As she sat in a dingy back street café, the one she used to hang out in as a kid, Carla wished she had the courage to walk away from it all.
She wished that she could just get up and move on with her life but as time seemed to pass by she knew she had to do this because if she didn't, she didn't know what would happen.
After everything that had happened in her life, Carla genuinely didn't think it could get much worse. She though that being with Nick kept her safe… he kept her safe and she thought that she would never feel this way again.
After finding out that Johnny Connor was her dad, Carla now felt naïve, naïve for thinking that Nick would be able to save her.
No one could save her that much had become very clear and Carla wondered if she'd ever feel her twisted version of normal again.
Her whole world had been blown apart for about the one-hundredth time and she was starting to believe that maybe she wasn't ever supposed to be happy after all, that someone, somewhere was doing these things to her because she didn't actually deserve happy.
Something always seemed to come along and ruin whatever joy she had managed to find in this pathetic joke that she called life.
He started with excuses.
He blamed it on being young and when Carla told him to just come out with it, he did.
"I'm... I'm your Dad... Carla... I'm your Dad."
He said it like it was nothing, like he couldn't have stepped in and spared her from the tragic childhood she'd had.
The words hit Carla like a tonne of bricks and had her rooted to the spot, she didn't say anything at first because she thought that she had maybe misheard him but when she went over the moment in her head again it became clear that she hadn't misheard him… this nightmare was well and truly real.
Then there was a moment… a moment where Carla had thought that maybe Johnny felt bad, maybe he was telling her all of this because he was finally stepping up to the plate, maybe he was finally going to be a Dad but this being Carla's life meant that Johnny, like everyone else, disappointed her.
Once again she was just being naive.
He revealed he was only telling her because he was being blackmailed.
Blackmailed by her own baby brother.
The kid she had looked after when their Mother was drunk or high or missing for the second day in a row.
Johnny probably hadn't meant to but he had revealed there and then to Carla that he didn't really care about the fact that she was his oldest daughter... he was only interested in saving his own skin.
He never said he loved her or that he was proud... just that he didn't want her to tell Aidan and Kate... he didn't want them know... he was only thinking of himself.
There were so many things about the situation that deeply wounded Carla.
The first was that her brother still held onto so much anger, that he was willing to hurt her in such a way and use her to gain money that he couldn't even spend properly due to the fact that he was in prison... in prison because of her of course, which made Carla once again feel like maybe finding out this way meant that she was getting her just desserts.
The next thing that Carla couldn't stand was that Johnny had stood by and let her grow up in the home that she did.
The home that being sat in this café, meant that she was only ten minutes away from and the home that she had spent her whole life trying to forget.
He knew what was going on, he could pretend that he didn't all he liked but he knew, because everyone knew what life was like in the Donovan household.
Everyone knew and he was the only one who could have done something about it.
As an adult, Carla had just accepted that her childhood was just the way it was because that's life, she knew that not everyone had a happy time as a kid and the fact that her's was a downright miserable one was just down to bad luck, that being born to a Mother like her's was just the way it went but now...
Well now she was hearing that Johnny Connor had his suspicions that he was her father all along and he did nothing.
Now Carla realised that had he have been a better man, had he had stepped up and been honest from the start, she might not have been the disaster that she is right now.
He stood by and watched her grow up in what could only be described as a place of hell.
He stood by and let her marry her own third cousin.
He did nothing and here was, after all of that… still doing nothing… still not being a father.
Carla thought about the man who she had always thought as her Dad, the one who was living a meaningless existence who had never even bothered with her, the one who she used to think if he had stuck around maybe things wouldn't have been so bad.
Now she couldn't think, was it any wonder he didn't want nothing to do with her... maybe he knew her mother cheated, maybe he knew Carla wasn't his baby and maybe thats why he walked out... maybe he didn't want to spend his time bringing up a kid that wasn't his.
It was then that Carla realised that she had spent her whole life hating the wrong man.
Her first reaction was anger, so much anger that her first instinct was to claw Johnny Connor's eyes out but she didn't because her second thought suddenly clouded the first.
