Chapter Text
I know everything.
Carla Barlow never checks her flamin’ junk mail.
And even when she does, there’s never anything worth looking at. It’s always the same old crap really, innit? Everyone gets the same sort of spam. ‘500 free spins and no wagering’, ‘claim your £3955.07 tax rebate now’, and ‘I’ve tried to call you about your recent car accident’.
Okay, so she probably could’ve almost fallen for that last one a few times over the years. She’s no stranger to a fender bender, but even that, she’s not had one in a good few years. Many years ago, the gambling addiction would’ve won out and she’d have followed the link for the free spins and then wound up with some dodgy virus on her laptop. And probably be a few grand out of pocket an’ all.
But when she clicked into her junk box today, searching for an invoice that was supposedly sent during the early hours of this morning, her attention was piqued by a new message sent directly from her own email address.
She’s no muppet, she knows that’s easy enough to fake.
But the subject?
FAO: Carla Barlow, 15a Victoria Street.
Marked with a little red exclamation point to imply ‘high importance.’
She’s not daft, but she’s mildly concerned about who might be emailing her, pretending to be logged into her account, that knows her full name and home address.
So she clicks on it.
And all that’s there is one line.
It almost rattles her a tiny bit.
But she’s Carla flippin’ Barlow, and half the street knows her secrets, so she’s not about to cry about it.
Whatever.
On with her day.
The invoice still isn’t there. Definitely. She hasn’t received anything of any relevance at all today and without the invoice, she can’t ship the order out. She reckons someone’s having her on for a laugh, going to send her on a wild goose chase looking for an email that was never sent. It’d hardly be the first time.
“Your watch stopped again, love?” Peter’s voice pulls her from her trance and she snaps her head up from her laptop.
She hadn’t even noticed it getting dark outside.
She shakes her head and smiles tiredly at him.
“Sorry. Lost track of time,” she shrugs nonchalantly.
The email isn’t even part of her train of thoughts. It’s a simple little blip, acknowledged, considered, and then deleted.
“No bother,” Peter responds as she’d expected him to. He should be used to this by now. He’s the man she loves, but the factory will always be her first baby. Her empire. She’s built it up from the ground on multiple occasions, and more often than not she finds herself practically chained to her desk after hours trying to get ahead. Or catch up.
Whichever it is at the time.
Peter strolls lazily over to her desk. As always, he looks ruggedly handsome, his dark beard giving him an air of ‘rough and ready’ that Carla has grown to love over the years. He stands behind where she’s sitting in her chair and wraps his arms around her neck loosely.
“Reckon you can finish up soon? I’ll order us a pizza or something.”
Carla sighs and leans into his hold as she rubs her temples.
“I’m not really hungry, love. Just sort yourself out and I’ll be home when I can.”
He huffs in defeat.
It’d be pointless trying to convince her otherwise and he knows it, after so many years together he knows his wife well enough to know when she’s completely absorbed in something.
“Alright, if you say so,” Carla rolls her eyes. She’s not about to argue with him again about her working hours. He’d never get it. “Don’t work too hard, eh?”
He kisses the crown of her head, beard scratching at the tender skin of her scalp as he does.
“I won’t. I’ll see you later,” she offers a warm smile then refocuses her attention, eyes trained on her emails.
Her mind wanders for a moment.
It usually does.
It’s always when her head is spinning. Memories flood back like a blummin’ tidal wave and she’s transported back to a simpler time. Well, almost simpler. Maybe could’ve been simpler if things had been different.
Brief flashes of a tender touch and soft, blonde hair.
She shakes her head. Snaps herself out of it.
It’s been thirty years.
She needs to get a grip.
She’s not that person anymore. It’s all just a memory.
When she finally trudges home, the living room is deserted. The lamp in the corner has been left on to prevent the room being entirely engulfed in blackness, so she manages to avoid stubbing her toe on the dining table or the leg of the couch.
