Out of all the things that Peter had thought Carla might tell him… This would have been the very last thing Peter had expected.
He thought he had prepared himself for it.
That whatever Carla was going to tell him would definitely be something he could handle but no…
Hearing that she had cheated on Nick had totally shocked him to his core.
That wasn't something Peter had ever thought Carla could do… not to anyone, not again.
He thought that everything he had done to her would have really made her determined not to be the same and yet...
He then paused for a moment and kept quiet, not wanting to jump to any conclusions about the situation… not before he had all the facts.
There had to be a lot more to all of this.
"You… What?" He ended up saying, after endless moments of silence as he watched the look on Carla's anguished face.
"You heard me." Carla said, it was very clear that she was trying very hard not to burst right into tears as she spoke.
It was also very clear that she was totally mortified.
"I…" Peter began, swallowing hard and then shaking his head. "I'm sorry... I just don't know what you want me to say." Carla nodded at him and folded her arms as the wind that surrounded them got harsher.
There was another, very long silence before Peter eventually spoke again. Carla could tell that he was completely and utterly stunned by her latest revelation and she already hated the way he was looking at her.
He was also stood with his arms folded, watching her but also shaking his head slowly, still in total awe of what he had just heard.
"Ermmm you said…" He cleared his throat awkwardly, "You said you wanted to know how I did it…"
"Yeah." Carla nodded again, her voice quiet as if she was totally ashamed of herself.
"How… I cheated for so long without saying anything?" Peters voice was quiet now because he too was ashamed of his behaviour.
"I don't want you to feel bad Peter." Carla said, reading his expression and feeling terrible. "I just… I don't know what to do anymore… I can't stop thinking about what I did."
"Am I the only person who you've told?" Peter asked,
"No... Chelle knows what I did but she just keeps telling me not to say anything." Carla answered.
"Who is it?" Peter said, staring at Carla intently.
He had to ask.
He had to know.
"Who did you… Who was he?" Peter asked, trying to rack his brains and think of someone that Carla would have cheated on Nick with.
He couldn't come up with anyone that would make sense so he just assumed it was someone he didn't know as Carla shook her head and sorrowfully asked,
"Does it matter?" There was no way she wanted to admit to Peter that she had slept with his sister's boyfriend but she also knew that if he really wanted to get it out of her then he could have.
Peter still seemed to have a hold on Carla, even after all this time.
He still had all of her attention and she couldn't do anything to stop it either.
"I guess not…" Peter began, "I'm just… Finding this hard to get me head around." He explained, sighing sadly and wanting desperately to find out more.
"Why?" Carla asked almost irritatedly, she still couldn't stand the way Peter was looking at her because he looked so stunned… almost disappointed in fact.
He was acting as if she was some sort of angel, someone who had never done anything hurt anyone.
Carla hated that Peter was watching her like that, like she was good because knew she was nothing of the sort.
"Because… After what I did to you, I just can't imagine you…" Peter stopped talking as Carla sighed and nodded at him. He hated talking about what he did to Carla, especially to her.
It was still so raw... the pain he caused even though it had been so long since it all happened... neither one of them would forget it.
"What? Doing the same?" Carla said, letting out a bitter laugh and shaking her head. "Well I did… Just the once mind but still… I cheated."
"When did all this happen?" Peter asked, feeling slightly odd for talking about such a subject in the middle of the street.
It was almost five pm and it was beginning to get dark too, it was so cold that they cold both see their breath as they spoke and so cold that as the bitter winds blew at them again, both of their bodies shook simultaneously.
"New Years Day." Carla replied, shaking her head and sniffing because that was actually the day after Nick's birthday. That was the day she had cheated on him and it only made her feel even more despicable.
"So…. Was that after you found out about Jonny then?" Peter asked, slowly but surely understanding a little more about the situation.
"Yeah." Carla said, looking down at her cold hands, which had turned red from the cold. "It's no excuse though… Not really."
