A/N: My Broadchurch fics are getting shippier and shippier and I care less and less. No amount of squinting is keeping this platonic.

Chapter one of three. In theory. Title, once again, from a Frank Iero song. This time She's The Prettiest Girl at the Party and She Can Prove It With A Solid Right Hook. I'm bit obsessed at the minute, okay? Anyway, hope you enjoy the fic!

Disclaimer: Still not ITV or Chibnall.


It started, as things always seemed to these days, with a phone call.

Well, it started with twenty six phone calls.

And Ellie had managed to miss all of them.

"Bollocks!"

Still half-asleep, she wrestled her arms out from under her quilt and sat up in bed, whilst trying to make sense of her call log.

Just over five hours ago, Tom had tried to reach her several times, followed by another bunch of calls about half an hour later from a local number. There was another gap before more calls from Tom's mobile and the unknown number and then, for some reason, Alec Hardy had joined in the desperate attempts to contact her.

"What the..."

The day had started like any other with the exception of Fred having a cold, hating it and trying to rupture the rest of his family's eardrums in retaliation. As a result, Tom was even more of a grouch as he got ready for school than normal and she was less patient with him. He'd ended up storming off, without so much as a goodbye, bag slung over his shoulder, a good ten minutes before he usually set off with her yelling at him until the front door slammed shut.

"You'll break the bloody window, you-" She'd taken a deep breath. Sleep deprivation and worry always brought out the worst in her, a trait her eldest had inherited. Before when they'd both been at each other's throats, Joe had been there to play peacemaker. With him gone and with the pair of them knowing what it was like to be estranged from the other, they'd started making sure their arguments never reached that level.

Of course, some mornings, yelling at each was more therapeutic than malicious.

Ellie noted that this memory of Joe caused more of a dull ache in her chest rather than anger so bad her hands would shake. As much as she tried not to think about him, he had been part of her life fifteen years and it was nearly impossible. She had no idea if this latest change was because of her moving forward or because she was simply too tired for anything to feel real anymore.

Two hours later, Ellie was at breaking point. Nothing she did could stop Fred from crying and none of the medicine she'd purchased the day before appeared to be working. It'd been nearly thirty hours since she'd last slept and her current tactic of crying with him was as effective as the rest.

Of course, it was then that Lucy had decided to show up.

"'I've got the day off' she says." Lucy stepped into the house when the door was opened for her. "'Why don't we meet-' wow, you look like someone pissed on your cornflakes."

"Thanks."

Lucy pushed her sunglasses on top of her head in that way that she had always been able to effortlessly pull off to study her sister closer. "Shit, Ell, what's wrong?"

Whether it was the first sign of sympathy or just because her eyes had finally broken, Ellie began sobbing and was soon gathered in Lucy's arms, trying to explain how Fred was ill and the house was a mess and Tom was as moody a teenager as she'd always feared he'd be and Fred was clearly set for a career as a town crier and she hadn't showered in two days and Fred, shut up and her mind was about three seconds behind everything else and she just wanted to sleep and-

"Right," Lucy eventually interrupted, "all I had planned for today was lunch with you and you didn't bother to turn up for that, so I'll take Fred-"

"You don't have to-" Ellie protested, but Lucy shut her down before she could start.

"Someone has to or you'll lose your mind. I raised Olly, remember? I can deal with needy."

Even this act of kindness was enough to start the tears off again. Ever since Joe's arrest, Lucy had been making up for years of using her family when she needed something and Ellie couldn't have been more grateful.

"I can finally get some washing up done," she chuckled wetly as Lucy shouldered a bag of Fred's things and was trying to make the grumbling toddler smile by making faces.

"Don't you dare," she warned, pointing a finger at Ellie. "Make Tom do it when he gets in from school. Get some sleep or you might try and wash the toaster or drown in the bloody sink."

One tearful goodbye to a miraculously dozing Fred later, and Ellie was staring at her bedroom ceiling, willing sleep to come. At least for the previous couple of nights she had had her son to blame for keeping her up. Now, with the house a silent as she pretended she wanted it to be, there was no one to blame but herself for still being awake. Hours past in frustration, as she tried not to think about falling asleep was something so simple babies could do it, but for some ungodly reason she was failing miserably at.

It was a vicious cycle. The longer it went on, the more wound up and less able to drop off she became. It wouldn't have been so bad if every muscle didn't ache while her eyes burned and the dull pounding in her head served as a constant reminder of just how tired she was.

The answer to her problems was sat in the drawer in her bedside table.

Ellie rolled over to glare at the drawer in question. One sleeping pill and she'd be fine. She'd be out like a light in less than twenty minutes.

Memories of the last time she took one flooded back to her. The odd mixture of post-holiday blues and relief that a long journey was over. Tom almost falling asleep halfway up the stairs. Fred refusing to let anyone take his new Goofy toy away from him. Joe being his usual jolly self, making sure everyone had alarms set and bags packed for tomorrow.

Joe secretly arranging to meet the ten year old boy he was in love with, the one he would kill three hours later.

If she'd fallen asleep naturally would she have noticed him sneaking out? Would she have heard him come back in? Would she had woken up in the night to find him missing?

Could she have stopped it all from happening?

She rolled over again to face the opposite wall to stop the temptation. She'd have to go to sleep eventually. It was that or go mad.

An hour later, desperation had sent her to the kitchen. She made a sandwich for Tom, leaving a note with it explaining that dinner was probably going to be late, that she was sorry and that if the washing up could be done then that would really help her out and could possibly end in a chocolate-based reward, especially if the living room was tidied as well.

Not for the first time recently she felt like she was failing as a mother, but it felt so distant compared to the immediate problem of her body and mind slowly turning to gloop. She'd deal with the guilt later, when it didn't take an inordinate amount of concentration to walk in a straight line.