She can hear the low rumble of Peter’s snoring from their bedroom.
He’s her safety net. He’s warm and he’s comfortable and he protects her even when she doesn’t need it. She floats through her nighttime routine on autopilot, removing her makeup and applying her night cream. Slips into some soft, silky pyjamas and crawls tiredly into the bed.
Peter stirs and shuffles in close to her, following the dip in the mattress where she’s settled. She’s always needed that physical touch at night, that anchor to help her settle, but more and more recently she’s been closing her eyes and picturing the past. The gentle, smooth skin of the woman she’d spent so many of her earlier years with.
She burrows down into his chest and lets the day wash away as he wraps his arm around her shoulders lazily.
She dreams of her again.
It’s getting worse recently, but she’s been trying desperately hard not to acknowledge it. She is everywhere lately. She’s plaguing her dreams and almost all of her waking thoughts. As soon as she settles into the quiet, she’s there, at the forefront of her mind.
It’s bloody ridiculous.
It’s been thirty flaming years.
-x-
It’s a few days later when the next thing happens.
Truth be told, the email she’d received a few days prior hadn’t even established itself a slot in her thoughts. She’d opened it and deleted it without so much as blinking. Just another bit of spam from some dodgy company illegally selling their customers’ details to third parties.
But this time?
This time it feels a bit more real.
She sifts through the small pile of post, placing Peter’s letters on one pile and her own on another. Junk and fliers straight in the round file.
The last one?
A hand written address.
Mrs Carla Barlow nee Connor nee Tilsley nee Gordon nee Donovan
15a Victoria Street
Weatherfield
There’s no postcode.
But more importantly, there’s no postage stamp.
Whoever sent this wants her to know that they’ve hand delivered it. Whoever sent this wants her to know that they know about her. Her numerous marriages and subsequent surnames are no secret, everyone on the street has been in attendance at at least one of her weddings.
But this? It feels a bit more… sinister.
Like whoever has sent it wants to spook her.
Whoever has sent it isn’t supposed to know things about her.
Her fingers absolutely do not tremble as she tears into the rain-dampened envelope.
Ignoring me won’t make me go away.
It’ll just make me get louder when I tell the world all about you.
Okay, so she’s a little bit shaken this time.
Someone is clearly after something, but there are no threats, no demands, no ridiculous requests for an insurmountable amount of money. Just an ambiguous message.
She’s hardly an angel either, is she? ‘I know everything’ and ‘what you did’ could be a whole number of things she’s done in her life. She’s well acquainted with a secret or two, but she’s nearly fifty and she’s not about to have a meltdown about it if everyone finds out that she used to nick tins of soup from the corner shop to feed her little brother when she was a kid.
She’s pretty sure everyone already knows that anyway. Or at least assumes. She’s always been pretty open about her rough upbringing and the way she basically had to drag herself and her brother up because no one else was going to do it.
“Ayyup, whose cage have you been rattling?” Peter asks from behind her. She jumps and clutches a hand to her chest. She’d been so absorbed in the note that she hadn’t heard him come out of the bedroom, let alone stand behind her and read it over her shoulder. “Sorry, love, didn’t mean to scare you.”
She shakes her head and screws the note up.
Never to be thought of again.
“No idea, probably just someone’s idea of a joke. There was an email the other day an’ all.”
Peter wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her neck, the sharp strands of his beard scratching at the exposed skin.
“Chancers, eh, love?” He laughs it off.
Carla shakes her head.
Wishes she felt the same.
“Probably just trying to squeeze a few quid out of me,” and that’s the end of that one.
That’s the last time she’s going to think about it, she decides.
-x-
She’s already running late, she was meant to be on the M60 twenty minutes ago but obviously the universe had other plans. Everything that could’ve possibly gone wrong this morning has done.
