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Ellie had been on a tear all day. Some Saturdays she was just like that, and the whole family had figured out long ago that on this kind of Saturday, it was best simply to fall in line. One week, her mission might be tidying and mowing and pruning in the back garden, perhaps planting a load of tulip bulbs to bloom the following spring. One week it might be vacuuming and washing her sedan and Alec’s Prius, cleaning them inside and out, until both cars looked a lot newer than their odometer readings might indicate. One week it might be a massive cooking project, putting stews and pasta sauces into the freezer for future consumption at the end of long workdays.
This week, the Saturday objective was a major clear-out of too-small or otherwise unneeded items to be taken to the charity shop. With only a short break for sandwiches at noon, all of them had spent hours labouring diligently under her supervision: Alec, Fred, Izzy, David Barrett.
By 3 p.m. everyone was fagged out, and Fred had simply left. “Science project with Mickey,” he’d explained, heading out the door at 2:30 to walk to his mate’s house. “Back after dinner.”
Izzy, for her part, had had to be prevented from discarding clothing that still fit her, just because she was excited about putting things in boxes. Her grandfather had eventually taken her down to his “granny annexe” flat; they were now watching Minions together for the umpteenth time.
Ellie and Alec surveyed the damage: four big black bin bags, bulging, and five cardboard boxes, similarly full.
“If we go now we can get everything down to the shop before they close,” she said.
“Should’ve got Fred to help us load before he left,” Alec whinged, but the two of them managed to muscle everything into the boot of her sedan. Walking down the driveway with the last overstuffed box, Alec nearly tripped. Looking down, he saw that he’d got tangled in an errant scarf; it must’ve fallen out when he’d picked up the box.
Navy blue cashmere. Somewhat shabby.
“C’mon, then,” Ellie said over her shoulder. “Sometimes they close up early if they’re not busy. You know how it is with volunteers.”
But Alec had stopped where he stood, just staring down at his feet.
“What?” she demanded. Turning back, she took the box out of his hands, nestling it into the boot with the others. Alec bent to retrieve the scarf, holding it up for her to see.
“Oh,” she said.
He nodded. “Must’ve been tangled up with somethin’ else that went in there,” he speculated, handing it to her. “I wouldn’t have….”
“No,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been all day. “I don’t suppose you would.”
***
It shouldn’t have been so cold—it was only autumn, after all. Only September, the day Alec Hardy arrested her husband for the murder of Danny Latimer.
But Ellie was cold. She had been walking for hours: shell-shocked, aimless. First standing in Coniston Field, weeping as her best friend—would Beth ever be her friend again?—castigated her for failing to prevent Danny’s death. Then out by the St. Bede’s churchyard, for a long while, almost wishing Paul Coates, the always-sensitive vicar, would show up to comfort her.
She’d avoided the high street, of course. And she knew she should go back to her boys, though Lucy and Olly had volunteered to stay for as long as she needed them to. They’d all be hungry. Well, Olly could fetch them some takeway. She herself didn’t think she could eat a thing.
Hollowed out, stunned, Ellie just walked, grateful for the warmth of her familiar orange jacket and the fuzzy blue scarf she’d wrapped around her neck before setting out, almost as an afterthought. She tried to stop herself replaying the day’s events—Hardy at the beach, assuring her that she’d done a good job on the case; Hardy interrupting her interview with Nige Carter; Hardy calling her “Ellie” before explaining that Joe Miller was a murderer; Hardy gripping her shoulder as she retched and sobbed, disbelieving. Hardy cautioning her not to touch her husband and then unable to move fast enough to stop her kicking the hell out of the man in Interview Room 1.
How was this her life?
She needed to talk to someone. She needed someone to explain how this could possibly have happened. There was no one. Well, no one except maybe Alec Hardy, who’d lectured her often enough about the folly of trust and the existence of broken moral compasses. The infuriating man who’d stolen her job. Her boss and partner, who’d been so determined to solve the case that he’d almost killed himself trying. She’d lost track of how many hours ago he’d collapsed, after giving chase to a person she now knew to have been her husband. Alec Hardy, flat on his back in that boatyard, gasping for breath, scaring her to death.
Hardy ought to be in hospital tonight, with that lousy ticker of his. But he wasn’t, as far as she knew. And she had to talk to someone.
There was no one else who would understand.
