Chapter Text
Seven days before Alice Mercer was found unconscious on the beach, Tom Miller ate a piece of toast and watched his mother make coffee.
Outside, February had given Broadchurch another morning of wet pavements and colourless sky. Rain clung to the kitchen window in fine droplets, blurring the back garden into patches of brown and winter green, and somewhere beyond the houses a gull was making the sort of noise that suggested it had been personally wronged.
Ellie Miller was in a good mood.
This was not remarkable in itself. His mother was frequently in a good mood. She talked to people in supermarket queues, laughed too loudly at things on television and sometimes sang along to the radio without knowing more than half the words.
She was not generally in a good mood before coffee.
This morning she had come downstairs barefoot, opened the curtains and stood for several seconds looking at a February morning containing absolutely nothing worth looking at.
Then she had smiled for no apparent reason. Tom watched her spoon coffee into the cafetière.
Her hair was still damp from the shower, darkening the shoulders of her dressing gown. Every so often she hummed three or four notes of something before apparently noticing herself doing it and stopping.
Fred sat opposite Tom with a cereal box propped against the milk.
“Did you know honey never goes off?”
“Yes,” Tom said.
“They found some in an Egyptian tomb.”
“That doesn't mean it was still good.”
“It was.”
“Would you eat it?”
Fred considered the question seriously.
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
Their mother turned from the counter.
“Can we not argue about ancient honey before eight in the morning?”
“We’re discussing it,” Fred said.
“You’re arguing.”
“We’re not.”
“You absolutely are.”
She smiled again as she turned back to the coffee. Tom narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong with her.
Or, more accurately, something was excessively right with her. He knew perfectly well what it was. He simply preferred not to consider it before finishing breakfast.
Hardy had been in the house when Tom went upstairs the previous night. Hardy had not been in the house when Tom came down that morning. This was apparently supposed to constitute discretion.
There was a toothbrush in the bathroom. His shoes had been beside the front door at half eleven. At this point they could probably stop pretending Alec Hardy materialised independently each morning out of the sea mist.
The knock came at seven thirty-eight.
Ellie looked towards the hall, and the smile that appeared this time was different enough to make Tom immediately regret having eyes.
“I’ll get it.”
Nobody had asked her to.
A gust of cold air found its way down the hallway when she opened the front door.
Then came Hardy’s voice.
“Bloody gulls. They’re following me.”
Ellie laughed. Tom closed his eyes briefly. Of course they were.
Hardy appeared in the kitchen a moment later looking as though the short journey from his car had involved active combat. Rain had darkened the shoulders of his coat and plastered strands of hair across his forehead. His scarf hung mostly down one side. He held two paper cups close against his chest with the grave concentration of a man transporting donor organs across enemy territory.
The coat itself was the same long, dark thing Tom had seen him wear in virtually every kind of weather for as long as he had known him. He had begun to suspect Hardy had been born in it and intended to wear it through every remaining day of his natural life.
Tom looked him up and down.
“You look like something a cat threw up.”
Hardy stopped.
“Good morning to you too, young man.”
“Morning.”
“One of them tried to take this out my hand.”
“The cat?”
“The gull, Tom.”
“Maybe it wanted coffee.”
“It can buy its own.”
He walked past him. Ellie was watching him. That was the first thing Tom noticed.
Hardy was wet, cold and visibly irritated with the entire coastal bird population. One knee of his trousers was damp and his hair was doing something particularly unfortunate above his left ear. Ellie looked at him as though he had crossed several continents on horseback to reach her.
Hardy held out one of the cups.
“For you.”
“Oh.”
Just that.
Oh.
She took it from him with both hands and glanced at the writing on the side.
“Extra shot? Oat milk?”
"Aye."
Her face softened.
“You remembered.”
“I always remember.”
Tom took another bite of toast. Apparently romance was much cheaper than he had been led to believe.
Ellie drank from the cup and closed her eyes for a moment.
“Oh, that's good.”
Something shifted at the corner of Hardy’s mouth.
“Worth nearly losing an eye, then.”
“You’re very brave.”
“Aye.”
“Heroic.”
“I know.”
She touched his arm as she passed him. It was barely anything, the brush of her fingers over the wet sleeve of his coat, but Hardy’s eyes followed her to the counter.