Trying not to think about it and therefore thinking about nothing else, Ellie swallowed the tablet with a glass of water and crawled back under the covers, telling herself that it couldn't possibly end up as bad as the last time.

Twenty six missed calls later, and she was beginning to rethink this.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit..."

She hit the button to call Tom.

"Sorry, the number you have dialed is currently unavailable-"

"For fuck's sake."

Redial.

"Sorry, the-"

"Pay a fortune for the bastard thing and the one time I need to phone him-"

"Sorry-"

With a growl, she went back to the call log and hovered her thumb over the other two numbers. She quickly decided that, in the state she was currently in, talking to someone she knew was probably wiser than whoever the other number belonged to.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," she muttered as it rang. "Pick up, you miserable-"

"Welcome to the EE voicemail service. Sorry, but the person you-"

"What is the point in any of you having mobiles?"

Another go at Hardy's number ended in the same forcefully cheery recording and Ellie drew in a couple of deep breaths to stop herself flinging her phone across her room. The irony of them being unreachable was not lost on her.

She brought up Google on her phone and was in the process of copy and pasting the third number into the search bar to try and work out what was happening when the screen changed to display 'Alec Hardy - Incoming Call' and started vibrating.

"Hardy, what-"

"Where the fuck are you?"

He wasn't exactly known for answering his phone politely, but this was rude even by his usual standards.

"I'm at home, why-"

"Why haven't you been answering your phone?"

"I was asleep!" she bristled.

"It's half five!" he replied, his voice rising in both pitch and volume.

"And?"

"And? No one's heard from you since lunchtime! You've picked a piss poor time to become a bloody owl, Miller."

Rubbing her eyes to wake herself up a bit more, Ellie wondered if he could possibly sound any more Scottish without expressing a desire to throw a can of Iron Bru at an Englishman. "Sorry my sleep schedule is such a bother for you."

"Whatever. Just get down here now."

"And where's here?"

She heard his breath catch and for a moment all she could hear was the distant sound of traffic and the chatter of people in the background.

"Hardy?"

"Bridport."

Before she could ask what he was doing in Bridport or all places, a siren blared down the line and her foggy mind started fitting the pieces together.

Bridport was the closest A and E to Broadchurch.

"What's happened? Who-"

"Ellie, don't-"

"Tell me what's happened!" she shouted. Her grip on her phone was so tight the edges were hurting her fingers but she barely noticed over the rushing in her ears and nausea rising in her stomach. Everything about this - the sleeping tablets, Hardy using her first name - it all reminded her of Joe. All of the anger and fear were rising inside of her again and she knew she'd been stupid to think she'd ever get rid of it.

"It's Tom, but he's going to be fine," Hardy answered. Whereas before he was clearly annoyed, now his voice had taken on that softer tone she'd only heard a couple of times, normally during the worst moments of her life. She knew he meant to help keep her calm, but he'd have been better of if he'd carried on bickering with her. This gentleness only made her picture the worst and those bloody sad eyes of his.

"Going to be?" It wasn't until she spoke that she realised she was crying and she swiped at her eyes.

"He got into a fight at lunchtime and he's a bit bruised-"

"Obviously it's worse than that if he's in bloody hospital!"

Ellie got out of bed and picked clothes out of her wardrobe at random while Hardy explained. "Three cracked ribs, couple of stitches in his lip and black eye."

"What? Hang on-" She fumbled with her phone and managed to set it to speaker before setting it down on the bed. "Is he okay?"

It sounded like a stupid question to ask before she'd even asked it and it was telling how serious the situation was that Hardy didn't pick her up on it.

"He's doped up at the minute so he's fine. They've said he won't need to stay overnight. It'll be a rough couple of weeks for him, but there won't be any permanent damage."

It took three attempts of pulling her jumper over her head for Ellie to realise she had in inside out. "Really?"

"Aye."

Try as she might, Ellie couldn't stop the mental images of her boy, battered and bruised, in a hospital bed somewhere, waiting for her to show up. The guilt she'd expected this morning had definitely made an appearance.

With her outfit changed, she snatched the phone back up and rushed downstairs. "Tell him I'm on my way. Shouldn't be more than ten minutes. And that I love him. And if he scares me like this again then he's grounded until he's thirty."

"Will do."

She'd grabbed her bag and keys and was halfway out the door when she realised there was glaring hole in her timeline of events. "Wait - how did you get involved in all of this?"

"No one could reach you, so they tried Lucy-"

"Bollocks. She sold her phone a couple of days ago."

"Who sells their phone?"

"She needed the money. And she's on a self-improvement kick. Another one. Don't ask."

"I won't. Olly wasn't picking up either."

"Really?"

"I know. I thought his phone was attached to his hand so he could update bloody Twitter every time he blinked."

Ellie dumped her bag on the back seat of the car and got into a brief fight with her seat belt while Hardy grumbled. She should probably have defended her nephew, but she had bigger things to think about.

Besides, he wasn't exactly wrong.

"So Tom phoned me."

"You?" Ellie paused with the key in the ignition. She knew Tom had the Latimer's home phone number, as well as Mark's mobile. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd ended up with Beth and Chloe's either. There were plenty of people left in Broadchurch who would have gone to the hospital with him or who could have came to the house to find her. Yet Tom had chose Hardy. "How did he know your number?"

There was another pause, filled with a distant ambulance. "I gave it to him last time I was down. Look, my battery is running low so..."

"Right."

"See you later, Miller."

"Yeah. Ten minutes. Bye."

Ellie threw the phone onto the passenger seat and swore to herself that she would bin those sleeping pills the moment she got chance to.


Thanks for reading!