Alec Hardy had been initially reluctant to stay in Broadchurch after the past events. He'd stayed for the funeral and for the trial. He'd made peace with whoever he could but some were going to take longer. He'd become a friend to Tom Miller and even his DS and Tom's mother, Ellie had sobered up to him and they had become good friends over the past months even taken to calling each other by their first names although she always used his title when they were at work and just Sir when she got annoyed with him.
Alec had been there for her throughout the painful trial and had encouraged her to stay stating it was better the devil you know and the townsfolk were forgiving, some had remained her friend throughout. Ellie had been granted a quick divorce but decided for her two boys sakes to keep her married name and she had managed to goad Alec into looking into the surgery to have a pacemaker fitted to make him well saying if he only had a 50/50 chance what did he have to lose and he'd be no use to her otherwise.
Ellie had been right. Before he knew it and much to his surprise he'd survived and after weeks of complaining he was bored, deciding he'd probably stay and needed to move out of the hotel. He reluctantly got himself a place to live and was put back on active duty much sooner than he'd expected despite objections initially from the Superintendent who had to relent when he was cleared by the CMO plus Ellie complaining she wasn't going to prop him up and that he'd better pull his weight.
Ellie had half enjoyed taking over during his absence. With the revelation that he'd given to the local press about his past and the reason he was mainly in Broadchurch, he was no longer being hounded by them and was working on a solution to his problems with his daughter. His ex-wife however still hated him and had moved on to live with someone else which pleased him no end. If only he could get his daughter talking to him or at least answer his texts he would be reasonably happy. He'd sent her word that he was getting well again and hoped it would mellow her but so far she had not responded to the endless messages he'd left her.
He'd found a house to rent, two doors down from where Ellie had moved though if he'd thought about it he would have looked elsewhere and she'd looked in on him every night after work grudgingly saying didn't he think she had enough to do without waiting on him hand and foot as well but still, she kept her distance now apart from inviting him to have Sunday lunch every week, starting by telling him not to be a miserable git and that she always made too much anyway. He'd kick a football around in the back garden with Tom and Fred while she got it ready. Then they'd talk shop a bit, about a certain Officer who kept asking her out and about how people were moving on after the past events in the town. They also agreed that they didn't want to go through that again any time soon.
It was late on a Friday afternoon in March when he'd been returning from his trip to the grocery store (he still didn't have his own car though he could borrow one when needed and had a driver when he wasn't working with Ellie) when he noticed a blue car parked next door. He'd seen it pull away sometimes as he was arriving back from work but never seen the driver.
He knew someone was moving in obviously, he was just hoping he wouldn't be getting noisy neighbours and had been glad they had at least not been decorating into the night and disturbing him. Not taking much notice, he walked past and saw two figures at the window facing away from him. One was a small blonde female, the other a taller blonde man but he couldn't make out their faces. He was silently thinking how he hoped there were no kids there.
He went for his usual run on Sunday morning then to Ellie's as normal for lunch, noting no car in the driveway next door and recalling he'd not seen it since Friday and remarked to her about his new neighbours.
"I've not seen them," Ellie said, "have you Tom?" she asked her son.
Her son shook his head as he had a mouthful of food.
"I just saw a blonde woman and a blonde man facing away from the window on Friday," Alec said. "Hope they don't have kids," he grunted under his breath.
"Misery guts," Ellie mouthed at him across the table and she just laughed.
Tom hoped they had, then he'd have someone to play with, he'd just lost his best friend.
Alec walked back home again, having to pass his new neighbours. The car was now in the small driveway and the blonde man was taking something out of the back. There was no sign of the woman, Alec was secretly hoping he might at least get a proper look as to who had just moved in.
There was nothing much happening at the Police Station the following day. With the media circus leaving reluctantly after a few months, the season wasn't even started so Alec decided he'd had enough of shuffling papers on his desk and staring at the computer screen. He told Ellie he was off for a walk, see what was going on and that he didn't want any company to which she just pulled a face at him. He walked around the side of the Station and for some reason he decided to stroll into a side street which he didn't usually frequent, he wasn't much of a window shopper, in fact he wasn't much of a shopper full stop, just getting the bare essentials.