"Oh come on…" Peter said sympathetically. "Carla your world has just been totally turned upside down… You're bound to make a few mistakes because of it…" He watched as Carla shivered again, shaking her head because in her eyes there was absolutely no excuse for what she had done.
"Yeah well... that mistake... it haunts me day and night." Carla said, "I haven't been able to think about anything else." She added, although she wasn't being one hundred per-cent truthful now.
Since deciding that she needed to confide in Peter about this, Carla's mind had been slightly pre-occupied. She had been able to spend some time without thinking about cheating on Nick… although it probably wasn't so great that she had been thinking all about Peter instead.
"So go on then…" Carla breathed, "How d'ya manage not to go completely crazy then?" Peter lit another cigarette, mainly just because he felt like having a cigarette would warm him up. Carla raised an eyebrow at him and waited as patiently as she could for his answer.
"Well?' She eventually said, "Peter please? I can't understand how you managed to keep… her quiet for so long…"
Even now, after all these months… years in fact, Carla still couldn't say her name.
She still couldn't speak the name of the woman who tore her world apart and she could probably never speak that name again.
"Peter… How did you do it? I'm desperate ere." Peter could see that. It was obvious that she was desperate. Her green eyes were red, her nose was sore and her body trembled when the winds came once again.
"You know how I did it…" Peter began, taking his lit cigarette out of his mouth and licking his lips. Carla frowned slightly at Peter so he took it too mean that she didn't understand. "I drank… I drank a lot."
Carla didn't say anything then, she just sighed and swallowed as Peter took a very long and deep drag of his fag.
She suddenly felt slightly disappointed because she had hoped that Peter had come up with some vast coping mechanism that had helped him get through it but in reality, she remembered how he really had just drunk his way through it all and that was something that Carla knew wasn't going to help.
Alcohol no longer numbed the pain anymore.
"It was different when I cheated on Leanne you see…" Peter said, breaking the silence, as the sun almost set in the distance. "I didn't have to drink my way through it because I didn't feel all that bad… Wait, that sounds terrible but what I mean is that by the time me and you had got together I had pretty much fallen out of love with her."
Peter hated the way this all sounded. He hated that he had quite a bit of experience in betraying the women in his life and most of all he hated that he had to draw on it to make Carla feel some sort of comfort.
"Okay…" Carla nodded, looking down at her frozen hands for a moment instead of looking at Peter.
"But with you…" Peter began again, staring at Carla attentively and moving closer to her as he threw the rest of his cigarette onto the ground. She looked back up at him as he continue to speak. "With you it was different, a lot different… it was agony…"
"N why's that?" Carla asked, watching him fixedly, with her eyes wide and as if she was hanging on his every word.
"Because I never fell out of love with you… I could never fall out love with you Carla." Peter said, shaking his head solemnly.
Peter's words made Carla feel utterly... completely weak.
She hadn't been expecting him to say something so heart warming... something so overwhelming and even though it was too little too late, she still couldn't help but let a very small smile creep onto her face.
"Believe it or not I really detested what I did to you Carla... and ultimately that's why I ended up back on the booze… it was my way of coping with it all." Peter explained,
Carla nodded slowly remembering exactly when Peter had started drinking again, remembering how it had felt when he had come home and she could smell the alcohol on his breath for that first time in ages.
She remembered feeling totally useless and as if it was something that she was doing that had driven him to the drink.
Peter must have read her mind because suddenly he shook his head at Carla and said a very stern,
"None of it was your fault Carla. I deeply regret what I did to you every single day of my life. I was a foolish... foolish man, I let my ego get the better of me and I ruined absolutely everything… it was nothing to do with you… please know that. Carla you are perfect."
"No I'm not." Carla said plainly, shaking her head for about the a hundredth time that day.
She couldn't bare to be complimented these days, not by anyone, especially not by Peter.
"I'm not perfect…" She sniffed, tears piercing her eyes as Peter stood before her.
She was clearly getting herself worked up again as she thought about what Peter had just said.
