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“Isn’t it weird,” Beth said as she topped up Ellie’s wine glass, “that every year our first words are the same every year?”
She moved towards Maggie’s glass, but the other woman put her hand over it.
“Oh, no more for me, petal.”
“Shut up.” Beth poured the drink. Ellie noticed that Maggie didn’t put up too much of fight. “Isn’t it, though?”
“What?”
“Our first words every year are ‘happy new year.’” Beth took a sip of her drink with a frown. “Except last year. I think last year I said something like ‘put me down, Nige.’”
The three women laughed, the noise loud enough to cover the increasingly aggressive Rock Band tournament going on in the living room. Ellie leant against the kitchen counter and allowed the pleasant warmth of the alcohol flow through her.
It had been a New Year’s Eve tradition that everyone would gather at the Latimer’s for years, but it hadn’t happened since Danny had died. Their house was central enough that everyone could get home without driving or getting a taxi and they had plenty of room for everyone and the impressive buffet and drinks table Beth and Mark would put together.
While the basics stayed the same, Ellie couldn’t help spot the changes. There were the missing faces of families that had moved away and the additions of new friends. Where once you couldn’t move for hyperactive children running around, overjoyed at being able to stay up late, there were moody teenagers on their phones, only speaking to ask their parents for an alcoholic drink.
Of course, there were still a couple of younger children. Baby Lizzie was asleep upstairs, living up to her reputation of being able to sleep through a hurricane, and Fred had joined her not long afterwards. The group of them were used to such arrangements, becoming a single parental unit for the night. If a child yelled “Mum!”, then six mothers would answer and the closest would deal with the issue. Mark (currently being chastised by Jocelyn for his substandard drumming) had volunteered to stay sober just in case.
Seeing as this was the first year any of them could remember him doing so, Beth had grasped the opportunity with both hands. Ellie was yet to see her without a glass in her hand. She wasn’t complaining, though. Beth was a generous drunk.
“Does kissing count?” Ellie asked thoughtfully.
“Hmm. Kissing isn’t really words,” Maggie replied. “Although I always say you can judge how good your year has been by who you end it kissing.”
“I hit the fucking the red one!” screamed Mark from the living room as Nigel could be heard giggling.
Beth looked distraught. “I didn’t think my year had been that shit.”
The three of them snorted into their glasses again. Earlier that night Olly had called them the three witches which somehow led to Paul Coats explaining to Nigel why he couldn’t perform an exorcism on the kitchen.
“Nah, he’s been all right,” Beth sighed. “It’d be nice to mix it up one year. Knew I should have invited Ryan Gosling…”
“I have no idea who that is,” said Maggie as Ellie swatted Beth’s arm, “but, personally, I think I’ve done all right for myself.”
Just then there was an outcry from the living room, led by Lucy. “She covered my eyes! I couldn’t see the bloody screen!”
“Prove it,” came Jocelyn’s haunty reply.
Ellie and Beth turned to Maggie, who appeared to be holding her breath. “Is this what having a teenager is like?”
“Is this where Hardy announces he’s arresting everyone for noise violations?” Ellie peered around the corner into the other room. “Where is Hardy?”
“Isn’t he playing with the others?” Beth asked, before staring at her drink. “Shit, how much have I had?”
As Chloe started googling the legal terms Jocelyn was firing at the others to prove they didn’t have a legal leg to stand on and her team were indisputably the winners, Ellie downed the rest of her drink and went in search of the missing Scotsman.
Her first port of call was upstairs. It wouldn’t surprised her in the slightest if he’d used checking on Fred and Lizzie as an excuse to avoid other people, especially as they were smiling. However, when she crept into the bedroom she found only the two sleeping children.
Briefly Ellie looked in on Lizzie in her cot to find she was snoring softly. Her own son was fast asleep in the large chair in the corner, his curls just visible underneath the blanket she spread over him a couple of hours previously. With smile, she pulled it down so she could see his face. The movement was enough to rouse him and he blinked up at her in confusion.
“Midnigh’?” he mumbled, rubbing his eye.
“Not quite, sweetheart. Go back to sleep.”
Fred followed her instructions almost immediately and she ran a hand through his hair. The buzz from the wine in the dark quiet of the room made her think of the years to come, when the tiny sleeping boy would be awake at midnight and making cheeky requests for another cider.