Tom chewed.
This had been happening a lot.
Not anything anybody could reasonably object to. That almost made it worse. A hand on a shoulder. Fingers through hair. His mother putting her feet in Hardy’s lap while they watched television. Hardy passing her something before she had asked for it. Ellie touching the back of his neck on her way through a room.
Neither of them ever seemed to notice. Or perhaps they noticed and had simply stopped caring who else did.
“Clark moved the briefing,” Hardy said.
“When?”
“Ten.”
“What, Sanders?”
“Harford finally got the CCTV from the harbour.”
“She did?”
“Six hours of it.”
“Anything useful?”
“Dunno yet.”
“Did she get the chemist?”
“Not yet.”
“She should chase them.”
“I told her.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Ellie lowered her coffee.
“You were still answering emails at half eleven?”
“I answered one email.”
“You’re terrible at not working.”
“Says you.”
“I wasn’t working.”
“You sent me three messages about work.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It was me doing it.”
Hardy considered this for a moment.
“Right.”
They went on discussing CCTV, apparently unaware that there was enough kitchen around them for two adults to stand without their sleeves touching.
Tom finished the first piece of toast and reached for another. His mother glanced at the clock.
She froze.
"Oh, shit.”
Hardy looked around.
“What?”
“Fred’s dentist.”
Fred lowered the cereal box.
“You said you remembered.”
“I did remember.”
“You forgot yesterday too.”
“I remembered again.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Oh, thank you, Fred. Very useful.”
She grabbed her phone and checked the time despite the clock being directly in front of her.
“Quarter past nine. Christ. I’ll have to take you before work.”
“I told you.”
“Yes. Thank you. I’m really enjoying how supported I feel by my children this morning.”
Then she looked at Tom.
“Could you take Tom to school?”
“I can walk,” Tom began.
“Course I can,” Hardy said at precisely the same moment.
Tom turned to him.
“I have legs.”
“I can see that.”
“It’s twenty minutes.”
“Your mother asked me to take you.”
“I heard her.”
“So did I.”
And apparently that was the end of the discussion.
Ellie looked up at Hardy.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Tom felt something deep inside him wither.
Hardy, for reasons Tom could not begin to understand, showed no embarrassment whatsoever.
“Whatever you need.”
There it was again. Hardy did things for her. Not enormous things. Nothing anybody would put in a film. Stupid little things, mostly.
Coffee. Carrying something because her hands were full. Driving somewhere because she asked. Watching an entire film he plainly hated. Getting up from the sofa because she had left her phone in the kitchen.
Things Tom's friends would notice. Things people talked about. Things Hardy ought, by any sensible standard, to find at least slightly embarrassing.
He never did. If anything, he seemed to like it.
Ellie put her coffee down.
Hardy reached towards her without seeming to think about that either, his thumb brushing beneath one of her eyes before he pushed a damp strand of hair back from her face.
She went still.
The look she gave him made Tom suddenly very interested in the remaining crust of his toast.
Hardy’s voice dropped when he spoke again, low enough that the Scottish in it seemed to thicken around the words.
“Whose are those pretty eyes?
It probably should have been difficult to understand. Unfortunately, Tom understood every word. His mother did too.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Mine?”
“Hardy.”
“Are they?”
She was already smiling.
“No.”
“No?”
“Shut up.”
“Not an answer.”
She gave him a look that should have ended the matter. Hardy waited. Ellie lasted perhaps three seconds.
“Yours.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Couldn’t hear you.”
“Yours, you absolute twat.”
Hardy smiled. Actually smiled.
Not the thin, unpleasant little thing he sometimes did when he thought somebody had said something particularly stupid. A proper smile, wide enough to change his whole face.
Ellie put her arms around his neck.
His hands settled around her waist as naturally as if that were where they had been heading all morning.
Tom stared at them. For one optimistic second he thought that might be the end of it. Then Hardy bent his head and murmured something into her ear.
Tom couldn't hear the words. He saw his mother's face. That was considerably more information than he wanted. Her eyes closed. Colour rose into her cheeks and she hid her face against Hardy’s shoulder, laughing quietly.
Hardy looked unbearably pleased with himself. Tom pushed his chair back.
