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Alec is well-acquainted with receiving devastating post, from divorce papers to NHS letters to journalists’ cards slipped menacingly through his letterbox. This, however, is the first time his fate has been delivered on such tasteful stationery.
Eleanor Jane Barrett and Edmond Peter William Spencer joyfully invite you to celebrate their—
Daisy had been delighted to pick it up from where it landed on the doormat. Had she not been home—and he half-suspects Miller did this on purpose, sending the invitation out at Christmas when she’d be around to get excited—he would have left it there. Perhaps even walked over it. Watched it blow right back out on a sea wind. Let it catch on the bottom of the door, watching absently as it gets torn to shreds over a couple of weeks.
—on Saturday, the fourteenth of September, 2019—
Alec doesn't dislike Edmond.
Well, he doesn't dislike him any more than is natural and expected for someone named Edmond. No, Edmond-oh-do-call-me-Eddy Spencer is perfectly palatable as a person (a compliment Alec supposes is actually quite sincere, since it's not something he can say about himself) and certainly respectable, having passed every one of Alec’s rigorous (yet surreptitious, of course) background checks and been given the stamp of approval by Daisy.
(Alec, humbly realising the limits of his own detective skills, enlisted her to give the final say based on a complex set of metrics that he personally couldn't understand a word of and which Daisy referred to as just general vibes.)
—The Orangery, Lutwidge House, DT2 8PY—
Everyone—everyone—says that Edmond Call Me Eddy Peter William Spencer has a heart of gold. Which Alec finds to be a charming and apt description and which, when he heard it for the first time, did not have him trying to crush his reusable coffee cup in his hand, thinking yeah? Well, mine’s titanium.
—RSVP—
Miller will be happy with a man like Spencer. No, really, she will; he's a retired journalist, now the owner and part-time manager of a small conglomeration of botanical gardens with a soft, supportive cushion of generational wealth to lean back on when it all gets a little too much.
Miller, in a way that has Alec feeling oddly proud, has turned down a couple of promotions beyond D.I. to keep working on local cases as much as she can, so a little financial stability probably goes a long way.
Alec is pleased for her. No, really, he is.
—Dinner and dancing to follow.
“As you should be! You’ll go, then?”
“What?”
Daisy, already three pages deep in their linked John Lewis gift registry, tuts at him.
“You have to go, Dad. She’s your friend. Arguably your only—”
Right at that moment, Alec happens to spot an insufficiently vacuumed corner of the room. Can’t have that.
“—you should support her, show her how happy you are for her, and it’ll be fun —”
Goodness, another patch that needs attention.
“Dad, stop trying to end the conversation by hoovering. You're acting like a teenager, and if the house is any cleaner, your immune system will suffer for it.”
Children shouldn’t be allowed to be wise, he decides.
“She won’t want me there,” he says, and then tidies the vacuum cleaner away as noisily as he can, since he’s certain that his darling daughter has more wisdom to impart to him.
He thinks he’s got away with it, but then Daisy chooses to wave the disgustingly tasteful piece of glorified sodding tissue paper at him, as if that says anything at all.
“Ellie’s invited you,” she says.
“And?”
“Dad.”
“Daisy.”
“You don’t invite people to your wedding that you don’t actually want there.”
Alec very nearly replies with, ‘Well, your mother let me come to ours, ’ but thinks better of it.
“It’s a formality. We work together.”
“You’re friends.”
“Miller’s friends with the whole town. I’ll be doing them a favour by not showing up, saving them a spot of cash. They'll have too many people there, anyway.”
Daisy heaves a sigh that sounds terribly like one of his own. “Well, I’m going,” she says, and really, in hindsight, Alec should’ve known he’d never win this one.
It’s a beautiful day. It’s not always a beautiful day in mid-September in Dorset, but Ellie Miller Ellie Barrett Eleanor Jane Spencer has an infectiously sunny disposition, against which not even the weather can remain immune. (It follows, then, that Alec Hardy, not exactly known as a force of nature, should be especially susceptible.)
The Orangery, as they call it, a terribly false Mediterranean-inspired construction surrounded by overly-manicured gardens and overlooked by some old Tory’s stately home, should, by all means, be both an abomination and an easy point of contention in this whole farce; tragically, Miller has impeccable taste. Where so many before them have chosen to cram groups of guests around convoluted white-draped tables, the happy couple seem to have taken a page out of a Tuscan photo album and sat their guests all together on one long table, lined with charmingly rickety chairs, trailing foliage and large dishes of invariably mouth-watering pasta.
