face, smell the thick smoke and feel it catching in his lungs, but he replied calmly that they would be there presently, collected his coat and hat, and strode out into the station, calling out orders as he went. They piled into cars, and a sergeant drove him the longest mile in history up to the bathhouse. Buildings distorted, and they passed the same bakery three times. All the way there, the orange glow reflecting off the low clouds grew brighter, until the entire sky seemed to be on fire.
By the time they reached the bathhouse, it was a smouldering ruin under a grey sky in the cold light of morning, the final pockets of fire being damped down by steady rain.
“No survivors,” Phryne told him thoughtfully. She was wrapped in that white towel still, her skin damp from sweat and steam and her hair mussed, hands on her hips in familiar frustration. “Still. One less bordello.”
He stared at her. “No, but… you can’t be dead. That isn’t allowed.”
“Jack,” she scolded him. “Since when has that ever stopped me?”
Jack forced himself awake before she changed, but the memories had already surged to the fore and wouldn’t be so easily dispelled. He’d seen far too much not to know exactly what could have happened that night. Luck and Dorothy Williams had saved Phryne that night, not him.
Some nights he thought they’d saved her from him.
Cold sweat beaded on his skin, soaking his pyjamas until they clung to him, so as soon as his legs were steady enough, he stumbled into the bathroom, threw them in the laundry hamper and stood under a cold shower for as long as he could stand it. It was still an hour before dawn, and the weak light was just enough to see by as he towelled himself dry roughly and dressed without seeing what he was pulling from the wardrobe. Before long he was out of the house and in the car, and he’d long since given up on pretending that he didn’t know exactly where he was going.
Jack had too many nightmares for any one to recur with any regularity, and most nights were blessedly free of them these days. It wasn’t like those years after the war, when he could hardly get through a night and hadn’t begun to deal with them. He and his demons had learned to live with each other in a way that he and Rosie had never been able to. But this nightmare in particular, he only knew one way to banish.
The street was silent and still when he pulled up outside Wardlow, and he leaned his head back against the seat as the final rush of fear drained from him to leave him dizzy and exhausted. Logically he knew that the house had looked just the same under its previous occupants, whoever they had been. He’d passed it a time or two and admired the veranda connecting the bedrooms as much as the police officer in him had worried about security. But he knew this house now, knew its moods and the strange noises it made after dark, the changing colours as morning passed into afternoon and then evening, and its occupants better still. Its mistress especially.
If his nightmare had been real, he wouldn’t feel this sense of contentment at just the sight of it.
He sat there some time, until the sun was nearing the horizon and the sky was dappled with soft pastels and he risked being spotted by either Dot or Mr Butler as they prepared for the day, and he was just bracing himself to return home for what sleep he could get when a familiar black cab turned the corner and pulled up outside the gate.
He shook his head fondly and crossed the road before he could think better of it, reaching the car just as Bert helped a very tipsy Phryne out of the tangle her gown had become in the back seat.
“Hello, Jack!” she called, pressing a kiss to Bert’s cheek to leave a bright red print that must have been deliberate after a night of dancing. She released his hand and reached for Jack’s and made him twirl her under his arm and into a ballroom hold. “I’m afraid I may not be sober enough for a crime scene for a while yet.”
“She’s not wrong,” Bert grumbled, but he was smiling behind his dog-end. He pulled it from his mouth and crushed it under his heel in the gutter. “Took me a good while to get her out of that place. Had to give her a dance first,” he added, and she giggled. “I’ll let you see her safely inside, Inspector.”
Phryne slipped from his arms and danced ahead of him, high heels dangling from one hand and the other clutching her wrap around her, so Jack nodded to Bert and followed her. They were too early even for the milkman, and he took the keys from her to open the door with a minimum of fuss and noise.
Despite her inebriation, Phryne’s eyes were still keen and observant as ever. She didn’t ask him what he was doing there, just handed him her wrap to hang and took his hat, which she placed on her own head instead of on its usual hook. It was much too big for her and slid down over her eyes, so all he could see of her face was that brilliant smile.
“Stay for breakfast?” she asked.
Jack chuckled. “I think you should go to bed, Miss Fisher.”
“Only if you come with me,” she countered.
He still couldn’t see her eyes, which meant that she couldn’t see the way his fluttered closed to stop them from raking over her too-short, too-gaudy, too-tempting dress and the miles of legs it revealed. His hunger for her, stripped bare by his nightmare, was shielded only by the hat that she had bought for him.
“You are far too drunk for that,” he told her. “And I am far too sober.”
She pushed the hat back with one finger so that she could peer up at him. “Well, one of those is true.” When she took the hat and put it back on its hook at last, she combed her fingers through her hair to neaten it, then did the same to him with quite the opposite effect. “It’ll have to be toast, then,” she decided, and she grabbed his hand to take him with her into the kitchen.
Jack had once assumed that Phryne would be a menace in the kitchen, but, of course, she’d taken great delight in proving him wrong. She was never likely to cook a three-course dinner, because when she’d learned to cook they couldn’t afford one. What she could do, what she’d never forgotten, was how to make something out of very little. Even so, he wasn’t about to let her try anything more complicated than boiling eggs when she was still humming borderline obscene jazz and telling the chairs to be quiet when she tripped over them.
A lump clogged his throat as he watched her, and he found himself rooted to the spot with the teapot clutched in his hands.
