Chapter Text
Outside 15a Victoria Street the early winter dusk was draped like a cloak. The windows had surrendered their view of the world and turned inwards. A dozen versions of Carla stared back at her. Dim. Distorted. All with the same tired eyes boring into her from the glass. The lights inside were too bright. Every available bulb burning fiercely turning the comforting glow she was used to into an inferno. It felt like an interrogation room. No shadows or quiet corners or mercy. The darkness had been pushed to the boundaries of the flat, held back like the tide against a dam. A stage set for a woman trying to convince herself she wasn’t falling apart.
The breakfast bar had been spotless hours ago, but Carla dragged the cloth across its surface again, retracing the same lines, hunting for specs of dust that didn’t exist. Around her, boxes were lined up like tombstones. Cardboard sarcophaguses for a life she was burying. Clothing was bagged up for donation, glasses she wouldn’t need now, reminders of him. All hastily removed from her life. Following him out the door.
It was an exorcism of a life with a man who had failed her in all imaginable ways, and then some.
Clean home. Fresh start.
She repeated the thought like scripture.
The scream of the intercom shattered the night like glass. The air vibrated with the sound, pulled her spine taut, and rattled her teeth. Then came the pounding on the door. Heavy. Impatient. Familiar.
Carla sighed, peeled off her gloves and folded them carefully over the kitchen tap. She made no move to answer. Just reached for the switch of the kettle. Tea solved everything. Even if she was forced to resort to decaf.
The pounding started again, then a voice cutting above the noise.
“Carla Barlow! I know you’re up there!”
Michelle. Ready to wage war. Absolutely not going to give up.
Carla pinched the bridge of her nose, wishing with her remaining energy for some peace and quiet. She wondered, if she stayed still enough, would the world allow her to fade away and stop requiring things of her.
The intercom screamed again. Persistent, frantic, stuttering stabs at the button before the pounding resumed with a vengeance.
“Carla!” Pound. Pound. Pound. “Do not make me cause a scene! You know I will!”
She would. Lord help them all. Cyclones didn’t ask permission to roll in, they just arrived. Woe betide anything unfortunate enough to find itself in the path of destruction. Carla wondered if the door could withstand gale-force Michelle. Probably not for much longer. She loved fiercely, and was the kind of woman who could level a city and crush a man’s ego to dust given half a good reason.
“Let me up!” She was relentless. Carla could hear the frustration in Michelle’s voice fracturing into panic at the edges.
Then the threat came. Low and lethal.
“Fine. If that’s how you want it. I’ll just go and get the spare key from Roy and Hayley, shall I? Get them over here to talk some sense into you?”
That did it. Hayley was too frail for additional stress. Carla wouldn’t allow it.
Carla pressed the buzzer to unlock the downstairs door, unlatched her own, and returned to the kettle as the water finished boiling.
Michelle’s footsteps thundered up the stairs, crashing through the door moments later and immediately stopped short on the threshold.
Carla turned, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter, and cradled her tea between both palms. She willed herself to look unphased as she stared at her best friend. She didn’t like what she saw.
Breathing ragged. Face flushed. Expression frantic with concern. Michelle’s eyes scanned Carla head to toe, roved the flat, and widened at the sight of the boxes.
“Michelle,” Carla said, lightly. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
It was a terrible performance. Even she didn’t buy it.
Michelle didn’t either. “Don’t give me that.” she snapped, kicking the door closed behind her. The walls shook. “You know exactly why I’m here.” She shed her coat and launched it at the back of the sofa. Took a step towards the kitchen.
Carla sipped. Raised an eyebrow. Blew across the rim of her mug in a birthday-candle wish for strength.
“Nothing?” Michelle gestured at the pile of things, incredulous. “Not one word? Christ, Carla, usually I can barely get a word in but today is the day you choose the silent treatment?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me Steve was talking out of his ass when he told me he took Peter to the airport this morning. Alone. Stinking of booze. With a one-way ticket to god only knows where!”
“Spain.” Carla supplied, voice quiet and much steadier than she felt. “To begin with. Probably.”
A silent beat.
Then Michelle detonated.
“I’ll fucking KILL HIM.”
“Michelle…”
“You’re nearly eight months pregnant, for crying out loud!”
“Thank you,” Carla said dryly. “Well aware.” A hand drifted automatically to her bump, circling softly.
“What could possibly be more important to him than his wife and child?!”
Carla let out a humourless laugh. “Whiskey, apparently.”
Michelle’s anger collapsed into something heavier. Something dangerous. Compassion.
Carla shrugged and looked away.
“He said the pressure was too much. Said he never wanted a child with me. That we’d screw her up. That he’d screw us up. He said that without me, he would be free to make all the mistakes he wanted with no consequences.” Her voice cracked. Fractured around her next words. “He said that he was tired of having to choose between me…and the drink.”
Carla watched Michelle’s throat bob. She wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“So there we have it. Yet again, not good enough.”
“You’re too good for him.” Michelle shot back. “Always have been.”
Carla hummed. She didn’t trust her voice.
“But he’ll come crawling back, won’t he? Once she’s born?” Michelle gestured to Carla’s bump. “You’re his family.”