The ceremony itself had been short and secular, missing (to Alec’s guilty chagrin) any rambling, forced or overblown proclamations of undying love that would confirm his hopes suspicions of an unhappy liaison. Miller's youngest, still incredibly small and dressed in a tiny charcoal suit, had handed them the rings with a toothy grin. It's the first time Alec has seen Edmond Call Me Eddy without a hunting jacket.
Daisy looks gorgeous. Daisy always looks gorgeous—she’s Tess’s daughter in that sense—but she’d seen the suggested dress code of ‘rustic’ and decided to weave fresh flowers into her hair. (Marguerites, apparently, but to Alec, a daisy by any other name would smell as sweet.) She’d insisted that she shouldn't buy a new dress for the occasion on her student budget (Alec’s reluctant, weak-voiced offer to go shopping with her had had her in fits of laughter), and he’s fairly sure that the dress she’s only slightly too tall and slim for was one worn by Tess on their honeymoon. It’s very nearly too much for Alec.
(She’d tried to get Alec into a kilt. She really tried her best, bless her, but he’s not wearing a kilt to a wedding in Dorset in September.)
All this, with the obvious exception of Daisy, is really only the result of a cursory glance; if he's being honest (which he's really trying not to be), his gaze is fixed on Miller herself. He’s seen a couple of pictures of her first wedding before, all big and white and layers of materials that Alec will never know the name of, and it all seemed lovely (as lovely as a marriage between his best friend his partner his crush? He’s not sixteen, for god’s sake his Ellie his colleague and a child murderer can seem) but when he compares it with this, it seems suffocating.
She's opted not for a dress, but for an ivory one-piece suit thing (“Jumpsuit, Dad, it’s a jumpsuit.”) with a deep neckline and flowing sleeves and trousers. Every edge is delicately embroidered with tiny little crystals that catch the light as she moves, more of which pin back her hair, save for a few wild curls which frame her face. Alec imagines that she's probably wearing makeup since her incredible cheekbones stand out just a little more than usual and her beautiful lips look dark and soft, but all he can really tell is that she looks fucking stunning.
(Now he really isn’t being honest. She always looks fucking stunning. But he’s not sure there are words in the English language exquisite enough to describe how she looks today.)
He doesn’t dance. He sort of knows how—he learned for Tess, for their wedding, of course—but it's bad enough that he's here at all, surrounded by people who genuinely believe that there’s a correct way to put jam and cream on a scone, and he’s perfectly happy watching Daisy be twirled around by Edmond Call Me Eddy’s pink-faced, signet ring-wearing nephews and second cousins.
No, watching her while sipping outrageously good wine is enough for Alec, and he’s lost in it when the seat next to him is quite suddenly occupied by what must be some sort of goddess.
“You came,” says Eleanor Jane Spencer, and raises a glass to him.
“Congratulations,” he says, clinking his against hers. “I’m very happy for you.”
It isn’t really a lie, and yet he can’t seem to make it sound sincere.
“No kilt,” she says.
“Oh, Daisy wouldn’t let me. Something about standing out too much, it being too cold, and what if there was a strong wind.”
“Mm, I’ll bet.”
They don’t say anything more for a few moments, and Alec can hear her being called away again.
“She looks gorgeous,” she says, nodding towards Daisy, who is being spun around by a young lad who, by the looks of him, must be named Marcus, or possibly Cornelius. Alec nods in agreement.
“So do you.”
Miller smiles in a way that has Alec feeling awfully grateful for the little piece of titanium in his chest.
“Dance with me?”
“Two left feet. I’d trip you up, and then you’d get grass stains on your..."
“Jumpsuit.”
“Aye, that.”
“That would be a shame. Though, I’ll tell you what—I’m surprised I’ve not already dropped pasta all down it.”
“Wonders will never cease.”
They both drink their wine.
“I couldn’t keep waiting for you,” says Miller.
Alec very nearly chokes on his wine. “I'm sorry?”
“I mean, your RSVP. At some point, I had to decide whether or not you’d come. Not like you’d cost us very much either way, catering-wise.”
“Right. Naturally." Alec runs his finger along the edge of the wine glass. “I didn’t think you’d want me.”
“You mean. Want you here.”
“Of course.”
“I always thought I’d made that quite clear.”
“Did you?”
