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It had become their own private ritual over the years. Ellie asking, always ready with an offer. Hardy refusing, always ready with an excuse.
The years had changed them so much. In the beginning, it had been rapid. Worlds crumbling and trust broken in months, weeks, seconds. Then slowly, over the course of a year, built back up. Leaning against each other as they reconstructed themselves from the foundations. Finally, weak still, but able to stand alone, teetering, wobbling, like a child’s first steps, yet determined to move forward.
Did they know then that in their two years apart they would change yet again? It seemed so. Otherwise why separate? Why not stay together, build together?
‘Because if the other falls, you would too. Just like last time,’ must have been the reply, because separate they did. Trying to reforge themselves alone, trying to reclaim their lives and face the future intact; not as a mere part of a whole.
Two years it had taken for Hardy to realise that home was no longer where he had believed it was. He had thought he missed Tess, but what he really missed was the companionship. He missed soft touches and caring words, the sense of belonging he had felt as part of a family, the feeling of being a part of something so much bigger than himself. Of feeling like your existence mattered to those around you..
Home, he discovered, wasn’t a place or a person. It was a feeling. It was knowing you belonged, with all your strangeness and imperfections. It was knowing you were accepted, not judged, yet at the same time being called out for behaviour that wasn’t acceptable to the whole. It was mugs of tea given and taken, walks together at night with no words spoken, quiet talks on a bench no matter the weather to dispel the shadows of the work day. Home was how he felt when he had all those things unreservedly and was able to reciprocate in the ways he knew and understood, without fear that it wasn’t enough. He had taken on the role of teaching his daughter this revelation and returned to those stupid cliffs and endless sky and the small town he hated. Mostly.
Five years later, with that same daughter now far away and living her own life, he was surprised to find he still felt at home. He had assumed that once Daisy left there would be nothing to keep him in Broadchurch, because Broadchurch wasn’t home. But he hadn’t left. He had stayed, despite himself. Perhaps by default, having nowhere else he wanted to go. But also because, despite himself, this was where he felt he belonged to something.
“We could go up the pub,” said the reason he felt like he belonged, giving him the usual half smile that always accompanied this statement. “We’ve never been to the pub.”
Hardy turned his head toward her, just as he always did, and studied her for a moment. The orange jacket remained, as adamant to be a stalwart of Broadchurch station as Bob Daniels himself, oddly complimentary to his preferred navy blue. Her hair, still unruly, grown out more than once now, flew around her head in the soft breeze. Just as it made his straight strands stand up at peculiar angles. The street lamps and dying sun cast glimmers of light on a patch of silver hair at her temple, no doubt mirroring his own.
They sat close these days, comfortable in each other's spaces. Still she slumped on the bench, legs crossed, body twisted half towards him. Still he sat upright, back straight, hands folded in his lap. If he wanted to, he could reach out and touch her with barely more than a gesture.
Maybe it was this realisation that made him give his reply. Maybe it was the realisation that not only did he want to, but that it would require no effort at all on his part. No inner turmoil of whether he should or shouldn’t; no gauging whether this was appropriate for the time or place or their respective circumstances. No need to consider what anyone would think.
Not even her.
He knew what she would think. Hadn’t it always been there? Hadn’t the real question not been whether they would go to the pub, begin a new journey as separate, healed people, who could create something new and breathtaking together, but when?
‘Now,’ thought Hardy. ‘Now is when.’ He had always told himself he would know when the time was right. It was like when you knew your old dog needed your last act of kindness, or your twenty something daughter left to live her own life with her girlfriend, or your friend’s son emigrated to Canada to be with the love of his life. It was an inexorable feeling of rightness. That they had somehow always been destined to reach this point.
Here.
Now.
Together.
Hardy reached out and entwined his fingers into hers. She didn’t start or look shocked. She had no witty comeback or snarky point to make. She didn’t react at all, in fact. Except to give his hand a reciprocating squeeze, so featherlight he could believe he had imagined it.
”Sure,” he said, sighing with the weight of the inevitability he felt. “I’ll get the first round.”