Chapter 4

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," Carla huffed as she hurried barefoot along her front hall, wrapping the tie of her dressing gown in a firm bow around her waist as she went. "Keep yer hair on," she muttered as she opened the door. "Oh, it's you."

"I'm sorry," Lucas apologised, his eyes transforming into something reminiscent of a lost puppy when he saw the annoyance clear on her face. "I've come at a bad time, I'll come back later. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be silly," Carla waved off his apology, succumbing to the universal demands of hospitality. "I'm just being a lazy cow, you know, having a Saturday morning lie in."

"So I see."

Lucas allowed his eyes to wander over Carla's body, the thin satiny robe that she wore skimming lightly over her curves, every movement of hers captured and heightened by the clingy fabric. Suddenly aware of her nakedness beneath the robe, Carla folded her arms self-consciously over her chest, hiding from Lucas' gaze her nipples which stubbornly remained erect, their outline clearly visible to him.

"How can I help you?" she prompted him.

"Oh," he forced his eyes to return and meet hers. "I wanted to apologise. The other night in the pub, Lucy… she was out of line."

"It's fine, really."

"You're too kind," he shook his head sadly. "But it's not fine. She had no right, the way she acted. She embarrassed… she embarrassed herself. I'm sorry you had to see her like that."

"Like I said, it's fine, you've got nothing to apologise for. But thank you anyway."

"I just didn't want you to think…" But what Lucas didn't want Carla to think he never quite managed to verbalise.

"How is she?" Carla asked, breaking the silence that threatened to descend over them.

"Don't worry about her," Lucas said dismissively. "She'll bounce back, she always does."

"That's, umm… that's good."

"This is a nice place you've got here," he abruptly changed the subject, stepping past Carla into the entrance hall and looking around appreciatively.

"I like it," Carla said, holding her position by the still-open front door. "How did you find out where I live?"

"You told me," Lucas replied with a friendly chuckle. "Don't you remember?"

"Did I?"

"To be fair, you'd had a few drinks by then."

"That does sound like me."

"You know what you need," Lucas said. "A nice hot coffee inside you. Kitchen?"

"Umm…" Carla stammered, eventually crumbling under Lucas' gaze and pointing towards the door that lead to her kitchen. "In there."

She followed him inside her kitchen, a cosy space with the cottage's original stone walls proudly on display, a cast iron range that kept the room toasty warm throughout winter, a solid oak table with matching chairs dominating the space, and a picture window that overlooked the green fields outside.

She watched in silence as Lucas took charge and immediately began rummaging through her cupboards, pulling out mugs and teaspoons, coffee and sugar.

"Where do you keep the–" he asked as he continued to open and close the bank of overhead cupboards that lined the wall above the countertop. "Never mind, found it!" he triumphantly pulled a box of filter papers from the cupboard and set to work.

"I might nip upstairs and get dressed."

"You take your time," he granted her leave. "Everything here is under control. You take yours black, don't you? Your coffee?"

"Yeah," Carla confirmed, pausing at the kitchen door to watch Lucas as he dashed about her kitchen, filling up the water jug, measuring out the coffee into the filter bag, and switching on the power to the coffee maker.

"Go on then," he urged her with a smile. "Go and get yourself decent."

Carla padded quietly down the stairs. She'd been longer than she'd planned, unable to resist the call of a hot shower to fully wake her up after being dragged so unceremoniously from her slumber. Opening the kitchen door, she was surprised to find it empty, the smell of freshly brewed coffee the only sign that anyone had been in there that morning.

Backing out of the kitchen, she turned and entered the living room, a sizeable rectangular room with full-length windows along one wall to take advantage of the country views and an open fireplace on the opposite wall, with bookshelves flanking either side.

And there, in one of her armchairs, her most comfortable and her favourite no less, sat Lucas, quite at home with his half-drunken coffee close to hand on the side table, while in his lap rested a small stack of photo albums.

"Oh, hi," he greeted her with a smile, nodding to a mug of coffee placed neatly on a coaster on the coffee table. "Your coffee, as ordered."

"Ta," she picked up the coffee and gulped it down, desperate for something to clear her head, to make sense of what was happening. But still she remained standing, watching him as he flicked through the albums, stark and undeniable evidence of her past, both the good and the bad.

"How old were you here?" he asked, holding up the album to display one of the pages that was dedicated to her first wedding.

"Twenty-two."

"That'd be about right," he nodded in agreement. "Your hair, it's…"

"It was the fashion at the time," she retorted defensively.

"Don't get me wrong, you looked amazing, you always do. So…" he asked expectantly. "Tell me about this fella. Who was he? How did you two meet?"

"Umm…" Carla hesitated, struggling to find the right words to describe the decade she had spent with her first husband. "That's Paul," she explained. "Paul Connor. Listen–"

"Ahhh, so that's where you got the Connor name from," he nodded in understanding. "How about…" he closed the first album and opened another, searching through until he found the photo he was clearly looking for, another wedding photo. "And this? Is this Nick?"

Carla held out her hand, snatching the album from Lucas' grip the moment he offered it to her. She looked at the photo in question, at the man staring back at her, unmoving, unspeaking, from the pages of an album that once she had cherished and now kept, she didn't know why she kept this album; out of habit, out of sentimentality, or an inability to fully let go, she didn't know.

"No," she said, snapping the album shut. "I don't mean to be rude but I, umm, I've got plans today, I need to get moving."

"Oh," Lucas said, taken aback by Carla's pronouncement.

"Thanks for dropping by," she said with a smile, her arm half-raised, her hand pointing in the direction of the door.

"I thought it was the right thing to do."

"And I appreciate it."

"Well, then," he said, reluctantly rising to his feet and staring at Carla in anticipation.

"I'll see you at work," Carla definitively signalled the end of his visit.

With nowhere to go and no plans to keep, Carla wandered aimlessly around her house long after Lucas had finally left it. But ultimately, inevitably, she ended up back in her living room, standing in front of the photo albums she had left on the coffee table. She picked up second album and, sinking into the armchair recently vacated by Lucas, flicked through the pages until she came to the photograph he had been so curious about.

Nick, Carla chuckled at the thought of the man in the photo being mistaken for Nick, at how he would have laughed at the comparison. This was no Nick Tilsley, no, this was Peter Barlow.

They should have been celebrating their third wedding anniversary in a few months' time, she thought bitterly, but instead she was here, hundreds of miles from home, once again all alone. She had long ago buried her feelings for Peter, buried them deep. It had been the only way she could move on with her life. And for months now, all of her thoughts had been of Nick, of their marriage, of their future together. But now she couldn't help wondering about Peter, where he was right at that moment, what he was doing, who he was with.

With a snap, she shut the album and, without hesitating, she rose to her feet and put it back in its place on her bookshelf. She couldn't afford to reminisce on her past with Peter, she knew the dangers that dwelled there. Instead, she consciously thought about Devon, about her new job, her new friends, and her new future that she was determined to build there. A future without Peter Barlow. She must forget him, she repeated, assuring herself that one day she would be successful. Whether she truly believed it or not, only time would tell.