A fun fair has sprung up behind his house. An obnoxiously loud and glaring fun fair they have to cross in order to get from the spot where Ellie had to park her car at the edge of the fairground to the door in the wooden fence surrounding his little blue shack on the water. They. Fred's with Ellie. She had to pick him up from the childminder's when they got back from Claire before she could drive Alec home. Instead of dropping Alec off and leaving, she got out of the car, loaded Fred into his stroller, and started walking. Alec has known her long enough by now to recognise that look of determination in her deceptively mellow eyes to not try and stop her.

They're all going to end up there, in his house. There's no way to prevent this from happening anymore. Ellie is unstoppable once she gets going. She's following the Sandbrook case, which means she's following him home to the Sandbrook case files, and she's not going to lay off, no matter what he does or says, so he doesn't even try. He just keeps going.

The parallels between the weight of Pippa's cold, bloated body in his arms and the heaviness with which he drags himself through the world are not lost on Alec. He feels like he's slowly dying. He's so cold all the time. If it weren't for a constant supply of hot, caffeine-free tea, he'd be frozen into an unmoving statue by now. He keeps dragging himself towards the blue fence, leaning forward in the hope that it will make it easier for the rest of his body to follow.

There haven't been so many people in a place Alec lived in in months…years, you could say by now. The self-imposed solitude came close to feeling comfortable. No tricky social waters to navigate. Right now, those waters are turning into a reef in the quarter of an hour before a storm strikes: Not deceptively calm and shimmering anymore. Instead, menacing ripples are stirring the surface and revealing the sharp corals beneath.

Still, although she's been nattering on behind him for a few minutes now, Ellie's presence doesn't feel like part of the storm. Weirdly so, because she's at the center of one, and she's bringing it here, where he tried with so much futile effort to keep at least some of it out and instead clean up the mess that another storm that had raged through his own life had left. Ellie, however, is managing to shift herself out of the eye of her own hurricane by sheer force of will. The hopeless longing to pretend that Joe's trial and everything that led up to it isn't connected to her fills the air around her with the strained buzz of despair avoided at all costs.

That's all it is, though. Hopeless. It's already too late. In her distressed attempt at distracting herself, she's blindly sliding into the Sandbrook case with her eyes wide open. Even if it helps her to forget, to avoid, Alec's past has come back in full force in turn. With Ellie. Who's following him persistently. And nattering on. When he found Pippa's body in the river, the realisation that there were people who'd leave a child like that hit him so hard that it left him speechless ever since. Not so with Ellie. The worse it gets, the more she talks.

Alec has been walking in front of her for a while now, so he turns back to look at her while she's speaking, to show her he's listening although he's not responding because he is afraid he would accidentally pierce the bubble of distraction and keyed up over-excitement she has constructed around herself.

Ellie is on a roll. Facts about the Sandbrook case whirl through her mind, some touch, and connections form. More and more possible links emerge the longer she ponders what she has so far learned about the murder of the two girls while she tries to keep up with Hardy's not overly fast, but long and purposeful strides despite her pushing Fred's stroller.

Blinking lights, tinny music, and the intense scent of burnt sugar mixed with the dull and slightly sickening odour of rancid hot oil penetrate her analysis. When it really sinks in where it all comes from, that all that emanates from a fun fair that is set up in what is practically Alec-the-grump's backyard, glee rises within her as if she were a water fountain with the tap stuck on full on.

They need to cross the fair to reach the narrow alleyway that leads to Alec's house. It takes a bit of force to get the stroller over the bumpy grass, but in her hyped-up state, Ellie doesn't even notice. Instead, her mind latches on to the promise of excitement, escape, and better times that her unconscious associates with places like this, despite their undercurrent of despair. Or maybe because of it. In any way, the fountain is still going strong, the tap still stuck, and a rainbow of running commentary of their surroundings spills out of her.

"Ooh, bumper cars, Hardeee," she crows excitedly with a silly inflection in her voice to Fred while glancing at Alec from the side. Alec doesn't answer. Neither does Fred. She can't see his face from where she's walking behind the stroller, but she knows that he's listening, overwhelmed in his attempt to take it all in and make sense of it. It spurs her on further.

„Aww, I think this is brilliant!"

No reaction whatsoever from Alec. He's staring straight ahead again. She wants him to respond. He has to. She needs to let off steam and irritating Alec Hardy is the one thing available to her that always works, sadly. It's childish and insensitive, but she isn't able to ponder ethical questions concerning her own life right now. She just needs to get him out of his shell, otherwise she'll boil over. So she keeps going.

„Did you not know this was going to be behind your house?" she asks, a slightly acrid tinge mixed into the mischief in her over-energised voice.

„The rental company forgot to mention it when I took it on," he mumbles.

Not the kind of response she was looking for, but he's found a fact to latch on to, so at least he said anything at all.

Still, she doesn't want him to escape to facts. She can't bear to be alone in the emotional turmoil churning within her. She's overwhelmed by the need to drag someone else into it so she doesn't get pulled under by the weight being isolated puts on her. Ellie has never been any good at being alone.

"We could go on the teacups."

Her voice hasn't sounded that high in a while, not even when talking to Fred. Alec turns towards her, finally.

The tiredness that resulted from her inability to sleep more than a few fitful hours a night has morphed into a feverish state of constant overstimulation. In a way, she's already on a ride of the teacups and unable to get off. Slowing down or even stopping is not even remotely an option. The discord of her keyed up psyche and the lack of any kind of emotional response from Alec chafes at her. An overwhelming need to penetrate the stoic dark grey wall that is Alec Hardy takes ahold of Ellie. The momentum of her despair forcefully propels her forward. Even as she feels social convention lose its usually tight grip on her, she barrels head first into something that she knows will make him uncomfortable, may even hurt him, neither of which she wants to be the cause of.

"We could take Uncle Alec, " she blurts out before she can even try to reel herself in.