Neither of them noticed.
He carried his plate to the sink and set it down with enough force to make the spoon beside it jump.
Nothing.
He picked up his schoolbag.
Still nothing.
Two detectives. Two actual police detectives, one of whom was in charge of other police detectives, and neither capable of detecting a third human being leaving the room.
Tom pulled on his coat in the hall.
He looked back once. They had not moved.
Hardy had one arm around his mother’s waist. She was saying something into his shoulder. Whatever it was made him lower his head towards her again.
Tom rolled his eyes.
Idiots.
Absolute idiots.
He left them to it.
Hardy’s car smelled faintly of coffee, damp wool and whatever he used to clean the windscreen.
Tom threw his bag onto the back seat and got in.
There was nothing unusual about this. Hardy had driven him to school before. Sometimes because it was raining, once because his mother’s car wouldn’t start, twice because Hardy had happened to be leaving at the same time and apparently regarded driving past Tom’s school with an empty passenger seat as inefficient.
He never made much of it.
Hardy got behind the wheel, pulled the door shut and spent a moment trying to arrange his coat underneath himself. He failed, swore quietly, gave up and started the engine.
Music returned through the speakers where it had apparently been interrupted earlier that morning.
Pink Floyd.
Tom recognised the song after a few seconds. Us and Them. Hardy reached for the volume and turned it down slightly, but not off.
Then he pulled away from the kerb.
He didn’t ask Tom how school was going.
He didn’t ask what subjects he liked or whether he had plans for university or whether there were any girls he was interested in. He had never tried to have a man-to-man conversation with him, never offered advice Tom hadn’t asked for and, perhaps most importantly, had never once used the phrase when I was your age.
For the first few streets they didn’t speak at all.
Tom watched Broadchurch pass beyond the window. Wet brick, grey pavements, people walking quickly with their shoulders raised against the cold. The sea appeared briefly between two buildings and disappeared again.
Beside him, Hardy drove. Tom looked at him. Not obviously. He had become quite good at not looking obviously.
Hardy was tall. Tom knew that because he had asked him yesterday.
Six foot one.
Hardy had looked mildly confused by the question, answered it anyway and gone back to reading whatever had been on his phone.
Six one was good. His hair was good too, Tom supposed.
There was a lot of it, anyway. Dark, slightly ridiculous in places and showing no particular intention of disappearing. Tom looked towards Hardy’s temples, checking.
No.
Not really.
Hardy glanced sideways.
“What?”
Tom turned to the window.
“Nothing.”
Hardy looked at him for another second, then returned his attention to the road. He didn’t ask again.
The saxophone filled the car. Tom waited a little while before looking back.
Hardy had a decent jaw. A long face, but not a bad one. The nose was massive, though. Tom wasn’t sure what category that went in.
His shoulders were narrow under the coat. He was thin everywhere, really. Not skinny exactly, but there was very little about him that suggested he had ever deliberately lifted something heavy for purposes other than moving it from one place to another. No gym. No obvious muscles. His hands were big, but that was probably just because the rest of him was long.
His skin looked like it hadn’t seen direct sunlight in approximately three years.
And he was old.
Not properly old, obviously. But old enough.
Tom frowned at the side of his face. Some of it made sense. Not all of it.
“What?” Hardy said again.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re staring at me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Aye, you are.”
Tom looked away.
Hardy let it go.
They reached the roundabout. Hardy indicated, waited for a van and pulled out behind it. Tom watched the wipers drag rain backwards and forwards across the glass.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
Hardy glanced at him.
"What?”
“Doing all that.”
“What all that?”
“For Mum.”
Hardy waited.
When no further explanation arrived, he said, “Taking you to school?”
" No.”
“What, then?”
“All the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
Tom looked at him. Hardy appeared genuinely baffled.
“Getting her coffee. Carrying things for her.”
“Right.”
“Watching whatever she wants to watch.”
“I don’t watch whatever she wants to watch.”
“You watched Twilight.”
Hardy’s mouth tightened.
“One time.”
“She said you watched the whole thing.”
“She wanted to watch it.”
“You hated it.”
“It was terrible.”
“So why watch it?”
Hardy gave him the briefest look.
“She wanted to watch it. I wanted to sit with her.”
