Read Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story Online
Authors: Chris Chibnall,Erin Kelly
Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story
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: The Letter
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 978-0-7515-5563-9
Sphere
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
Contents
Rory Costello
Brand Operations Director
Breaking News Group Ltd
London Wall
London EC1
Dear Sir
It is with great regret that I must tender my resignation after fifteen years as Editor of the Broadchurch Echo.
I accept that the industry is changing. However, the nature of your swingeing cuts – in particular, centralising the finances and taking everyday decisions from my hands – means that I am no longer able to do the job I am good at in a town I love. Our new office is a fraction of the size of our old newsroom and barely fit for purpose, with facilities more appropriate to a small family home than business premises. From a staff of twenty I am now down to a workforce of three: myself, a junior reporter and an under-qualified office manager on whom we must rely for everything from manning the phones to advertising revenue.
If you have read the newspaper you will know that we have for some time been covering the murder of schoolboy Daniel Latimer and the subsequent arrest and forthcoming trial of local man Joe Miller. This is by far the biggest story Broadchurch has ever seen and the Echo should own it. But your persistent refusal to let me take charge of my own newspaper’s budget has been deeply counter-productive. I begged you not to lay off our staff photographer, and I have been proved right. I am currently in the ignominious position of having to bid for agency shots of events happening on our own doorstep. We do not, as you so forcibly reminded me in your last email, have the budget for this. I cannot stay in a position where I am constantly undermined, then berated for the consequences.
I write this letter with a heavy heart. I have been employed by Breaking News for over thirty years in various capacities and I regret that my longstanding relationship with the company must end this way.
I may be only local news and a small cog in your empire, but all news is local to begin with and you would do well to remember that.
Sincerely
Maggie Radcliffe
It is the day before Joe Miller’s trial. God knows there’s plenty of real work to do, but Maggie has been at her desk since eight, writing and rewriting her resignation letter.
Thirty years, she’s been a reporter. Three decades of covering everything from crime at the Old Bailey to cats up trees for the local papers, and she’s been reduced to this: a shoebox of an office, a skeleton staff, writing angry letters to a management consultant in London with no respect for Maggie’s experience or her skills. It seems that almost overnight a new way of operating has locked her out of her beloved profession. Thirty years. She feels her age for the first time in her career and she resents it. She can see which way the wind is blowing: better to get out now and preserve what’s left of her professional pride.
The door swings open and for a second Maggie smells the sea, the only good thing about the new harbourside office. It’s Lucy Stevens, red hair styled by the breeze. ‘Morning, Mags!’
‘It’s
Maggie
,’ she replies through clenched teeth. Lucy edges through stacked archive boxes and teetering piles of paper that she should have filed by now. She sinks into her chair, chewing gum that doesn’t quite mask the traces of last night’s vodka. Maggie re-reads the paragraph about staff.
Under-qualified
is putting it lightly;
liability
would be the better word to describe Lucy Stevens.
Maggie acknowledges that some of the anger on the page is really directed at herself. No one forced her to give Lucy the office manager job. Maggie did it as a favour for Ellie Miller as much as anything. The Stevens’ money worries are chronic. The last thing Ellie needs while her husband’s on trial and her son’s not talking to her is for Lucy to come to her cap in hand, a loan shark on her tail. Maggie must be going soft; she’s seen it happen before, hardened hacks losing it in their dotage. Another reason for her to get out now, before she gets a reputation as an old fool. She closes down the document; there’s only one printer here.
‘Olly’s getting coffees,’ says Lucy. ‘What’ve you got for me today, Mags?’
‘Same as yesterday,’ Maggie says, pulling up a half-completed spreadsheet on Lucy’s screen. ‘Only this time I’d like you to finish the job. You’ve got until about four o’clock to fill the classified pages from these businesses.’
‘Yes,
sir
,’ says Lucy, winking.
Maggie turns to her own to-do list, shorthand curlicues on an A4 pad. They’re as prepared for tomorrow’s trial as they can be. They’re building profiles of the legal teams. They’ve stockpiled interviews with local people. This will be Olly’s first major trial and she’s been coaching him in the ethics of court reporting. Increasingly she feels that her legacy is not the words she’s left on the pages over the years but what she can teach Olly. If he’s willing to learn. It’s a sobering thought that Olly is her second-in-command; if she were to go, who would the news group draft in as her replacement? Would they really entrust the newspaper to an over-ambitious kid and his car-crash of a mother? Keeping the paper’s integrity is perhaps the strongest grounds of all for Maggie to stay, and her resolve wavers for a second. But fuck it. Her employers aren’t showing her any loyalty. Why should she stand by them? She pictures her resignation letter sliding out of the printer. It could be on Rory Costello’s desk by the morning.
