Prologue - Ellie
I'm so afraid to love you
But more afraid to lose
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose
- I Will Remember You - Sarah McLachlan
Ellie doesn't really think about Hardy all that often. When she does, tears spring to her eyes and she feels his firm grip on her hand as they say good-bye. She assumes he's in Sandbrook, reconnecting with his daughter, although she can't really picture him casually interacting with a teenager, let alone a teenage girl. The very idea makes her smile a little.
No, she's too busy with the boys, commuting to her job in Devon, and spending time with Beth and her family. She and Tom continue painting the house, and it's slowly becoming a home. She's learning how to incorporate the past into their present and future, and by working together she and Tom and Fred will figure everything out, as a family.
As for her career, she knows she's now ready to move on from being a traffic cop. Working on Sandbrook showed her she could still be a detective, and she wants to work in Broadchurch again, in her community. She wants to truly come home. It will be better for the boys, too, if she doesn't have to commute so far each day. It means less time at the childminder's or Lucy's or Beth's.
Every now and then she passes the bridge that leads to the little blue shack. When she does, she almost smiles and thinks she should text him. See where he is.
She always walks past and doesn't reach for her phone.
Three weeks after the acquittal, after Sandbrook, she meets with the Chief Superintendent. Asks if there's a spot for her.
That woman smiles and offers her the DI position Ellie had been promised before she'd gone to Florida. Before everything fell apart.
She pales a little. Asks to think about it and goes walking to clear her head.
She ends up on the beach where they found Danny and she stares at the site for what feels like days.
She wants to come home, she wants to be home. She wants to work as a detective again. But can she? Can she truly be a DI here, in Broadchurch, where her beautiful, perfect, happy life went to shite. While things are calmer, they're far from better, far from normal, whatever normal may now mean. Tom still has his moments when he resents her, resents all of them, for sending Joe away. Mostly, though, it seems he grew into a man overnight and not simply because he's become so tall. Fred, thankfully, doesn't seem to remember his father at all anymore.
Always, hanging over everything, is the spectre of Joe. Not simply her memories of him, of her supposedly happy marriage, of the loving man he'd been to her. Now there's the fear he'll come back. He was acquitted, after all. They still have to be divorced. He was a stay-at-home dad for the last eighteen months of their marriage. She wonders if a court would order her to pay him alimony, if it would grant him visitation rights or worse: custody. She wonders if she will someday have to take the boys and run.
She's already planning for it.
But until she has to face that demon, if she ever has to face that demon, she wants to build a home. Can she do it as a Detective Inspector? Here, where it all fell apart?
She pulls out her phone and looks at it. She finds Hardy's name and stares at it, already hearing his Scottish burr, his clipped voice. She shakes her head and puts the phone away.
She doesn't know what he could tell her that she's not already saying to herself. It's not like he's ever been a great source of advice or support and he seems to be biologically incapable of sugar-coating anything. Shitty company indeed. Besides, it's not like he's even bothered to tell her where he is.
Anyway, she doesn't need him to tell her what she already knows.
A week later, Ellie walks back into the Broadchurch police station as their new Detective Inspector.
Her past and future colleagues stand and applaud, and she smiles and blinks back tears then hugs each and every one of them.
She walks into the office and stops, half expecting to see Hardy there, crouched over the desk, glasses perched on his nose as he glares at the computer screen, willing it to give him the answers he needs. It's silly, really. It's been almost a year since Danny died, and there's been at least two other DIs since that horrible day. The office bears no trace of him outside her memories, and for a moment that makes Ellie sad.
She shakes it off, because the bloody man has no one to blame but himself. She, too, is alone, but unlike him, she wants to connect with people. She craves it. She won't be alone forever. She'll love again, marry again, be fully happy again. If he stays alone and miserable, it's his own damn fault.
She moves forward with a jerk, because she's suddenly aware she must look ridiculous standing there, staring at the desk like it's going to bite her. She settles on the chair, smiles and waves at those watching outside her door before they, too, return to their desks and go to work.
She slowly smooths her hands across the surface of the desk then pulls out her phone.
She should at least send him a message. Something like "guess who finally got the job you stole out from under me you wanker" or something much more witty and sarcastic. Definitely not anything as stupid as "are you all right?" or even "where are you?"
She puts the phone on the desk with a scowl.
They said good-bye and he left. That's the end of it. She misses him only because he took over her life and made her spend so much time with him. It's like missing a sore tooth: overwhelming while it's there; an odd empty space once it's gone. Then you get used to it. He's a grown man, for God's sake, if he wants her to know where he is, he can text or call.
Besides, it's not like she really misses him. She's just thinking about him because it's her first day back and her first day in the job he stole.
She powers on the computer. She has work to do and a life to piece back together.