Tom stared at him. Hardy’s attention remained on the road. He had said it as if it explained everything.
Maybe to him it did.
"And now you’re driving me to school because she asked.”
“I’m driving you to school because your brother has a dentist appointment.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Tom. I genuinely don’t.”
Tom shifted in his seat.
“You don’t think it makes you look a bit…”
Hardy waited.
“A bit what?”
Tom nearly left it there.
“Whipped.”
Hardy turned his head.
Only for a second, because there was traffic ahead, but long enough for Tom to see the expression on his face.
“Whipped.”
“Yeah.”
“By your mother.”
“Yes.”
Hardy looked back at the road.
“Aye, terrifying woman.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No.”
Tom folded his arms. Hardy was quiet for a moment.
“She does things for me.”
“Like what?”
That produced another glance.
“What d’you mean, like what?”
“What does she do for you?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as?”
Hardy frowned.
“I dunno. She makes food. Brings things round. Picks things up for me. Sat in A&E for four hours with me last month.”
“That was because you were ill.”
“I know.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Tom didn’t answer. Hardy drove another hundred yards.
“She bought me socks.”
Tom looked at him.
“Socks.”
“Aye.”
“That’s your example?”
“They’re good socks.”
Despite himself, Tom laughed once through his nose. Hardy looked faintly pleased. Then his expression shifted.
“Why are you keeping score?”
“I’m not.”
“Sounds like you are.”
“I was just asking.”
“All right.”
And that was that.
No lecture followed. Hardy didn’t ask who Tom had been talking to or tell him he was thinking about relationships incorrectly. He reached forward and turned the heating down, then tapped his thumb twice against the steering wheel with the music.
Tom looked out of the window.
They passed the turning towards the harbour. Yesterday’s question came back to him.
Six foot one. He looked at Hardy’s profile again.
“What’s your number?”
Hardy sighed.
“What now?”
“Your number.”
“I know what a number is. Which one?”
Tom hesitated.
“How many women you’ve slept with.”
Hardy’s hand stopped against the steering wheel. For several seconds he said nothing.
Then:
“Oh, no.”
Tom frowned.
“What?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, no, no.”
“It’s just a question.”
“I am not having this conversation with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re fifteen.”
“So?”
“So I’m sleeping with your mother.”
Tom recoiled.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly. Glad we agree.”
“You didn’t have to say it like that.”
“You asked me how many women I’ve slept with!”
“You could just give me a number.”
“I could. I’m choosing not to.”
Tom stared out of the windscreen.
“Is it over thirty?”
There was a beat.
“Thirty?”
Hardy turned towards him again.
“Is it?”
“You think I’ve slept with more than thirty women?”
Tom shrugged. Hardy made a sound Tom had not expected.
He laughed.
Not the short breath through his nose that usually counted as laughter. He properly laughed, one hand still on the wheel, the other coming briefly over his mouth.
Tom felt himself getting annoyed.
“What?”
“Thirty women.”
“I don’t know.”
“Christ.”
“You’re old.”
That made it worse. Hardy laughed again.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”
“I am, actually.”
“Guys my age have higher numbers than that.”
Hardy’s laughter faded, although something of it remained in his face.
“I'm sure they have."
“Some of them.”
Hardy nodded thoughtfully.
“You really shouldn’t believe everything your mates tell you.”
“You don’t know them.”
“Don’t need to.”
Tom watched him for a moment. Hardy gave no indication that he intended to provide the number.
Apparently that avenue of research was closed.
“How much do you make?”
Hardy stared through the windscreen.
“What’s got into you this morning?”
“Nothing.”
“Yesterday you wanted to know how tall I am. Now you want my sexual history and my salary.”
“I’m just asking.”
“You can look up police pay bands online.”
“So you won't tell me?”
“I don't know what I make off the top of my head.”
“How can you not know?”
“I know roughly.”
“More than Mum?”
Hardy’s expression changed very slightly.
“At the moment, aye.”
“How much more?”
“What does it matter?”
Tom shrugged.
“It doesn’t.”
“Then why ask?”
“I was curious.”
“About my salary.”
“Yes.”
Hardy was silent.
Tom could feel him thinking now, which was different from being questioned. Hardy could make silence uncomfortable when he wanted to. At work, Tom had seen grown adults start filling it simply because Hardy kept looking at them.