Carla shook her head. “It’s done.” The words echoed with finality.
The nursery, if she could even call it that, still smelled of fresh paint and the promise of new beginnings she wasn’t sure she deserved. Michelle sat on the floor beneath raspberry coloured panelling and delicate grey floral wallpaper, next to a pile of vintage Winnie the Pooh sketches waiting to be framed and hung. A new changing table and chest of drawers sat against one wall. A rocking chair still covered in protective plastic was nestled in the corner cradling a basket of freshly-washed baby clothing.
Carla stood with her back to Michelle, filling tiny drawers with tinier clothing, her movements methodical and relentless.
“You’ve been busy.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are, but you’ve been on your feet since I got here and I --"
“I’m pregnant, Chelle, not dying.”
Michelle ignored the bite, as she always did when Carla was hurting. She rose and joined her friend at the laundry basket, folding silently. Carla felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. Hot and humiliating. She blinked them back. Forced her breath to stay even. She wouldn’t break. It would take far more than an absent man to break her.
“What part of ‘I’m fine’ are you not hearing?” But she wasn’t fine. She was a woman carving order from the fractured pieces of her life. Desperately trying to wedge any shaped puzzle piece into the available holes.
Minutes passed in hushed quiet. Just the hiss of the radiator and their socks shuffling against the carpet to accompany their racing thoughts. The air thickened with words both women were afraid to give voice to. Carla was scared to speak in case her strong, calm exterior crumbled. Michelle was scared to say something to make this all worse.
They reached the bottom of the laundry basket as pain pulled tightly across Carla’s lower back. She braced both arms against the changing table and failed to suppress a groan.
Michelle was there in an instant, hands firm and warm against her lower back. Steady.
“You don’t have to do all of this tonight, you know.”
“Yes,” Carla bit back, desperate and exhausted rather than angry. “I do.”
“No,” Michelle argued softly, still working to relieve Carla’s discomfort. “You’ve got time.”
“I don’t!” She turned with her hands clutched protectively over her bump. Eyes glistening, fighting the tears clawing up her throat. “She will be here in a matter of weeks and nothing is ready. Her father left us before she even arrived, and I can’t bring her into this world proving that I am a disappointment too!”
There it was. The raw truth. Her deepest fear.
“I can’t let that happen.” Her voice cracked and something inside her cracked too.
Michelle moved closer, her fingers closing around Carla’s, face softening with what looked like love and heartbreak in equal measure.
“Carla–-”
“I need her to have a home. A proper one. She needs to know that she is loved and wanted. So wanted. I can’t wait for someone else to do it for me and make our lives safe, because it’s only me. There is no one else. So it’s all on me.”
“Listen to me, Carla.” Michelle’s grip tightened. “You are not on your own. You have me. You have Ryan. Roy. Hayley.”
Carla shot her a look. Michelle wasn't in the mood. “No, we’re not doing that tonight either. You know she will be here as long as she is able to be.” Carla offered a watery smile.
“Point is, baby Barlow is arriving into a world where half the street would throw themselves in front of a bus for her. She is going to have more love than she knows what to do with.”
Carla’s chin trembled. “Connor.”
Michelle frowned. Blinked.
“Baby Connor.” Carla’s spine pulled straighter as if claiming the name had lanced strength through her. “If I’m doing this alone, I’m doing this as Carla Connor. She’s rebuilt her life from nothing once, and she’ll do it again. My baby will be a Connor too.”
Michelle laughed, watery and fond. “Another Connor woman…god help us all.”
The hug was immediate and instinctive. Carla collapsed into it, her body heaving with sobs that brought both women to their knees. Deep, guttural, broken sobs. Years of disappointment and this new fear poured into the space between them. Michelle clung tightly, her own cheeks wet, desperately trying to hold Carla together.
It was some time before Carla could draw a steady breath again.
“I’m so sor–-”
“Don’t you dare apologise. Not for that.”
“You’re a good mate.”
“Your best mate, thank you.” Carla sniffed and smiled in response. “You’ve always got me.”
“I know.” She said quietly. Then in a much smaller, terrified voice she said “I’m just so scared, Chelle. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Oh darling,” Michelle murmured. “You can. You already are. If he’s gone, good riddance. You’re still here. Still fighting. That’s what mothers do.”
Fresh, silent tears tracked down Carla’s cheeks as that word settled in her chest. Mother. She was going to be someone’s mother.
“You’ve got her, and we’ve got you. You’re going to be wonderful.”
Carla smiled and squeezed Michelle’s hands gratefully, who then helped Carla to her feet. She wobbled and laughed weekly. Blamed the baby for sitting on her bladder as she waddled towards the bathroom. Her laugh made the flat feel lighter.
As unsteady as Carla felt, both physically and mentally, suddenly things felt that little bit less impossible. Somewhere in the fallen tears she had let go of some of the anger she felt towards a disappointing man. Peter was gone. He had run from the only good thing he had created in this life. In the space he left behind Carla felt a faint flicker of hope.
She had been left with the only thing that ever truly mattered to her. Her little girl. Her daughter who deserved nothing less than Carla Connor at her very best.
And maybe, just maybe, Carla could be that woman.