"I'm no where flamin near Perfect… hell if I were perfect you wouldn't have gone off with someone else would ya?"
"Carla don't…" Peter begged, watching Carla as the tears that were beneath her eyes spilled down her cheeks.
"It's true Peter…" Carla continued, almost short of breath. "If I were perfect me own Dad wouldn't have abandoned me for all those years and if I were perfect I wouldn't have slept with Robert."
Peter had stepped forward to take hold of Carla to calm her down but when he heard the name Robert he stopped dead in his tracks.
"Robert?" He said, mentally going through all the Roberts he knew.
There was an old mate called Robert from school, a friend from work called Robert and then there was...
"Robert Preston?" Peter said, staring at Carla in disbelief.
She just nodded. What else could she do?
"Yep…" Carla inhaled, she could tell that Peter was thinking all sorts about her and if she was honest she couldn't blame him. "It wasn't planned… It were nothing to do with him… not really. I weren't in my right mind, I was a complete mess and he were just there really… Y'know I'd like to blame it all on the amount I had been drinking that night but if I'm honest… I weren't that drunk… Not really... I knew exactly what I were doing… I walked right out of that casino with him... I went to bed with him and I didn't even think twice about it."
Once again Peter was speechless. He didn't actually know what to say by this point.
Now he was not only informed that Carla had cheated on Nick but he was informed that it was with his Sister's ex husband... the same man she had recently got back with.
This situation just got a whole lot more complicated.
The word Casino kept repeating back and forth in his head but before he could ask about it, Carla read his mind this time.
She ran a hand through her long hair and sighed heavily before saying,
"Last year… I went through a lot… I started gambling because unfortunately wine just doesn't quite do it for me anymore…" She paused and waited to see if Peter was going to speak again, he was still in utter astonishment but eventually… he did speak and what he did say, well Carla wasn't expecting it.
She was looking down again, ashamed. A few strands of her brown hair fell in front of her eyes but suddenly she felt a hand brush it out of her face and tuck it behind her ear.
Peter's touch was rather overwhelming for Carla and as he left a hand gently rested on her flushede cheek, he took a deep breath and said,
"What on earth ave I done to you eh?" Carla dithered in front of Peter and kept quiet as he bit his lip in a concerned fashion. "I should ave been better… This is all my fault… I should ave been a proper husband…"
At first Carla let him completely in.
She let him touch her and hold her.
She let Peter wash right over her and just for a moment she forgot all about Nick.
She suddenly felt just like she did back in 2012 when everything was different... new and exciting.
"Your life shouldn't be this way." Peter said quietly and he moved closer.
He moved too close because it was that step too far that snapped Carla back to reality.
"Yeah… well it is." She muttered as Peter devastatingly removed his hand from her cheek.
That was it.
The moment was over.
There was a long and lingering silence one only filled with the traffic that was speeding past them.
Carla stubbornly folded her arms again and then said,
"This is isn't about you Peter… or us…" She sounded panicked as she spoke.
As if that short but sublime moment between her and Peter meant more than they were both letting on.
"Things are different now… I'm different… I've changed… I've done things I could never imagined doing… I just really really don't know what to do anymore Peter." She wiped her a tear that had run down her cheek and sniffed again as he began to speak once more.
"Carla… I know that you must feel terrible about what happened with Robert but you weren't thinking straight."
"It doesn't matter Peter… it's no excuse." Carla said firmly, hating that Peter was making excuses for her. He was really trying to make her not feel bad and she couldn't help but think that she didn't deserve it.
"You interrupted me..." Peter said softly, putting his hands into his pockets and shuffling on his feet to keep warm. He had started to get a headache whilst being out in the cold and talking to Carla but he ignored the pain because she was still the most important thing in his world. "What I was going to say was that on top of all that, it only happened the once… I mean… let's be honest… it could ave been a lot worse... you could ave been me."