Kirk delivered an order to Surrey instead of Southampton - the flaming muppet; Sean had got his hand stuck in his machine and started blarting on about unsafe machinery and suing - yeah, nice try, drama queen; and Sarah had called in sick because Harry has the chicken pox, although she’s pretty certain she’s already used that excuse twice so it probably won’t hurt to make a house call when she’s home and ‘see how he is’.
If there are no spots on that kid’s face when she gets there, she’ll replace Sarah’s shampoo with hair removal cream or something equally vindictive. Teach her a lesson or two.
She’s just about to take a deep breath and count to five when she hears it.
Feels it.
The unmistakable hissing of all the air coming out of her tyres.
Feels the way the car dips almost instantly.
“Oh, you have got to be-” she rages, switching the ignition off and hoisting the door open.
Not one, not two, but three flat tyres.
She kicks the front drivers’ side tyre in frustration and winces in pain.
Webster’s Auto’s isn’t open, obviously, so she has no choice but to call Gareth and cancel their meeting. He’s not happy, understandably, but the exasperated tone of voice she’s found herself using seems to have won her a bit of sympathy and an invitation to reschedule at a better time.
Then she spots it.
Them.
Nails.
Wedged into her tyres, slap bang in the middle of where she’s just reversed.
If there was even a tiny part of her that was convinced it had been an accident, it’s gone now. Nails behind her tyres is a whole new level of crazy behaviour.
And whoever did it is calculated as anything.
“Sorry, Mrs Barlow, three damaged tyres are not an insurance claim,” the woman on the other end of the phone tells her calmly.
Carla huffs.
“Are you kidding me? What do I pay for then? Someone has done this deliberately.”
“I appreciate your frustration, Mrs Barlow, but unfortunately the policy wording very clearly states that you can only claim for four damaged tyres. Anything else is considered wear and tear.”
She could scream.
But instead she does something that’s probably a bit stupid.
Reckless, maybe.
She yanks one of the nails from her tyre, rounds the car, and shoves it straight through the remaining undamaged rubber.
That hissing sound rings out again.
“Right. It’s four then.”
-x-
“A flaming crime reference number? Are you taking the mick?” She’s been arguing with her insurance for the last week.
Her car’s out of use and she’s half tempted to just go and put four new tyres on it herself, save herself the hassle.
Although when Peter had suggested that, she’d pretty much bitten his head off and ranted about how this nutter will just see it as an invitation to do it again.
He’s not exactly taking it very seriously.
If he calls her paranoid or jumped up one more time, she really will flip.
The best bit had been when he’d practically accused her of bringing it all on herself.
Bit narky at the best of times, aren’t you, love?
He’d slept on the sofa that night, that’s for sure.
“Right. Fine. I’ll get one,” she snaps and cuts the call off.
-x-
She’s been waiting for what feels like an age.
All she wants is a bloody number to give to her insurance to replace the tyres on her car, surely it shouldn’t be that difficult. Shouldn’t involve giving a full statement to some blue-eyed, brown-nosed, bushy-tailed PC.
How many words can she use to say ‘some prick stuck nails behind my car tyres’ anyway?
She taps her foot restlessly against the tiled floor and watches the second hand tick round on the clock in the interview room that she’s waiting in.
Someone will be with you shortly.
The desk sergeant had absolutely lied but what else is new?
She’s just about had enough lately, and is just about to storm back out to the reception area and tell anyone that’ll listen as such, when the heavy oak door to the interview room finally swings open.
She’s been waiting so long that she doesn’t even show the decency of looking at the person that’s just walked in. She’ll make them wait for some manners now, just like she’s been made to wait.
Maybe Peter had a point, maybe she is a bit narky lately…
The steady click of chunky heels rolls throughout the room.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs Barlow, it’s been a-”
She’d recognise that voice anywhere.
Older and slightly more weathered with a bit of a sharper edge to it.
It’s been thirty years since she last heard it.
But she’ll never, ever forget it.
Her blood runs cold as she turns her head and is met with the same pair of piercing green eyes that she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
“Lisa Swain?”
“Carla Donovan?”