Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story by Erin Kelly, Chris Chibnall Page B

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.’
    Maggie is silenced. Olly instinctively navigates this new world of hits and live feeds. The advertising revenue that had been in freefall is slowly creeping up again thanks to his relentless online marketing of his own byline.
    ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll go myself. I’m not above doing a bit of grunt work.’ Immediately her conscience twinges. She shouldn’t be above doing a bit of grunt work. It might even give her a taste of what life will be like after resignation. Who knows what form a freelance career would take these days?
    Driving past Roger Wilson’s house is a balancing act; slow enough that he can see her, fast enough that he doesn’t have time to sprint down his drive and engage her in conversation. She parks her own car in a turning next to a five-bar gate and completes the journey to Crown Farm on foot.
    The offending car is a bashed-up SUV and Roger is right: it does block the public footpath. Walkers would have to climb its bonnet to access the trail. Close up, it’s clear why the tenants can’t park on their own land; the driveway outside the property is piled high with a mouldering three-piece suite, two stained mattresses and the jagged matchwood of a dining set. The house itself is an ugly pebbledashed cube, the opposite of the chocolate-box cottage that tourists love to associate with this part of the world. Steam billows from a vent in the wall; who would have the heating on in May? She tries to peer through the windows but they are all sealed, even the upstairs ones, plastic sheeting taped up inside. A smell leaks from the house, pricking Maggie’s antennae. Dry, sweet and unmistakable, it was once the scent of her