"No Peter… whether it was once or a hundred times. I betrayed Nick..." Carla sobbed, "I betrayed him and I cannot deal with keeping it a secret from him for much longer."
"Then don't." Peter said making Carla stop crying in an instant.
"What?" She asked, staring at him in awe.
"Don't keep it a secret… own up. Tell him what you did." Peter said, as if it was all so easy and as if that was what he had done when he had cheated in the past.
"But… it'll destroy him." Carla said, thinking about sitting down at telling Nick all about what she had done.
"It's destroying you." Peter replied gently, "You can't do this anymore… you need to tell him."
"He'll hate me." Carla nodded, "He really will."
"Yeah maybe… although I doubt it." Peter said, "Nick will understand... I mean he is no saint after all. He's betrayed the women in his life for reasons a lot more ridiculous than the one you ave." Peter had to stop himself just then, he didn't want to start bad mouthing Nick in front of Carla like this because he knew how bitter it would sound.
He knew it would sound like it was just because he was jealous so instead he just sighed and said, "If he loves you as much as I reckon he does… he'll forgive you."
Carla nodded again and really tried to take in what Peter had just said to her.
She tried to listen to him as much as she could but there was still a little voice inside her head that told her Nick wouldn't forgive her and that he would end things between them.
She then thought about not telling him... out of everything the only good thing about not telling Nick would be that he would probably never leave her.
If he didn't know, he would probably stay by her side forever and she wouldn't be alone.
"I know what you're thinking." Peter said, gaining Carla's full attention as he spoke. "How come I can tell you to own up when I lied to you for so long?"
"The thought had crossed me mind..." Carla said and it was well and truly dark now. It had also grown colder than ever and they both knew that they couldn't stay stood in the street for much longer.
They both knew that sooner or later they'd have to go.
"Well take it from someone who knows eh…" Peter said, "As hypocritical as this all sounds… Honesty really is the best policy."
"I know…" Carla agreed, "I just… I've been so scared to tell him because… I don't want to lose him… I really can't lose him Peter..."
"I know…" Peter nodded dejectedly, "I know... because that's exactly how I felt… about you."
Silence had then returned.
Carla couldn't quite look Peter in the eye because suddenly things made a little bit of sense.
Suddenly she understood just a little about why Peter had lied for so long.
Obviously she was still in turmoil over the fact she had been betrayed by him but as he stood before her... for the first time she felt as if she understood what he did and why.
"Seriously Carla… that man would be a complete and utter fool for letting you go over this." Peter said, smiling at Carla in the best way that he could.
He would never... never in a million years of dreamed that he would ever be trying to support Carla into sorting things out with another man… especially if that man was Nick Tilsley.
Peter would have normally assumed that he would have done everything in his power to stop Carla from moving on but he knew, deep down he knew that would be selfish, he knew that Carla deserved a world of happiness and if Nick made her feel that way then all Peter could do was try his hardest to get things right again.
"I'm… gonna tell him." Carla said bravely. "I should tell him."
"Yes." Peter nodded, "You really should… and not just about Robert… about me too. He should know it all Carla… he'd want to know it all."
"I know…" Carla said and after thinking about it some more she said. "I'm going to tell him tonight... I have to tell him. I can't live this way anymore." Carla added, sure that whatever happened tonight was going to define the rest of her life.
Whether Nick forgave her or not, she knew that from now on, things were going to change.
So there they stood... Carla and Peter.
In the freezing cold and whilst they made some very companionable small talk, It was easy for both of them to see that their time was pretty much up.
They had been talking like this for a long while now and now that Carla seemed to have what she needed to continue with her life and now that she had calmed down a little bit, Peter decided to bite the bullet first, he didn't want to of course, heck he could have stayed talking to Carla all night but he knew she had to go home... back to Nick.
"Right…" He said, "It's bloody freezing out ere, I think we better get going don't you."
"Yeah I spose you're right." Carla nodded, her heart beginning to pound as she thought about what going home and telling Nick would bring.
"Unless you're not ready..." Peter said, biting his lip again and waiting for Carla's response.
