Disclaimer: Coronation street, and all characters used here do not belong to me.

Liz was exhausted. As she got back to the flat after having a furious row with her boy friend Vernon, in the Rovers of all places, who was getting on her nerves more and more of late she was shaking with anger. She didn't get why he was being like this with her. She had been so sure they had been alright and then, well he had changed out of the blue and she only one begun to realise he was the last person in the entire world she wanted to be with.
Going in to the room they had been sharing for the past six month she decided to go to bed. She needed her sleep and what ever problems they were having were going to have to wait until she woke.

Just as she got to her bed side table she began to take off her jewellery when three photos that she had had with her where ever she had been these many past years caught her eye. She didn't know why she didn't really ever look at them properly any more but she had just grown so used to them she guessed. They were going to be fixed in to her memory till the day she passed on.

The first she did not know why she still kept. The fact was she should have thrown it out years ago and she knew it but she just felt as if she couldn't be parted with it. It, just like the man who featured in it with her, was such a big part of her life and her history and the women she had become. Jim and her on their first date. She had been so excited when her friend had said she had needed her to go along on a double date with her with soldiers. They had seemed so glamorous to her and her friend. And when they had turned up, oh how he had melted her heart to butter. He had been in his uniform. Consequently of that memorable evening, her friend and her date never spoke again, but Jim and Liz had not been able to stop. Every weekend he had had off, every day she was able to spare they were together and they were so in love. They had been seventeen, they had been young and there passion and need of the other had only just begun to grow. Every thing had pretty soon in his life, revolved around her and when he had been able to see her again.

To that day she tried to fool her self that that passion had died out when he had gone to jail. However for her it hadn't. She knew if he had the chance of sweet talking her round he would and she would fall in to his arms as if she was still not a day over seventeen. That, she was. She was going to be fifty soon.

The second photo she had kept by her bedside so loyally was of her Andy and Steve when she and Jim had first moved in to number eleven bringing their lads with them. Of course at fourteen, nothing had seemed worse for the two boys then moving away up north away from there friends and they had made such a fuss but to that day she stood by her and her then husband's decisions. In different circumstance maybe they wouldn't have moved but it had been times must situation and she had been so desperate to get her husband away from the army and her self away from Johnny. She hadn't wanted to lose Jim for the world when they had been raising the twins. She still wished she hadn't let him go. He hadn't been like all the others and the last thing he had been to her was a stupid mistake, not like the others.
He had been every thing to her since the very beginning.

The last picture was of course of her Katharine, her poor little girl who just simply had not had the strength she had needed to get through the first few days of her life. Nothing she or Jim had been able to do for her had been able to chance that and it had broken her heart. They had been completely powerless in the situation. They had talked about a termination when she had first found out she was carrying her and sometimes she thought it would have just been easier on the entire family, Katherine included, if she had gone through with it. Then she realised if she had she wouldn't have even had a photo to remember her by. That would have been even worse.

If only things had turned out different for her, then... she didn't know but Liz wished they had. She wished she had been allowed to keep the little girl who was her daughter from harm. She wished her husband had not been locked away from her and she wished she had never met Vernon.

"Mum?" she heard Steve call as he got back to the flat. He was back then. As he disturbed her from her thoughts, it was only then she realised she had begun crying.

"In here love." she said to him as she tried to wipe her tears and not let him see them but he got in there quick when he heard his mothers voice was so weak and he rushed to her side, with concern for her in his green eyes.

"I'm just having a stupid moment over Katherine and your father, ignore me Steve." she said but he took her hands and looked even more worried for her when she said Jims name.

"Why?"

"I don't know love, it's just me and Vernon had a little row and well, I still miss your dad at times." how could she not. She had spent over twenty years joint with that man and she had given him three children though only two had made it past infancy. That made a bond between two people which was not easy to break and yet now she was sure this was the most tempted she had ever been to go and see Jim again since she had divorced him. She still wanted him back; just the wait for him seemed so long.

What she wouldn't give to see him in those moments when she was so low she didn't know.

Covering her face with her hand she felt her whole body begin to shake with grief for Jim's sentence all over again. Every time she did it she promised herself it was going to be the last time but it never was. She had to admit it to herself. She was still crazy about him and she always was going to be. He was her first. Vernon was never going to measure up in her eyes. Yes Jim had been cruel to her at times. Even barbaric. But he had loved her through it. She didn't know why she wanted him back! Was she that weak that he was able to break her with out even being in the room? He wasn't that strong surely? The hold he still had over her wasn't that strong.

But every Christmas, it was him, who she wanted to be kissing under the mistletoe. Every birthday it was he who she wished was going to be taken her out for a special treat and every day when she woke up it was he whose face she wanted to see. It was strange. She thought she had been so happy with Vernon till now, but she was as lonely as she was with out him as when she was with him. Nothing changed. She just wished for the warmth of the decades she had spent with her husband. Her wild, fiery, passionate man.

When they had had each other though they had never seen was a good thing they had had and they had for ever been searching for other peoples arms to find refuge in as well as one another's. Both of them had hurt each other. Not purposely perhaps. But they had. And yet it was she he longed to kiss now. When she couldn't have him. When he had been taken from her, what felt so mercilessly. She wanted him to tell her he still love her. To whisper in her ear as he had when he had found out she had been carrying the twins about how wonderful their life together was going to be.

"Mum." she Steve quietly.

"Don't Steve." Said Liz not wanting any comfort from him. "I cant help how I feel over that man." she said as she looked back to the photos. She wished she could dive in to them, in to her past and do things differently. Make sure her eyes hand strayed away from him. Make sure she had stayed more calm when she had been carrying baby Katie. Make sure she had been a better mother, wife and lover. make sure she had kept her Jim away from Quigley. And yet, she couldn't.

"I want him back." she said simply. She wished she could hold him right then, right there. She wished so many things.
"I know mum." so did he. He had seen what begin with out him had done to her. She was ok on the out side, but on the inside she was so alone and he was the only one she let close enough to see that ant more.

Drying the last of the tears knowing her boy friend was going to be back soon, she tried to forget.

"Can you go get us a cuppa love?" she asked and nodding Steve did as she had requested. Picking up the photo of her and Jim again she smiled, knowing one day they were going to get back to how they had been there. That day simply hadn't come yet.

A/n: This may be a stand alone fic or I may give it chapters. I have a sketchy plot based out but I've not made my mind up yet…

Any way, if you've read, please review!