He certainly wasn't interested in the 'Artsy' shops in small side streets but for some reason or another, a pale yellow shop caught his attention. A sign above the shop read 'The Sunflower Gallery' in red fancy lettering. The number of the shop was to the left and in the right corner in much smaller lettering was a name stating 'Prop – R. Tyler ' The door blind was pulled halfway down as was the window blind but he could make out two pairs of legs, one was a distinctive female pair which in his opinion were not half bad and wondered what the rest of her was like. The other pair were almost certainly a male wearing jeans.
He wondered with it being a new shop and just having seen two new neighbours move in a few days before if his detective skills were getting the better of him and deduced they were one of the same. He smirked to himself. "At least they're employed," he thought, "and I know their name."
Two days later, he found himself back in the side street again. He'd not noticed the street name plate. He was gazing at the pale yellow shop again. Why exactly was he there he wondered? This time the window blind was almost fully raised. He could see various paintings on display, a rack with cards, a display sleeve rack with posters showing through plastic, a small counter at the back of the shop and a doorway. The woman whom he had only seen the legs of two days before had her back to him having the same blonde hair as he had seen in the house window previously and was she looking around the shop.
There was no sign of the man, he could have been in the back or out somewhere. The woman turned round and saw him staring in the window. She stared back in horror, probably not expecting anyone to be watching. "Should have pulled down the blind," Alec thought to himself. She walked to the back of the shop and pulled out a mobile phone from under the counter.
Alec could see the panic on her face from that distance and she was probably calling her boyfriend/husband or whoever the blond man was. He just caught her attention as he fished in his jacket pocket for his I.D and he tapped on the window. Looking up for a second, the woman moved the phone away from in front of her eyes where she was about to dial a number.
She kept the phone in her hand and came to the window and signalled for a closer inspection of his I.D Card. Satisfied, she walked to the door and unbolted it.
"You scared the hell out of me," she yelled.
"Nice to meet you too," Alec replied as he instantly chastised himself for it not being his best pickup line. He introduced himself when he'd picked himself up off the floor having been suddenly yelled at.
The blonde muttered a very quiet "Rose Tyler," in reply.
With that over with, he mumbled an apology, turned away and made a hasty retreat probably leaving a very puzzled Rose Tyler standing in the shop doorway. He noticed the blond man just coming round the corner of the street and he crossed over.
When he got home that night, the blue car was parked outside and not in the small driveway. It was beginning to get dark and the light was on inside the house. Two people were sat opposite each other at a dining table, looking like they were having a heated discussion.
"Hope that isn't about me?" he thought and then added to himself, "Why would it be about me? Did she think I was a stalker or something?" Questions raced through his mind. He'd only been doing his job – well sort of – that of checking out new people to the area and new businesses. Nothing unusual about that. He had a clear conscious. He walked past and opened his front door, still wondering what they were discussing and why she'd yelled at him. He hadn't noticed she had just turned towards the window or that she was rubbing her wrist.
He went inside, trying his best not to think of a certain Rose Tyler he had just met but wasn't having much luck. The best he could do was resign himself to wait until he had the chance to introduce himself properly or maybe be the nosey neighbour he despised and knock on their door on some pretext. No, that wouldn't be very tactical. "Who was the man?" he was thinking to himself. He thought it was good though that new people were moving to the area and starting up businesses, the town had suffered during the past year.
He hadn't liked living in a small town when he'd first moved there and he'd found it difficult to settle down. He was only just starting to come around. He only had one real friend he could speak of and that was Ellie and then he thought he was putting too much on their working relationship by stretching it to outside work but they had helped each other through bad times. They certainly had no desire to take it any further. They were both too stubborn to start with.
Alec had thought he didn't need anyone anyway, he'd had no time for his first family otherwise it would not have got so out of hand and his daughter would still be talking to him. He had not noticed his ex wife slipping away from him or had he and not bothered? He'd kept to himself, never socially mingling with work colleagues, always giving excuses that he'd too much to do. He hadn't really, he spent a lot of time reading or catching up with interesting cases from other divisions and occasionally watching the news on the TV. He had a personal laptop but never got round to having access to the internet, mainly because that was how the rumours had spread about him so fast when a case he'd worked on in Scotland went badly wrong and wished the thing had never been invented. Maybe he'd relent one day though but not just yet.
Trying to put the day behind him, he went to get some sleep thinking he must at least go and try to apologise to Rose Tyler and it occurred to him that was maybe just the way to get to know more without seeming too obvious. It would give him chance to find out who she and the man were. He made his mind up to leave it until the weekend to go back to the shop and pay her a visit and maybe a take a peace offering.