Previously: Phryne told Jack to make use of her car and her home, and in the meantime she's been going a little crazy stuck in hospital, but at least she has her beautiful robes and her lipstick.

xoxox

Now that Phryne was able to sit in her hospital bed in relative comfort, the flood of other visitors started.

The women wrapped in decadent silks and furs, dragging their husbands, who regarded Jack with barely-veiled suspicion; and her fellow Adventuresses Club members, who viewed him with the very greatest of interest. Friends of Aunt Prudence, aviators, artists, jazz musicians. Samson and Miss Parkes from the carnival, Miss Leigh from the bookshop, with Simon Abrahams (Jack didn't like the way he looked at Phryne), all three of the Freemans (he also felt an unjustified twinge of jealousy that Vic had driven all those hours to Melbourne to see her), Lin (another even bigger twinge) and his wife Camellia, the Fleuri sisters, Mr Tarrant and his actress daughter Leila, Miss Charlesworth, Monsieur Anatole, and of course her childhood friend Raymond was a regular.

Jack knocked and was admitted to her room one afternoon to be confronted with one visitor that he had not been expecting. "Rosie!…" The three of them had spent an awkward quarter hour before she had departed.

Phryne started, "Well, that was…" but neither of them knew how to finish. Apparently, Rosie had seen the newspapers, and had swallowed her pride and resentment to come to check on Miss Fisher's wellbeing. Phryne had received her with good grace, and Jack supposed that he was grateful that the two women could hold a civil conversation.

He had a surprise visitor of his own in mind for Phryne, and he broached the subject with a little apprehension, "My mother… wants to come and visit you… but I'll understand if you don't want to… I know that the circumstances aren't exactly ideal…" But, in spite of her current appearance, she had been rather pleased, if a little anxious, with the request, and it had been arranged.

Jack had taken Phryne's car to collect his mother; but if it was a surprise to her, her neighbours were positively astounded. When he had told her he would bring a car to collect her, she was not sure what she had expected – surely not a borrowed police vehicle? – but it certainly wasn't a shining red roadster. Jack explained, but she wasn't quite sure what to make of it; and why on earth would anyone want to travel at 85 miles per hour?

Phryne was bubbling with anticipation when they arrived. Jack was momentarily thrown – had she had a haircut? She brushed her fingers along the underside of her bob and lowered her voice to a secretive level. "It's not quite up to usual standard… but I'm not sure what they'll do to me if I complain!" She winked, and it was his mother's turn to be taken aback.

Introductions over, he had retrieved the items he had left just outside the door, and thereby revealed his plans for their lunch.

She clapped her hands with glee. "A picnic! Am I allowed outside? Oh, Jack, I do love you! How wonderful!" He smiled with satisfaction. Yes, it had taken a little of his charm, but for the first time she was going to be allowed outside and into the gardens without the presence of a nurse, beyond the previous boundary of the wide verandahs.

He helped her into a wheelchair, and she took the hamper onto her knees, taking great care to avoid the injury on her upper thigh. They took a blanket from the end of her bed to augment the picnic blanket, her pillow, and purloined the cushions from the two visitors' chairs. These he surrendered with an unceremonious, "Would you be so kind, Mother?" and they were away, to find a slightly sloping position in the dappled sunshine, looking out over the lush gardens.

For her part, Jack's mother was struggling to come to terms with the emotions warring within her.

She had to admit that the entire family had been a little sceptical when her husband had repeated Jack's words; after all, Jack wasn't a ladies' man, but now he was suddenly free to do as he pleased, and it wouldn't surprise them if her long-neglected son simply latched onto the first woman who came along and showed an interest in him.

From Jack's first stories of his encounters with Miss Fisher, the family had known that she was well-to-do. What he had failed to tell them was… almost everything else. His mother had come here today expecting to find perhaps a plain, rather mousy woman, who had somehow managed to insinuate herself into Jack's work. Instead, there was this immaculately painted Dutch doll in her beautifully embroidered silk sleepwear; intelligent, vibrant, witty… and flirtatious.

Having now met her, she was unsurprised by Jack's attentions to the woman, although she still wondered when, and how, this had happened. It was true that he was a private man, but still, he had said nothing. Nothing. He had simply responded in the affirmative when occasionally asked if she had been involved in any of his recent cases, and none of them had ever suspected any other attachment to her; in fact, there had been another attachment on their minds.

They knew that Jack had done his best to support Rosie, after that horrible business with her father and her fiancé. They had felt, under the circumstances, that they ought to support her as well; after all, her only other remaining family was her sister. She had been invited to dinner with them, and everyone had noted her changed attitude to Jack, and his care of her. Eyebrows had been raised; was a reconciliation on the cards?

Now she knew, without any doubt, that Rosie stood no chance against Miss Fisher – Phryne, as she had been asked to call her. In her presence, Jack had come alive in a way that his mother had never imagined; there was something here that she had never seen in him before. Sure, when he and Rosie had been married they had been in love, and he was a bright-eyed, determined boy (she had still thought so, anyway) – a little bit of a larrikin. He had come home from the trenches a serious and reserved young man, aged beyond his years. He was her son – her love for him could not be diminished – but he and his wife had never been able to resurrect what had been lost.

Here, on this blanket, she was seeing Jack as she had not seen him for fifteen years. He was relaxed – he had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves and was leaning back on his elbows, legs crossed at the ankles. He laughed, he teased, and they bickered, good-naturedly. And yes, he was definitely returning her flirtation; when Phryne leaned to spoon potato into his mouth (yes, he actually let her do that!), Jack had given her a look that brought to mind a slavering wolf, and Phryne had returned it, as a lamb, stepping willingly into his jaws. The heat that flickered between them was not the sort of thing on which a mother wanted to dwell…

But most unexpected of all were *Phryne's* attentions to Jack. She might be the one sitting there injured, obviously in pain in spite of her good spirits, but her care for him was evident in her every glance and touch. It wasn't just the feeding; it was the way she leaned into him, stroked his cheek, poked his ribs, and raked her fingers through his wind-ruffled hair. A month ago, if a fortune teller had told Mrs Robinson that a rich, beautiful, thoroughly modern women would sweep her son off his feet, she would have demanded her money back; but here she was, seeing it with her own eyes.

When Phryne was back in her bed, and Jack collected the hamper to leave, she asked, "Aren't you forgetting something?" and tilted her face teasingly toward him, waiting for her goodbye kiss. He had been affectionate in public with Rosie, would put an arm around her, or press a kiss into her hair, but his mother had *never* seen him express his love with such a kiss, and she had to turn away. Somehow, against all odds and expectations, it seemed that their Jack had finally been brought home.

tbc