“Is everything all right?” Mr Butler asked from the doorway, looking like this was an everyday occurrence. For all Jack knew, it was. “Should I do the tea, Miss?”
“No, we’re fine. I’m sorry we woke you.” Phryne took the pot from Jack at last and immediately took the lid and put it on her head as a hat. It only stayed there a second, and Jack stepped in to catch it as it fell. “The Inspector is here to keep me out of trouble.”
“Very good, Miss. Do call if you need me,” he added to Jack, and then he left them to it.
She laughed softly once he’d gone. “That man has the patience of a saint and the genius of a devil. I don’t know why he puts up with me.”
Jack shook his head, still staring at her. “I do.”
“Jack.” Phryne put the teapot down and reached for his hand again. When he lifted it obligingly she span under it and into his arms. The hand still clasped in Jack’s came to rest between their chests, and the other she curled around his shoulder. “Do you want to talk?”
He shook his head, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, until her head rested on his shoulder and tucked under his cheek. Tears stung at his eyes, even with her safe and warm and so brilliantly alive against him.
“Never change,” he told her, practically begged. “Never change a damn thing about yourself.”
She swayed in time to music only she could hear. “I will if I want to. But only ever on my terms.”
“That’ll do.”
“Good.” Her hand slid to the back of his neck and her thumb brushed through the short hair above his collar. “Any other requests?”
Jack smiled against her temple. “Rhapsody in Blue.”
She laughed into his chest and pulled back. “An excellent choice. Better now?”
“Much.” He released her, but reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “You know, I worry sometimes that I’ll be too late.”
No one should have been able to follow that leap in the conversation, but Phryne always did. She rested her hand on his chest and held his gaze. “Really? I never have.”
That caught in his throat again, and he swallowed hard. “We’re going to burn the toast.”
“Damn!” She ducked away, a blur of motion again, and turned her attention to tea and toast and eggs, and Jack let himself be swept along in it. They eventually settled in the parlour, sharing a plate of toast balanced on the settee between them, dipping torn off strips into their eggs and trying not to drip the runny yolk onto the settee, no matter what she said about the colours matching.
Phryne laughed as she licked egg yolk from the palm of her hand, and he knew that the only thing keeping him from her bed was the imminent start of his shift. He’d probably never know how he felt about that. When the clock on the bookcase finally chimed and he could no longer delay his departure, it felt like both a reprieve and a cruel loss.
“I should go,” he said. “Duty calls. Thank you for breakfast.”
Phryne pouted a little, but she uncurled herself from the settee and offered him her hand. “You are always welcome, Jack. But I’m showing remarkable restraint here, I’ll have you know.”
He raised one eyebrow, gut swooping. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Every time you say that I have the strongest urge to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. But I know you loathe Pirates of Penzance,” she reminded him, “and so I refrain.”
It was such a small thing, but after the morning he’d had, that was enough set him off laughing so hard he couldn’t begin to stand. He pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and reached out for hers with the other, squeezing it and pulling her back to the settee, where she curled up at her end and, he found when he could finally look at her without setting himself off again, watched him with an expression of outright delight.
“You’re right,” he said, “a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. But mine isn’t so bad these days.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Jack.”
He got to his feet at last and this time he offered her a hand up. She followed him to the door, where she let him slide his coat on and insisted on placing his hat on his head and tugging his lapels straight himself.
“Jack,” she said softly. “Next time, don’t feel you have to sit outside.”
“It was six o’clock in the morning.”
“I don’t care.” Her eyes were serious, and she still hadn’t let go of his coat. “Mr Butler wouldn’t mind, and I’d welcome it. Whatever it was drove you here, if being here helps…”
Jack shook his head. “You help.”
Phryne’s hand flattened against his chest. “Then come. If I’m not in, Mr Butler always knows where to find me. For you, I’d drop everything.”
It was like she’d read his mind and dug out every worry he’d had, and though she hadn’t set them to rest she’d done all she could. The rest was up to him. The tightness in his chest settled under her palm.
“You know,” he said, “that first case, when you were at the bathhouse. I almost didn’t come.”
“I know.”
He looked down at her hand on his chest. “I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself for that.”
Phryne reached up to cup his cheek in her palm. “I can’t fight your demons, any more than you can fight mine. But I never blamed you.” She brushed her thumb across his cheek once before she dropped her hand, but she didn’t step back. “How many times have you come to my rescue now?”
“It was a dereliction of my duty,” he argued.
“Perhaps.” She shrugged one shoulder. “But I can be very annoying when I put my mind to it. And,” she said firmly, “you did, in fact, save my life that night. If that makes you feel better.”
Jack tilted his head. “And I seem to recall it was your fault it blew up in the first place.”
“So… I promise not to blow anything else up unless it’s absolutely necessary.” She smoothed down his lapels once more. “But I can’t promise that I won’t need rescuing again.”
He smiled fondly. “And when you do, I will be there.”
“I know.” Finally, she stepped back, stockinged feet silent on the tiles. “I’ll leave you to your duties, Inspector.”
He tipped his hat to her and pulled the door open. “I will endeavour not to need your assistance until at least this afternoon, Miss Fisher.” Happiness curled through him at her laugh. “Good night, Phryne.”
“Good morning, Jack. Call if you need lunch delivering.”
Jack rolled his eyes at her, and the sound of her laughter followed him down the path and far out of hearing.