Ellie spotted a photo on the chest of drawers next to her and swallowed around the lump forming in her throat. Smiling at her from Main Street, USA were Mark, Beth, Chloe and Danny. She remembered Danny double checking she understood how to use to the camera before running to join his family. Now that Ellie thought about it, this was most likely the last photo she ever took of him.
The distant rumble of the party wasn’t enough to distract her from the crushing grief that hit her at the strangest times. In the direct aftermath, she had tried to focus the job she had to do and, after that, the betrayal of her husband and protecting her children. Though it had been nearly two years since his death, she still hadn’t really taken the time to grieve for the boy that had been at the centre of it all.
Ellie pressed a kiss to Fred’s cheek, grateful for what she had, and left the sleeping children to their dreams.
There was no sign of Hardy anywhere else upstairs so Ellie headed back to the party. The Rock Band argument was still raging with most people involved laughing too much to keep track of what was being said. Hoping to go unseen, Ellie let Beth know everything was fine upstairs, before slipping out the back door and into the night.
Pulling her cardigan tighter around her, Ellie quickly realised Hardy wasn’t in the back garden and trudged towards the gate, thinking he’d perhaps popped home for something. As she closed it behind her, however, she spotted a familiar outline sat on a bench further up the path. She sighed, her breath misting in the cold air, and made her way towards him. Gradually she could make out his features in the moonlight and could see he was staring at the outline of the church on the distant hill.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, making him jump. “You’ve just realised you haven’t filled up you sulking quota for the year and are trying to fit in as much as possible now.”
He blinked up at her. “Did you come out here without a coat?”
Not bothering to hide her eye roll, Ellie sat next to him. Straight away, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She hadn’t realised how cold she was and burrowed into his side in search of warmth.
“I just wanted some air,” he explained eventually. “Mark told me he made it his personal mission to make sure I was never without a drink.”
“You could have said no.”
“Tried that. Didn’t work.”
Ellie smiled. Mark’s reaction to the news that she was seeing Hardy had been confusion followed by some light ribbing as she expected. However, after he’d given Hardy a warning about how Broadchurch looked after their own and that included Ellie which was met with Hardy’s usual silent derision, Mark had treated him as on old, albeit strange, friend. Apparently, despite being arrested by him, Mark had decided the man who did everything he could for his son deserved his respect.
While she suspected it had something to do with his startling effort to prove himself to Beth, Ellie was grateful that Hardy hadn’t been chased out of Broadchurch the moment he showed up with his suitcase again.
She rested her chin on his shoulder to look up at him. “You could have sat with Paul. I’m sure he would have-”
“You’re not funny.”
She grinned into his coat. Despite his excuse she wouldn’t have put it passed him to have lost her and then have ran away rather than join in. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d pulled such a stunt. Over time she’d come to realise crowds and strangers set him on edge and she’d learnt to make allowances. To help she’d asked Beth to make a point of speaking to him if she saw him around in the hopes she could break through the walls he built around himself.
It had taken six weeks of this before he started a conversation with her. The women were exceptionally proud of their accomplishment.
“It’s ten to twelve,” Ellie told him. “Can’t believe it’s nearly over.”
“Aye. Heard from Tom?”
Ellie nodded. “I phoned him about an hour ago. Said the party was all right. How about Daisy?”
“Phoned her not long ago wishing her happy new year before the networks get all jammed.”
“That sort of takes all the fun out of the thing.”
“She said the same thing.”
He sighed and Ellie knew he was missing her. Tess had arranged Christmas at her parents’ that year and Daisy had planned to go to a friend’s party for new year. As a result, he’d only seen her briefly on Christmas morning and for an afternoon a couple of days after that. While it was much better than the previous years, she knew he’d been expecting to see her more than he had.
“Hey, you know what teenagers are like,” she reassured him and holding the hand that wasn’t resting on her shoulder. “She wants to see her friends. It’s nothing personal. At least she’s speaking to you.”
“I know. I just… hoped.”
Maybe because it was New Year’s Eve or maybe because she was a bit drunk, Ellie decided to change the subject to something less upsetting. However, definitely because she was a bit drunk, she couldn’t think of a way to do so subtly.
“What was your highlight of the year?” she asked, grinning at him.