"I guess I'm ready as I'll ever be." Carla nodded again, taking a deep breath.
There was an awkward glance between the two before she rolled her eyes and slowly wrapped her arms around Peter's middle.
It was act that shocked them both but it was also an act that had been long over due.
"What's this in aid of?" Peter asked, trying not to get too moved by the way she was holding him so close to her.
"Don't be dense Peter." Carla tutted, shaking her head. "This is for today... you really didn't ave to come ere… you could ave just told me to get lost."
"Never." Peter said, shaking his head and letting himself embrace Carla back… just for a moment though, because being this close to her was torture... especially when he thought about it being the last time he'd get that close.
"Thank you." Carla breathed, absentmindedly taking in Peter's scent as she inhaled in the cold air that surrounded them.
"You're welcome." Peter replied, wondering if she'd let go first... which she did.
"What are you gonna do now then?" Carla asked, letting go and wondering if he'd maybe come back to the street with her. "Do… ya want a lift back?" Carla asked, her breath completely visible in the evening air.
"Erm…" Peter said, glancing around him and then shaking his head. "I think not."
"Oh… right." Carla said feeling slightly foolish now.
"I don't think it's a good idea if I go back with you right now… I'm still really angry with this Johnny Connor to be honest with ya…" Peter said but he trailed off when he saw Carla smirk.
"You don't need to make excuses." She said, "I get that it'll be a little weird to come back with me... it's fine."
"It's not an excuse... I'm serious..." Peter insisted, putting his cold hands back into his pocket, mainly so that he didn't reach out and take hold of Carla once again. "Not that I know what this Johnny even looks like... I just don't think I'm quite ready to go back just yet… I mean I'll definitely come back later to see me Dad n Si n stuff, I'm not going to leave without popping into see em… I think I just need an hour or so."
"Okay." Carla nodded understandingly. She looked incredibly worried about going back to the street but she tried to tell herself that she was doing the right thing as Peter coughed awkwardly and then said,
"Can you do me a favour?"
"Sure… I mean after what you did for me today… anything." Carla said, wondering what Peter could be about to ask her.
"Could you just… let me know what happens… with Nick… I know I ave no right I just hate the idea of not knowing how it all turned out… even a little text would do… just so I know that you're okay." Peter watched Carla nervously and was sure that she would say no but as she nodded he felt a wave of relief rush over him.
"I'll let you know." She said and she meant it, even though the prospect of speaking to Peter over the phone was slightly odd. "I've still got your number." She admitted shyly.
"Good." Peter said smiling sheepishly as he and Carla began finally walking away from that cafe that they had met up at earlier on today.
He walked Carla to her car and as she got in it and waved goodbye he wished that he'd had the courage to hug her again.
Just one more time would have been heaven.
She drove away from Peter and as he walked the streets aimlessly he really and truly hoped that she and Nick were going to be okay.
Peter still hated Nick with every bone in his body but if Carla loved Nick then Peter knew that he had to get past those feelings of hatred.
That was why he hadn't gone back to the street with her straight away.
He still needed time to get used to the idea of Carla and Nick.
He knew that if he had seen Nick he'd feel his blood boil and that he just needed a little while longer to prepare for that.
Peter strolled slowly in the direction of Coronation Street but on the way he decided to pop into the local chemist to get some painkillers for that headache of his that was still bothering him.
He pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge and approached the till to ask for some painkillers, which were kept behind it.
There were a few people in front of Peter, a blonde middle aged woman was at the front talking to the pharmacist about the medication that she was on and behind her was a man with greying black hair and a black coat, tutting and looking down at his watch, he was obviously in some sort of rush but Peter wasn't, he was trying to delay his return to the street for just that little bit longer so he just waited patiently.
He waited patiently in his own little world, until the blonde woman walked past him and the greying man in front stepped forward with a sigh and said in a gruff voice,
"I'm ere to pick a prescription for Johnny Connor."