Her second thought was that maybe… just maybe things would be okay if she told her loved ones.
Michelle.
Roy.
Nick.
She wanted to tell them all so bad because she thought they'd be able to help her… only they didn't, their words didn't do anything to stop Carla from feeling so numb and if anything their reactions were extremely underwhelming.
It wasn't their fault and at first Carla couldn't work out was wrong with her friend's/boyfriends reaction to all of this, it took her some time but she eventually figured out that she wanted anger and that was one reason she was sat in this backstreet cafe.
The other reason she was there was because the news that she was no longer who she thought she was, sent her into a world of complete and utter Self-destruction... because that was what Carla was good at after all.
Ruining everything good in her sorry life.
The gambling and the heavy drinking came back into her daily habits like an old friend and as she sat and frittered endless amounts of money away, she also did the same with her relationship with Nick.
She drunkenly went to bed with a man that she barley knew and now she had a continuous feeling of guilt to go with the feeling of just not knowing who she was anymore.
The only thing she could think say to Nick other than the obvious and heart felt "I'm Sorry" was that she warned him.
She warned him that she'd hurt him in the end and that she wished he had of listened to her and not been foolish enough to still take the risk.
She could already see the look on his face.
She could already feel the hurt he'd have in his eyes when he found out and on top of everything she couldn't cope with it.
The only thing worse than not telling Nick would be telling him.
So she didn't, she didn't because she loved him so much.
She didn't because she also knew how much he loved her... telling him would rid her of his love and then she really would have nothing left.
It wasn't easy of course, in fact it was one of the hardest things Carla had to do.
She had to go through each day feeling endless amounts of guilt and as the days turned into weeks Carla wasn't sure that she could cope with it anymore and that's the other reason that she ended up where she was right now.
In a Café near her old estate, a place where she and Rob would go and share a hot cup of tea and maybe a full English if they were lucky enough to have scraped together the money for it, the food really wasn't that great and neither was the tea but it was miles better than they were both offered at home.
No one knew where Carla was, she had just walked out of her flat and made her way here without telling a soul.
She didn't tell Michelle because she'd say it wasn't a good idea.
She didn't tell Nick because he'd be hurt that she couldn't get what she needed from him and she'd also have to be honest, which was something she had been trying desperately to avoid.
She wasn't sure when it had exactly happened, when she had decided that she needed to do this, all her days seemed to blur into one now she was getting barley any sleep so Carla wasn't sure the exact moment when she pressed that little phone symbol on her phone and let it dial that number she had secretly saved.
The one that she had been reluctant to delete and the one she wasn't even sure he had anymore.
She hadn't planned it.
He wasn't someone that she really wanted to see at first but when torturing her self with everything that had happened to her, she couldn't help but wonder what his reaction would be like.
She wondered what he'd look like when she told him and what he'd say.
She knew it would be so different to the reactions she had encountered recently and the thought of what he might do made Carla pick up that phone.
She didn't say much.
She just asked to see him.
She gave him a time… a place and a date before hanging up.
It was now that time, that place and that date and Carla found her self clutching onto her half drunk, cup of cold coffee for dear life.
If he didn't turn up she didn't know what she'd do.
As she sat in the horrible plastic chair, she looked down at the screensaver of her and Nick, the one they had taken on Christmas Day and the last truly happy photo she had of the pair. She stroked the screen sadly and wished that Nick's reaction to Johnny being her Dad could have satisfied her.
She knew it was selfish but she also knew that this had to be done, that the man she was waiting for, knew more about her than anyone else and when it came to her childhood, he had been the first man that she had felt comfortable enough to open up with about it.
He would say something different, do something different, react different and different was what she was counting on.
She needed a proper reaction to all of this, one with anger and passion.
She needed his reaction and just as Carla was beginning to think that this was too much, that surely he wouldn't make a trip all the way from Portsmouth to some grim and grey café just because she had asked him to, there he was.
Peter had arrived...