He arched an eyebrow at her, clearly not fooled by her grand plan. “You sound like one of those shite Channel Five shows.”
“Fine,” she huffed. She settled back against him, the cold of the bench seeping through her thin trousers. The view of the church was stunning, but she hadn’t had chance to fully appreciate it from the common since Tom was a baby and she used to walk him around to try and get him to settle. It was so typical of Hardy to have found the one picturesque view in the area to stare at while he moped.
For a couple of minutes she closed her eyes and lost herself in the feel of his arm around her and his distinctly male scent.
His people skills still left a lot to be desired, but she could tell now when he still wanted her around despite his prickliness. He still hated most of the world, but somewhere along the line, she’d been included in the tiny bubble around him, like it was them against the world. Ellie quite liked their chances.
“You know it’s you,” he said quietly some time later. She doubted she would have heard him had she not been practically in his lap.
“Sorry?”
He breathed heavily out of his nose and shifted in his seat. “My… highlight of the year.”
It took Ellie a moment to piece together the two statements to work out his meaning. He avoided her eye the whole time.
“No,” she told him softly, “I didn’t.”
He looked down at her then, his expression one of disbelief. Ellie knew she couldn’t have looked much different. After everything he had done that year, getting his job back, a proper address and who knew what else, she hadn’t even considered she might have made the shortlist.
Hardy tipped his head back before turning on the bench to face her properly. His grip on her hand tightened but she suspected it wasn’t on purpose. He looked more nervous than when Tom and Mark had asked if he wanted to play football with them.
“For most of last year I didn’t think I’d see new year, but then I was there. I phoned Daisy. And she spoke to me. It was more than I could have hoped for,” he explained, a smile fighting to reach his mouth. “After I’d hung up, I thought about you. Was going to call you but-”
Ellie cast her mind back. “You sent me a text.”
“Yeah. Even after everything else, all the other surprises, I never dreamed this year would end with me here with you.” He blinked rapidly, while she could feel her own tears building and blurring her vision. She cupped his jaw and he seemed to take strength from it. “I loved you even then, Ellie, but not nearly as much as I do now.”
Even if she had the words to respond to him, there was no way they would make it passed her lips without her doing something silly like bursting into tears. For a man who normally expressed himself with varying degrees of scowling, his eye were speaking volumes about how he felt about her. She hoped her own expression, screwed up against the tears of sadness for the past and joy for the future, could do her own feelings justice.
Though she could hear the distant noise from various parties around them, Ellie felt as though they were alone, surrounded by the town that brought them together, tore them apart and they now both called home.
He leant in to kiss her but she stilled him with a hand on his chest.
When he pulled back, she saw the terror and hurt written all over him. She would have laughed at the misunderstanding, but she didn’t think she could take seeing his heart break in front of her.
“Listen,” she whispered.
He frowned as the voices from the Latimer house drifted over to them.
“Ten!”
“Not yet.”
“TEN!”
“For fuck’s sake, Nige!”
“Hang on, hang on - ten!”
“NINE!”
“EIGHT!”
“Are you being serious?” he growled at her and she giggled. “You’ve been through - what? - forty-odd New Years and the whole-”
At the strike of midnight, amongst the cheers, neighbourhood fireworks and church bells, Ellie pulled Hardy down and kissed him. Whatever ire he had been working up was instantly forgotten as his arms wrapped around her and it was as if the world consisted solely of him and this moment.
The drunken rendition of Auld Lang Syne petered out in the background, but their kiss showed no signs of stopping. Ellie briefly considered dragging him back to their house, but she couldn’t leave Fred. Besides, everyone at the party would know where they had been and what they’d been doing. Separately she could have handled them, but it would be ambitious to think she could take on all of her friends at the same time. Even for her.
Besides, they could just make their excuses when they eventually went back to the party and be home within half an hour anyway.
As they broke apart and Hardy rested his forehead against hers, their breath mixing together and their hands still in each others hair and coats, Ellie heard several cries of “Happy New Year!” ringing out around them. She remembered Beth’s theory that every year started with the same phrase and decided that she would buck the trend and start the year as she meant it to go on.
“I love you, too,” she told Hardy and pressed another brief kiss to his lips. “Happy New Year!”
A rare grin spread across his face and Ellie wondered if it was worth risking straddling him right there on the bench. “Happy New Year.”