“I asked you.” She watches her husband glance conspiratorially between fussing, distracted mothers, and then, grinning, pour a finger of whisky into an equally pleased fifteen-year-old’s glass. “To the wedding. I sent you an invitation.”
“That’s what you do, though. You invite people. No matter how close they are. Doesn’t mean anything that you asked me.” Alec sighs. “Besides, I didn’t—I couldn’t offer you much. I don’t have—” he raises his wine glass, waves a hand at the long table with its carefully chosen foliage and tall, elegant candles, “I cannae give you any of this. I couldnae ever have given you what you deserve.”
“Who are you to decide what I deserve?” Ellie asks, but it's more weary than accusatory. “And, for the record, your present, that marble chopping board—it was perfect. Thank you.”
“You chose it. I just selected it from your registry list. I was scared.”
“Of a gift registry?”
“Of hurtin’ you. Of not bein’ enough for you. Of fuckin’ up what we had.”
“We didn’t have anything. You never gave it a chance.”
“No, well.” Alec gestures towards Spencer, now involved in some complicated kind of rural English line dance with ten or so cousins and nephews. “Good thing, too.”
Ellie leans towards him and puts a hand on his arm. He flinches away from her. If she’s hurt by it, or even surprised, she doesn’t let it show. “Is that really what you think?”
“Does it matter? You’re married, Ellie.” He pauses. “Again.”
She shrugs. “Maybe it doesn't matter. But it could’ve.”
“Aye, well. It can't now.”
At the other end of the table, the fifteen-year-old makes a lurch for the bottle of whisky, and Alec decides to delay the poor lad’s first hangover as much as he can. He stands and takes it, then pours himself a little, right into his now-empty wine glass.
“Beautiful wedding,” he tells her, and she smiles again. This one isn’t quite so radiant, and yet it still has an effect on him that would have his cardiologist frowning. “I really do hope you’ll be happy with him.”
“Of course I’m happy,” she says. For the sake of his own sanity and cardiovascular health, Alec chooses not to ask after the deafeningly silent ‘but’.
She’s swept up into the line dance, which everyone here but Alec seems to instinctively know, and he sits back with his whisky. He’ll have a killer hangover tomorrow (and by the looks of her ever-refilling champagne glass, so will Daisy), but that was inevitable.
Really, he’s happy just watching her being happy.
It’s his CS who suggests it first.
“You’ve been working down here, out on cases most of the time at that, for what—four years now? Nearly five? You’ll wear yourself out, Alec. Don’t you think it’s time for a change?”
Alec has to admit, she has a point. While the various crimes of Broadchurch rarely demand great physical exertion, he does find himself on his feet for most of the day, most days a week. And he's starting to feel it—he's more tired, recently, missing the energy he'd steadily regained over the past few years. Getting out of bed is starting to feel like a terrible effort. Even such small accomplishments such as cooking for himself, leaving the house for any reason but work, have started to feel almost insurmountable.
(Right, fine, so it's less of a recent, gradual development, and more of a... Since-D.I.-Spencer’s-Wedding development. But still, running around chasing after Dorset’s rather rural versions of criminals can’t be helping.)
And that's how he finds himself finally betraying his own resolution never to be promoted into a prominently paperwork-based position. Since his surgery, he'd sworn he'd stay a detective on active duty for as long as he worked, had felt it in his heart that that was what he was meant to do; he was meant to be here, in Broadchurch, protecting the people and his daughter.
(But then again, it’s not as if his heart has ever been especially reliable, has it?)
Daisy talks him into keeping the house, to paying an agency to rent it out for what seems like unfair amounts of money to tourists from across the country, to keeping a few weeks blocked out every year for the two of them to spend lounging around on the coast. They spend every Christmas that Daisy is at uni there, as well as a chunk of every summer, whereupon he piles his paperwork into his car and drives down from London to do the same job he could do in an air-conditioned office at a rickety table in a sun-trap of a living room.
After a couple of years, the appeal of a seaside holiday starts to dwindle in comparison to crashing at Dad’s place in London after a night out with old uni mates, and before long, it’s just Alec who goes there for a week or so each year, staring at the sea and the cliffs that keep slipping away.
He stops running into Eleanor and Eddy Spencer, and someone informs him that they’ve retired to the Cotswolds. That Broadchurch CID had been taking more and more cases from areas beyond the relative security of the Dorset hills and that D.I. Spencer had worked through one grizzly case too many and had finally fallen out of love with her birthplace.
And Alec thinks, good. And he finally sells the bloody house.