It's a lark to you...

[fairandfatalasfair]

A lot has been said about Edwin and Crystal's argument in Episode one, and I endorse a lot of it.

But I suspect there's another factor adding to Edwin's blow up, and it's that Edwin spends most of episode one terrified that he's going to fuck up and Becky is going to die and it will be his fault.

He argued against taking the case because he's the cautious one that looks for ways that things might go wrong, but that was an argument he was never going to win, and they both knew it. Charles raised his eyebrows and asked if Edwin was really going to let a little American girl die, and Edwin folded like a cheap suit.

Only they get there and it's more complicated than they planned for. They can't go in and get Becky because there's a witch involved and she'll see them, and he doesn't have his usual resources, and Charles is distracted, and Crystal is lying and hiding things and becoming unreliable without warning, and Charles is taking her side...

And none of that is Crystal's fault! She's sixteen, and traumatised, and doesn't know him, and genuinely doesn't realise he cares. She's afraid he's going to abandon her the second she becomes inconvenient. Of course she's keeping secrets. She's not fucking around with a child's life for her amusement, she's trying to survive.

But he's not being facetious when he says that David could jeopardise the Becky Aspen case.

He's terrified that because he's off his game and doesn't have all the information and is in a strange town, that he's going to fail to solve the case and this little girl is going to die (like he died; like Charles died) and there will never be justice for her.