Lucy’s already hit the phones, reading awkwardly from the sales script that Maggie’s laid out. She sounds about as confident and convincing as a six-year-old trying to read Tolstoy.
The other line rings and Maggie picks up. ‘
Broadchurch Echo
.’
‘Ah, the organ-grinder herself,’ says a voice she recognises. Former pilot Roger Wilson has devoted his retirement to petty complaints, anything from speed bumps to the King’s Arms letting people take their glasses outside in the summer. He calls at least twice a month with what he thinks is a scoop. He’s never onto anything but they have learned that it’s quicker to humour him than to fob him off.
‘They’ve put tenants in the Crown Farm cottage and they’re parking across the entrance to Crown Lane.’ She can hear him breathing as he waits for her to divine the importance of the situation. ‘They’re blocking the entrance to the public footpath, so I’ve got ramblers and all sorts hacking across the back of my land. It’s not so much for my own benefit but they’re forcing innocent people to trespass.’
‘Isn’t this something you should take up with the council?’ asks Maggie wearily.
‘Believe me, I have. I’ve usually got Jan Barnsley’s ear, but she’s gone quiet on me on this one.’ Maggie doesn’t need to jot down the name. Jan Barnsley is a right-wing councillor who has built her career pandering to the prejudices of a vocal handful of elderly voters. Her latest crusade is the closure of the Cliffside drug rehabilitation centre: she doesn’t want addicts scaring away the tourists. ‘It never hurts to get the local rag on board too, does it? Belt and braces, and all that.’ Maggie doodles
Crown Farm
on her notepad while Roger drones on. She knows he won’t let a little thing like the biggest story Broadchurch has ever seen stop him bombarding them with calls. As she hangs up, Olly comes in, balancing a cardboard tray of takeout coffees.
‘I just got an email from Karen White,’ says Olly as Maggie takes the lid off her coffee to check it hasn’t got froth on it.
‘Your little friend from the
Daily Herald
,’ she remembers, as Lucy purses her lips. ‘Will we be seeing her in court tomorrow?’
Olly sets his coffee down on the desk. ‘Nah, she’s in Dubai. Day after the
Herald
made her redundant, right, she
walked
into a job as head of content for one of the big newswires out in the Gulf.
Sixty grand
a year, tax-free.’
‘Sixty grand,’ echoes Lucy in wonder. Olly shakes his head. Maggie can’t tell whether he’s envious of the salary or disappointed that she’s left Fleet Street. She doesn’t blame the girl for a second. Karen was an old-fashioned newshound, a reporter after Maggie’s own heart, but she was too bright to go down with a sinking ship. She’s gone where the money is while she’s still of an age to acquire the new skillset she’ll need to stay in the game. Content instead of stories; click-throughs instead of sales. Karen is still young enough to learn this new language at mother-tongue level, while Maggie will never be able to speak those words without self-conscious enunciation that throws quotation marks around them. It pulls her up short to think about how limited her options are in this brave new digital world. Freelancing? Once she could have got work as a consultant, but she’s a dinosaur now. Early retirement? It’s just about possible, but she shudders at the thought. The implications of leaving are as serious as the implications of staying.
‘I thought Karen might come back here for this, though,’ Maggie thinks aloud. ‘She still wants Hardy’s head on a plate.’
‘She’s covering international news now. Although obviously she’ll be keeping up with me online.’ His chest puffs a little at the thought of his old mentor following him on the
Broadchurch Echo
Twitter feed. ‘She
did
say she might do a profile piece on Hardy once the trial was up and running, so she could link it back to Sandbrook. But it’s all tied up with how much leave she can get and whether she’s allowed to freelance on the side … why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Don’t take your jacket off,’ Maggie says. ‘You’re off to see Roger Wilson about a parking dispute.’
Olly’s eyes pop. ‘On the day before Joe’s trial?’
‘Yes,’ says Maggie. ‘We don’t ditch all the human interest stories for the big, sexy one. It’s not the
News at Ten
.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says, firing up his computer. ‘I’ve got a social media strategy to pull together today. It’s one thing writing the stories, but we’ve got to get them trending, too. We want Danny’s story to get nationwide attention if we’re going to get the click-throughs we need.’
