Read Online Broadchurch: Old Friends (Story 3): A Series Two Original Short Story by Erin Kelly, Chris Chibnall - Free Book Online

JOCELYN KNIGHT
    September 2002
    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