It was past half-eleven by the time she made it to The Traders. She rang him from the car park; he opened a rear door for her so she wouldn’t have to go through the lobby. God only knew who might still be in the bar, talking over her business in shocked tones.
They sat in his hotel room for well over two hours. Going through the whole case again. Questioning whether she might've missed clues in Joe's behaviour. Sometimes just sitting silently, with Hardy offering her glasses of water. Ellie continually looping back to the “why” questions that Hardy couldn’t possibly answer.
She never removed the orange jacket. She kept the scarf on, too, even though she was sweaty, after a while. She begged the man who was sitting on the bed, in his rumpled dress shirt and loosened tie, to come up with a narrative that made her life make sense.
Nothing made sense.
Months later, listening to Sharon Bishop spin the events of that evening into an imaginary love affair, Ellie would deeply regret the time she’d spent at The Traders that night—pleading for answers, demanding that Alec render everything comprehensible. Sharon Bishop’s courtroom version of that evening was nothing remotely like reality. Though it was also true that Ellie could barely remember a lot of what had happened, looking back. She herself found it difficult to believe that she’d left her boys and spent more than two hours in that room with Hardy, until he’d bundled her into a cab at quarter after two and sent her back to her own hotel.
Even now, all these years later, she didn’t remember a lot of that night. It was a mercy, not to remember.
But she remembered how worn the man who was now her husband had looked: gaunt, sick, exhausted. She remembered how long he’d listened to her. How gentle he’d been with her, in a way she would never have previously believed him capable of.
That was the first night she’d had an inkling of who Alec Hardy really was.
She’d forgotten a lot. But she still remembered the tears in his eyes, and the hoarseness of his voice, as he’d said: “I really wanted to be wrong.”
***
Hardy didn’t know what the hell he was going to do.
It was dark, and windy, and cold, and here he was on this damned bench, sitting in silence with Miller where they’d talked things out so many times before. Most of the town was heading to the cliffs for Danny’s torchlight memorial; Miller’s boy Tom was there, with her sister and her obnoxious nephew, Oliver. Miller had wanted to be there, too, and at the funeral. But it was clear the Latimers didn’t want to see her—and Tom had stopped talking to her, as well. It was impossible for her to be out in public, in Broadchurch, right now.
She had told Hardy that she assumed half the town thought she’d known about what Joe was doing with Danny. That she’d known Joe had killed the boy, and had helped him cover it all up. How could she not have known, they’d be asking—as Beth had asked. She’d be persona non grata for a while, he expected.
But Miller was an integral part of Broadchurch, in a way Alec Hardy could never be. She’d get her DS job back eventually, once Joe was convicted and locked away, the bastard. She’d be fine, he told himself. She was a strong woman underneath that bubbly exterior. He’d initially thought she was a bit of an airhead; he’d already figured out that he’d been wrong about that.
She’d land on her feet, Ellie Miller. He thought she would, somehow.
Alec Hardy, on the other hand? What the fuck was he going to do now?
Find a job, first, though after being medicalled out he didn’t know what the hell to try. He’d been a cop since graduating from Edinburgh Napier, a lot of years ago. He had no other discernible skills. Private detective, maybe, chasing down cheating spouses? The notion was repellent. But he had to do something to make money, because he was subsidising Claire Ripley’s rent, keeping her hidden away in a pretty little cottage, safe from Lee Ashworth in his own unofficial witness protection programme. And he was still paying child maintenance for Daisy, whom he hadn’t seen for so long. His daughter, whom he loved and deeply missed.
He had to stay close to Broadchurch, though; Claire was ensconced here, and he didn’t want to relocate her. And he had to solve that fucking Sandbrook case. He was damned if he was going to die without discovering the truth about Pippa Gillespie’s murder, and what had happened to Lisa Newbury, and whether Claire and that bastard husband of hers had been involved. He was going to get closure for the families, or die trying. He’d have to figure out some way to earn money, was all. Elaine Jenkinson had mentioned calling the Police Academy about teaching. Maybe he’d try that.
It was colder out here on the pier than Hardy had anticipated. His chest was hurting enough that he thought he might need to take more pills, even without water to wash them down. He should probably get the damn pacemaker operation, though he was more than half convinced that an attempt to implant one would end his life. But he didn’t have much of a life at the moment, did he? Popping pills, passing out, never knowing which tumble might be his last one?