This silence wasn’t like that. He seemed less suspicious than puzzled.
Pink Floyd continued quietly underneath it all.
After a while Tom said, “She really likes you.”
Hardy glanced at him.
“Aye.”
No false modesty. No stupid joke. Just aye. Tom looked at him.
“Why?”
Hardy’s eyebrows drew together.
“Why what?”
“Why does she like you?”
There was something almost offended in Hardy’s face now.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Tom hadn’t expected that. He looked back towards the window.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
They were getting close to the school. There were more uniforms on the pavement now, kids appearing in twos and threes, bags slung over shoulders.
Hardy slowed for a crossing. Then, without looking at him, he said,
“You trying to ask me something about yourself?”
Tom’s stomach tightened.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly. Hardy must have heard it. He didn’t turn his head.
“All right.”
That was all.
No you can talk to me. No reassurance that everybody felt awkward at fifteen. No attempt to turn the last ten minutes into something larger than they had been.
Hardy drove the remaining distance to school.
He pulled in where he usually did, a little way before the gates where there was space to stop without blocking traffic.
Tom reached for the door.
“Cheers.”
“Aye.”
He climbed out and pulled his bag from the back seat.
“Tom.”
He looked in. Hardy nodded towards the road behind him.
“Watch the bike.”
A cyclist passed. Tom waited, then shut the door. Hardy pulled away almost immediately. Tom watched the car disappear into the traffic before turning towards school.
Six foot one.
Good hair.
Decent face.
Not much muscle.
More money than Mum.
Some unspecified number considerably lower than thirty.
Tom put his hands in his pockets and walked through the gates.
Hardy, meanwhile, turned the music back up. By the time he reached the station, he had forgotten about the conversation.
By half past ten, Ellie had forgotten about Fred’s dentist, Tom’s school run and the fact that Alec Hardy had spent part of breakfast asking who her eyes belonged to.
This was mostly because Katie Harford had put twenty-seven photographs of stolen electrical equipment on her desk.
“I think these four are the same television,” Ellie said.
“They are.”
“Why have you printed them four times?”
“I haven’t.”
Ellie looked at her. Katie turned one of the photographs around.
“Different serial numbers.”
“Oh.”
“Same model.”
“Oh.”
“Four separate burglaries.”
“Right.”
Katie waited. Ellie picked up the next photograph.
“I knew that.”
“Course you did.”
They had been working through the photographs for nearly fifteen minutes, attempting to match property recovered from a lock-up outside Bridport to reports accumulated over the previous six months. It was slow, boring work, made worse by the fact that several victims had described their missing televisions simply as large, black.
Ellie had begun to develop strong feelings about serial numbers.
Across the office, the printer made an unhealthy mechanical noise.
Nobody looked up. It made another one. Ellie continued writing. A third noise followed, then silence.
“Come on,” Hardy said.
Katie’s eyes moved past Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie kept hers on the report. There was the sound of a tray being opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
“What have you done?”
The printer declined to answer. Katie bit the inside of her cheek. Ellie circled a reference number. Paper crumpled somewhere behind her.
“Fucking—”
Katie looked down quickly. Ellie finally turned.
Hardy was standing over the printer with his coat off and his shirtsleeves pushed halfway up his forearms. One hand was inside the machine. In the other he held several sheets of paper that appeared to have lost a fight.
“Don’t pull it,” Ellie called.
“I’m not pulling it.”
“You are literally pulling it.”
“I know how a printer works, Miller.”
The paper tore. Hardy stared at what remained in his hand. Ellie turned back to Katie. Behind her there was a dull thud as Hardy kicked the bottom of the printer.
“Look, Katie,” Ellie said. “The man of my dreams.”
Katie laughed.
“I still think you’re lucky.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows. Behind them Hardy muttered something about council procurement.
“Do you?”
“Dating’s hell now.”
"Wasn’t particularly wonderful when I did it.”
“No, I mean actual hell.” Katie shifted one of the photographs aside. “You know what happened to a friend of mine last week?”
Ellie looked back at the reports.
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Bloke from Tinder. Second date. They went back to hers.”
“All right.”
