Broadchurch: Old Friends (Story 3): A Series Two Original Short Story
Read Broadchurch: Old Friends (Story 3): A Series Two Original Short Story Online
Authors: Chris Chibnall,Erin Kelly
Erin Kelly is the author of the first Broadchurch novel and four critically acclaimed psychological thrillers,
The Poison Tree
,
The Sick Rose, The Burning Air and The Ties that Bind
.
The Poison Tree
was a bestselling Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2011 and was adapted for the screen as a major ITV drama in 2012. Erin also works as a freelance journalist, writing for newspapers including
The Sunday Times
, the
Sunday Telegraph
and the
Daily Mail
as well as magazines including
Red
,
Psychologies
,
Marie Claire
and
Elle
. She lives in London with her family.
The Poison Tree
The Sick Rose
The Burning Air
The Ties That Bind
Broadchurch: Old Friends
A Series Two Original Short Story
Erin Kelly
Based on the TV series by Chris Chibnall
sphere
First published by Sphere in 2015
Copyright © Chris Chibnall 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-7515-5565-3
Sphere
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
Contents
Jocelyn Knight, QC, is a Londoner. Not born, not bred, but by adoption, with the fierce defensive love that entails. Her life runs on fixed, well-oiled tracks. J Sheekey for work lunches, Elena’s for supper with friends. Aquascutum for work clothes, Liberty for everything else. She knows the best corners to hail a black cab but prefers to walk. She takes the back streets from her flat in Farringdon to her chambers in the Inns of Court. She knows every cobble and crack on the way; she never needs to look down.
She reaches her chambers through a little gate on Fleet Street. To step from the busy thoroughfare into Middle Temple Lane is to step back in time. These Georgian palaces were built too close for cars to pass. Their leaded windows catch the light at odd angles and dazzle the uninitiated. Newcomers to the city, newcomers to the law, get lost in the tight brick mazes, but it was here that Jocelyn Knight found herself. And she was
magnificent
.
Her photographic memory had always been useful in studying the law, but it was in practice that she discovered her real gift. It was an ability to see things as others do; anticipation is nine tenths of the law. It was expected that Jocelyn would follow her parents into academia, and, out of respect, she pretended to consider it in her final year at Oxford. But breathing new life into dead texts was never going to be for her. She wanted to apply her mind to something living. And the law is alive; it is reborn with every case.
When Jocelyn was first called to the bar, her gender made her a rarity. Clients were immediately drawn to her but judges and jurors were harder to convince. They’d take one look at her, with that dewy face and the twisted gold rope of hair beneath the powdered wig, and they would dismiss her. But she would have their respect seconds after she began to speak. She has the best record of anyone in her chambers. Not bad for a girl from West Dorset, even one with her pedigree.
Jocelyn goes home to Broadchurch twice a year. Once in July, to enjoy the beach before it is infested with tourists, and again over Christmas. It’s just the two of them: Jocelyn and her mother, Veronica. Her father died of a stroke before he could retire; he went suddenly, at his professional peak, which is how he would have wanted it. Now that Veronica has at last stepped down from her own professorship, she visits Jocelyn in London for the May and August bank holidays. Four weekends a year is plenty of time together. That’s how they both like it – everyone knows where they stand; there is no room for wheedling. Jocelyn has friends whose mothers only communicate in emotional blackmail. ‘Why don’t I see more of you?’ That’s not in Veronica’s nature. Her life is as rich and full as it ever was. She still gives guest lectures, although at clubs and societies now rather than the great seats of learning. She paints, she goes on rambles and she is working on what she calls, with typical assurance, her ‘first’ novel. It’s the kind of retirement Jocelyn wants for herself; put off until the last minute, then as busy as any professional life. Veronica and Jocelyn enjoy other’s company very much, but they are not needy about it. The Knight women are proud of their mutual independence.
Which is why, when Jocelyn telephones in September to say she’s coming home for a few days, Veronica’s first reaction is fear.
‘We never see each other in September,’ she says. ‘Darling, are you ill?’ There’s an old-lady tremor in her voice that Jocelyn has never noticed before.
‘I’m perfectly well,’ replies Jocelyn.
‘Is it work? Are you in trouble at work?’ That knocks Jocelyn’s pride. If there was something wrong at work, then Broadchurch is the last place she’d be. She’d stay in London and face the fire.
‘Work is fine. Better than fine. I just …’ she trails off. She promised to conceal the reason for her flying visit from everyone. There’s something that needs her attention back in Broadchurch and she doesn’t want to be drawn on it. She quickly changes the subject to the weather forecast before saying goodbye and starting to pack her suitcase.
Jocelyn did not, as a rule, become attached to her clients, but Jack and Rowena Marshall were an exception.
She thought of them both as her clients, even though he was the criminal. The charge: unlawful sex with a minor, the May-to-December relationship consummated just over a month shy of the girl’s sixteenth birthday. Jack was the first sex offender Jocelyn ever represented, and her last ever defence case. He was also her final client before she got silk. He could barely afford her then and he certainly wouldn’t be able to now.