Miller, pale and grim, stared straight ahead. He wondered what she was thinking. He wasn’t generally a man moved to pity, but he’d started pitying her the instant he’d realised Joe Miller was the killer, and he was feeling pity now. She was a good woman and a good officer, and she in no way deserved what had happened to her.
But Miller was bound to land on her feet. She was one of Broadchurch’s own, and Broadchurch would forgive. Even the Latimers would, eventually. Surely.
As if reading his mind, realising he was thinking about her, she turned and stared at him.
“You look terrible,” she told him.
“Wasn’t makin’ any particular effort to look good, Miller.”
Her mouth twisted into something that might almost be a smile. “You still ought to be in hospital, sir.”
“No need to call me ‘sir.’ I’m not your boss anymore. ‘M fine.”
“You’re not fine,” she said, crisply. “You’re shivering. Why on earth didn’t you wear your mac?”
“ ‘M fine,” he repeated. “Didn’t know it’d be so bloody cold out here, did I? Leave it.”
But she made an impatient noise, and she unwound the blue scarf from around her neck and leant towards him.
“Miller, no,” he began. “Don’t coddle me. For God’s sake. I’m fine.”
“Shut up,” she replied, looping the scarf once around his neck and letting the ends dangle over his chest. “You are not fine, and I’m not having you dying on me. So just shut up, can’t you? Stubborn git.”
He shut up.
The scarf was warm from being tucked inside her coat, and it was soft. It smelled like her. It was almost like an embrace.
Hardy wondered, fleetingly and for the first time, how it would feel to be embraced by Ellie Miller.
Daft man, he told himself. He must be beyond tired, to be thinking such a thing. And he was still bloody cold. She looked cold, now, too.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the torchlight procession. The memorial ceremony was the whole reason they were sitting on this bench tonight. Miller had insisted; it was symbolic, he supposed. Given the circumstances, this was as close as she’d thought they should come. His impulse was to join the procession, to show some solidarity with the Latimers. But he knew his place was with Miller. He needed to stay right here. With his partner.
His heart hurt—and not just because of the damned arrhythmia, for once.
“What will you do?” he asked.
***
Ellie took the scarf from his hands, staring down at it and then up into his eyes.
“Haven’t seen that for a long time,” she said.
“Aye. Must’ve got tangled in that,” Alec replied, gesturing at the threadbare tweed blazer resting atop the box he’d been carrying. He hadn’t seen her wear that blazer in years.
“Joe bought that scarf for me for Christmas. A few years before—you know.”
“Mmm.”
“I used to wear it all the time. Before.”
“I remember seein’ you in it.”
“You do? When?”
“The night they had the memorial for Danny, lightin’ all those beacons. We were sittin’ out on the pier, and you put it round my neck. Got narky with me for bein’ inadequately dressed.”
She smiled. “I did?”
“Aye. You don’t remember?”
“No. But I remember being out there with you. I remember you being kind to me.”
He shrugged. “I doubt it. Wasn’t my specialty at the time, was it?”
“You were, though. And you were kind the night when I came to see you at The Traders. I had this on then, too, didn't I?”
“Think so. Maybe. I always just remember you in the orange jacket.”
They were silent for a moment. Ellie bunched the scarf in her hands, as though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it.
“We should go,” he prompted. “They’ll be closin’, and then we’ll have all that stuff takin’ up space in the boot all week.”
“Yeah. Quite right,” she said. But neither of them moved.
And then she spread the scarf wide, looping it around his neck and pulling him towards her and into her arms. Holding him close. Saying nothing.
Alec hugged her back. He was happy to do that for as long as his wife wanted it, right here in their driveway. The scarf was still soft. Somehow, miraculously, it still smelled like her.
“Love you, Miller,” he said, because there seemed to be nothing else to say.
She pulled away from him at last, patting his cheek. “I love you too, dear heart. Come on, then.”
Removing the scarf, he held it out to her, a question in his eyes.
“Up to you,” she said. “Do you want it?”
“You gave it to me once before, sort of. Tryin’ to take care of me.”
“Taking care of you was nearly impossible,” she grinned. “Then and now.”
“Fair point. Though I think you’re actually doin’ all right in the caretakin’ department. Still here, aren’t I?”
“You are, my love. You absolutely are.”
He draped the scarf around his neck once more, and he hugged her again for good measure, kissing the top of her head.
“Let’s go,” he finally said, and they did.