“Everything’s fine. Completely consensual. Then during sex he puts his hand around her throat.”
Ellie stopped writing.
“What?”
“Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t say anything. Just decides he wants to see what happens if he chokes her.”
“Good God.”
" Yeah.”
“Was she all right?”
“Oh, she was fine.”
Something in Katie’s face made Ellie look at her a little more closely. Katie looked down at the photographs.
“Do you want to know what she did?”
“I desperately want to know what she did.”
“She knocked him out.”
There was a short silence. Ellie blinked.
“Actually knocked him out?”
“Apparently.”
“How?”
“Elbow. Then he hit the bedside table.”
Ellie stared at her for another second. Then she nodded.
“Tell your friend I’m very proud of her.”
Katie’s mouth twitched.
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate the professional endorsement.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No, because what kind of—” Ellie lowered her voice. “You don’t just put your hands around someone’s throat without asking.”
“Apparently he thought women liked it.”
“Which women?”
Katie shrugged.
“Women.”
“Oh, well. Women. Obviously. Collective consciousness must’ve forgotten to send me the memo.”
“He said his ex liked it.”
“Then what his ex liked is between him and his ex.”
Katie smiled faintly. Across the room, the printer suddenly came back to life. Both women looked over.
Hardy stood in front of it with the expression of a man whose authority had finally been recognised. A fresh sheet emerged smoothly into the tray.
He picked it up. The bottom half was covered in black lines. Hardy stared at it.
“Fuck’s sake.”
Katie lowered her head. Ellie smiled despite herself.
“The dream,” she said.
Hardy looked across the office.
“What?”
“Nothing, sweetheart.”
His eyes narrowed. Katie became extremely interested in the burglary photographs. Hardy looked from one woman to the other, recognised conspiracy without understanding its nature, and apparently decided against pursuing it.
“Harford.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Get someone to fix this bloody thing.”
“I’ll put a call in.”
“And Miller.”
Ellie looked up.
“What?”
“You’ve got the Palmer statement?”
“On your desk.”
He glanced towards his office. It was there. Exactly where she had said it was.
“Aye.”
He disappeared inside. Katie waited until the door closed.
“You could do worse.”
“I did.”
The answer came easily enough that for a second neither of them reacted. Then Katie looked down.
Ellie looked down too.
The joke had landed somewhere neither of them particularly wanted to examine. Ellie picked up another photograph.
“Right. Tell me about television number five.”
Katie let her.
“Samsung. Forty-eight inch. Reported stolen in November.”
And the morning moved on.
They ate lunch in Hardy’s office because the break room was full and Ellie had refused to sit beside the microwave while somebody reheated fish.
Hardy had a plastic container of salad. Ellie regarded it with suspicion.
“You can’t call me sweetheart at work.”
She looked up from her sandwich.
“What?”
“This morning.”
“What about this morning?”
“You called me sweetheart.”
Ellie stared at him.
“You cannot possibly still be thinking about that.”
“I’m not thinking about it. I’m telling you.”
“You brought it up hours later.”
“It’s one o’clock.”
“Feels like hours.”
Hardy pushed a leaf around with his fork.
“We agreed.”
“We agreed not to be weird at work. I wasn’t being weird.”
“You called me sweetheart in front of Harford.”
“In that specific context, I was entirely justified.”
He stopped chewing.
“How?”
“We were talking about dating.”
Hardy stared at her.
“At work?”
“Near work.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were also working.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“We had burglary photographs in front of us.”
“Ah. Professional, then.”
“Extremely.”
Hardy shook his head and stabbed another leaf. Ellie watched him.
“Is that all you’re eating?”
“It has cheese.”
She leaned across the desk to inspect the container. There were, indeed, several pieces of feta among the leaves.
“You rebel.”
“It’s a perfectly good lunch.”
“It looks like something you’d feed a tortoise.”
“You’re eating crisps with a sandwich.”
“Yes. Because I respect myself.”
Hardy ate another forkful of salad. Ellie opened the crisps.
“Anyway.”
“There’s an anyway?”
“Katie told me this horrible story about a date.”
Hardy’s attention stayed mostly on his lunch.
“What story?”
“She said it happened to a friend of hers, but I’m pretty sure it happened to her.”
That made him look up.
“Why?”