So why did she take him on? She certainly wasn’t fishing for friends in the pool of dirty old men or nymphomaniac schoolgirls. Initially, she met him for the experience – when prosecuting sex crimes, it pays to know your enemy – and to placate Neil, her overworked clerk. He dangled the buff file by its red ribbon and let it swing before her eyes like a hypnotist’s watch.
‘Bloke wants to plead not guilty,’ said the clerk. ‘I need someone to persuade him not to take it to trial. You won’t win, and he can’t afford it.’ (Neil was afflicted with a conscience, a terrible handicap in a clerk.)
Jocelyn raised one eyebrow at him. ‘Why me?’
‘He’s a stubborn old fucker. I need an unstoppable force for my immovable object.’ Neil let the file drop onto her desk.
‘I didn’t say I’d take it!’ she called at Neil’s retreating back, but she was already tugging at the ribbon.
Jocelyn invited Jack and Rowena to come down from Yorkshire for the express purpose of giving them a bollocking. She was rightly famous for her bollockings. She never prepared them but they seemed to come out of her mouth fully formed, as eloquent as any closing speech. It broke the ice and gave clients a taste of what they would undergo in court. This bollocking would write itself. Five weeks! If they’d only kept their pants on for five more weeks, they wouldn’t have broken the law. Of all the pointless cases …
And then she saw the two of them, nervously holding hands in reception, Jack in a tweed jacket that looked older than Rowena, although
she
was the one with a protective arm across
his
chest. The bollocking disappeared like words being erased from a screen. Love; as rare as a comet, and just as unmistakable. Jocelyn Knight could recognise love when she saw it, in other people at least.
‘You tell me why he should have to stand trial when there’s actual
rapists
out there getting away with it?’ said Rowena.
‘A guilty plea gets you a shorter sentence,’ said Jocelyn. ‘You could serve as little as a year.’ Jack flinched and Rowena put her head in her hands. Jocelyn softened her tone. ‘The sooner you change your plea, the sooner you’ll be back together.’
When Jack was inside, he and Jocelyn wrote to each other, largely about the books they were reading. She introduced him to Michael Chabon and he persuaded her to finally give Wilkie Collins a go. Jack never told Jocelyn what he was going through in prison and it was not in her nature to ask. She never visited; those orders were too precious for Jack to waste on anyone but Rowena.
He served just over a year. Six weeks after his release, he and Rowena married. Jocelyn and her then pupil, a bright spark called Sharon Bishop, were the only witnesses at the wedding. It was a fond but formal sort of friendship. They saw each other perhaps once a year or so, always as a threesome. Jocelyn found that she had more in common with Rowena, still a teenager, than she did with many of her peers; she was serious about music and serious about Jack, but everything else was at the mercy of her tinderbox-dry humour. The three met at recitals at the Wigmore Hall every winter, or new plays at the Donmar. They never entered each other’s homes.
Over time Jocelyn’s unspoken role became to give an official stamp to the milestones of their relationship. When Simon was born, Jocelyn temporarily put aside her atheism to be his godmother. And it was to Jocelyn that Jack turned, years later, after the terrible accident – the dark, wet road, the shattered windscreen – that cost Rowena her looks and Simon his life.
It was seven months later that she met him. They dined as a pair for the first time. By horrible coincidence, they were seated at a table set for three.
‘She doesn’t want me in the house,’ he said to his plate. ‘She says she can’t bear to be in the same room as me, that she thinks I blame her.’
‘And do you?’
His mouth set into a hard line, which is as close as he would get to answering her. Even in tragedy, he would not hear a word against his beloved wife, let alone utter one.
‘I’m too old to start again. Where can I go?’ He repeated the question, his voice cracking. ‘Where can I go?’
Where do you go when life is over?
‘I don’t know,’ said Jocelyn sadly. ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. I just don’t know.’
The following evening, in her weekly call to her mother, Jocelyn learned that the woman who ran the little newsagents down in Broadchurch harbour was retiring, and the business was up for sale.
Jocelyn purposely lets Jack settle in by himself. She’s never been one for holding people’s hands, not even clients who become dear friends. And besides, she doesn’t want anyone to link his arrival in Broadchurch with her. She’s in the middle of a case and it’s a flying visit; she’ll be catching the first train back to London tomorrow.
For the first time, Jocelyn is glad she isn’t in touch with Maggie Radcliffe any more. If anyone could sniff out the connection, it’s her.
It’s warm for autumn, and afternoon fades gently into early evening. Jocelyn walks the perimeter of Broadchurch harbour, in flat shoes and her father’s old Barbour. Around her are the childhood sounds of calling gulls, the gentle tap and clank of moored boats. The noise calls her like a bell, summoning something long-buried inside her. If there’s one thing she does miss about London, it’s not being able to fish. She’s been catching her own since she was a teenager. In a rare moment of projection, she has a glimpse of herself, a grey old lady, fishing for her supper. For the first time, she realises, she is thinking not in terms of
if
but
when
.