“The way she told it.”
“What happened?”
Ellie hesitated. Whatever Katie had chosen to disguise behind a friend of mine, it wasn’t Ellie’s to uncover for her.
“I’m not telling you the details.”
“Why bring it up, then?”
“Because we’re having a conversation.”
“A conversation where you tell me half a story.”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
“But some bloke did something sexual without asking first. Something potentially dangerous.”
Hardy’s expression changed.
“How dangerous?”
“Dangerous enough.”
“Miller.”
“I’m not telling you. It’s not my story.”
He accepted that, though reluctantly. Ellie folded the corner of her crisp packet between her fingers.
“Honestly, the whole thing came bloody close to assault.”
“Did she report him?”
“She knocked him out.”
Hardy paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“Apparently.”
“Knocked him out.”
“Elbow. Bedside table.”
Hardy put the fork down.
“She should still report him.”
“Yes.”
“If he did it to her, he could do it to someone else.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell her?”
“It was her friend, remember?”
“You just said it was obviously her.”
“I said I think it was.”
“So tell her.”
“I’ll find a way.”
Hardy nodded. Then picked up his fork again. Ellie pointed at the container.
“Eat your leaves.”
“I am eating my leaves.”
“Good boy.”
“Don’t.”
She smiled.
For a little while there was only the muted noise of the station beyond the office door, Ellie’s crisp packet and Hardy steadily consuming a lunch he plainly did not enjoy enough to justify eating.
“So,” Ellie said eventually, “the conclusion of the conversation was that I’m extremely lucky to have found myself a respectable old man who shouts at office equipment.”
Hardy looked offended.
“I’m not old.”
“Hardy.”
“I’m not.”
“You make noises when you get out of chairs.”
“So do you.”
“I’ve had two children.”
“What’s that got to do with chairs?”
“Everything.”
“You’re only two years younger than me.”
“Three.”
“Two and a half.”
“Still younger.”
“Barely.”
Ellie ate another crisp.
“Either way, I don’t envy those poor girls.”
Hardy looked down at his lunch.
“No.”
Something quiet entered his face.
"I always think about Daisy.”
Ellie knew what he meant. Daisy walking through school knowing boys had seen a photograph never meant for them. Daisy trying to make herself smaller inside clothes. Daisy insisting she could handle it because she shouldn’t have needed her father to handle it for her.
“Yeah,” Ellie said.
She folded the empty crisp packet in half.
“I think about Tom.”
Hardy looked up.
“That whole mess with the porn last year.” She ran her thumb along the fold. “God, I was so angry with him.”
“You had reason.”
“I know. Still.”
Michael Lucas had been there too. Neither of them needed to say his name.
For a moment Ellie saw the smashed remains of Tom’s laptop again, plastic and circuitry scattered across the floor. She had felt righteous for perhaps thirty seconds.
After that, mostly frightened. Hardy nudged a piece of feta onto his fork.
“Aye. Actually.”
“What?”
“He was asking me odd questions this morning.”
Ellie frowned.
“What sort of questions?”
Hardy hesitated. There were several possible answers. He chose the least complicated.
“How much I earn.”
Ellie blinked.
“What?”
“Wanted to know my salary.”
“Why?”
“Dunno.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To look up the pay bands.”
She laughed.
“Helpful.”
“He can use Google.”
“He hasn’t got a computer, remember?”
“He’s got a phone.”
“Still bitter about that.”
“You did destroy it with a hammer.”
“It was cathartic.”
“It was criminal damage.”
“It belonged to me.”
“That’s not how criminal damage works.”
“You’re very annoying when you know things.”
“I know.”
Ellie picked up the second half of her sandwich.
“What else did he ask?”
Hardy thought briefly of What’s your number? Then of thirty imaginary women. Then, unfortunately, of So I’m sleeping with your mother.
He picked up his fork.
“Just stuff.”
“Teenage stuff?”
“Suppose.”
Ellie nodded.
“That’s what I mean, though.”
“What?”
“You never know what’s going on in their heads.”
Hardy made a noncommittal sound.
Outside the office, a phone began to ring. Someone called Harford’s name from across the room. Ellie finished her sandwich. Hardy finished his leaves.
Neither of them thought about it for very long.