There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel for Carla Connor (Alison King) after tonight’s Coronation Street, as she managed to escape her cupboard prison.
Poor Carla has spent Christmas locked up and tormented by unhinged love-rival Becky Swain (Amy Cudden), who has all but taken her place around the dinner table at No.6.
And that’s not the only place she’s been, as she has delighted in telling Carla.
See, it is clear that Becky is incredibly insecure and certainly sees Carla as a major threat to her family plans – which is ironic given that she completely abandoned them when she faked her own death…
Despite having kept a low profile living abroad for almost four years, leaving wife Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) and daughter Betsy (Sydney Martin) to suffer alone with their agonising grief, Becky flew home almost immediately after realising that Lisa had made the choice to move on.
With Lisa’s engagement to Carla all over social media, the detective sergeant got the shock of her life when the second coming of Becky Swain waltzed into her living room, declaring that the whole thing had been an elaborate hoax.
To cut a long story short, Becky wasn’t killed in a hit and run as Lisa and Betsy had been told. It was all a lie to cover the fact that she had been moved to Spain under a new identity to escape a gang that she’d crossed in an undercover operation gone wrong.
In a bid to reclaim her old life with Lisa and their daughter, Becky made out that she was still in imminent danger and needed protecting – something which Carla didn’t buy for a second.
Though Becky’s manipulation and attempts to drag Lisa away from Carla were clear as day to the factory boss, Becky had a way of getting under Lisa’s skin, her tactics clearly working.
‘The coercive control and that manipulation and the drip-feeding, that’s something that [Lisa’s] been so used to for twenty years,’ actress Vicky Myers explained to Metro at the Corriedale premiere.
‘So she’s questioning her relationship that she had with Carla, in that sense, but she’s also grappled with fear in that she’s lost Becky once, she knows what it feels like. She has to protect Betsy. Betsy is her world, so she’s so confused at the moment, she’s emotionally fraught, she’s totally distraught and it’s whether or not she’ll eventually get to see through it.’
Unable to put up with Becky’s interference in their once happy relationship, Carla decided to call it quits, with Lisa later declining her request that they try again to make things work – essentially handing Becky what she’s wanted all along on a silver platter.
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However, as one of the only people able to see Becky for who she really is, Carla set out on a mission to expose the truth – but sadly things didn’t quite go to plan.
Lisa believes that Carla really has moved on, thanks to some clever social media posting from Becky, who refuses to let her wife slip through her fingers a second time.
With Carla bound and gagged in her closet, Becky has had full control of her phone, which she has used to post beachside pictures of Carla and send Lisa text messages about giving up on their relationship.
There was a tiny glimmer of hope when Becky accidentally left the phone within Carla’s reach, but things went south when Betsy called, alerting Becky to her mistake.
Carla managed to answer the call, but with a knife at her throat she was forced to go along with Becky’s lies. Refusing to give up easily, Carla took a long shot by making up the name of a fake hotel using the mismatched words she’d managed to get out of DI Costello (Daon Broni).
What she ended up with was the ridiculously named ‘Rhubarb Hill Hotel’, where she was apparently housed in the ‘Blessing Suite’. More on that later…
Throughout all of this and beyond, Becky has been tormenting Carla with tales of what she and Lisa have been getting up to in bed while her captive has been fighting for her life with no access to her anti-rejection meds.
This hasn’t yet managed to break Carla’s spirit though, as she pointed out that her being out of the way was the only way Lisa would ever choose Becky over her.
As Carla continued to push, Becky lashed out, throwing a plate at the wall and locking the doors again.
Little did either of them know, this had just provided Carla with the means to escape. When she later found a sharp shard from the plate on the floor beside her, Carla used it to cut herself free, before biding her time until Becky returned.
Once she got back and unlocked the cupboard, Becky didn’t have time to register what hit her as Carla burst through, pushing her as hard as she could.
As Becky tumbled to the ground, she hit her head on the coffee table, rendering herself unconscious.
With Carla standing over her, it seems there is nothing left to keep her from returning to Lisa and Betsy and revealing who Becky really is and exactly what she’s been up to… Or is there?
Remember that ridiculous hotel name we mentioned earlier? Well, Becky not only thought it was stupid, but also realised that it had thrown an especially large spanner into her otherwise perfect plan.
However, it turns out that she has a tech whizz in her corner, who was able to quickly throw together a website for the made-up hotel, in case anyone went looking.
And go looking they did, as Sarah Platt (Tina O’Brien) and Kit Green (Jacob Roberts) started to have doubts about Carla’s current situation.
Having found the words ‘hill’ and ‘rhubarb’ noted down in Carla’s diary from before she went missing, they were confused when Betsy mentioned it as the name of her hotel.
When they looked it up online, the freshly made website appeared, and Kit was quick to ring the number listed, asking for Carla.
Despite testing the supposed receptionist all the way through the call, everything about the story stuck, though it was clear Kit still wasn’t entirely convinced.
News of Kit’s call very quickly reached Becky, who instructed her accomplice to keep the website live to avoid suspicion.
But who is the mysterious person doing Becky’s bidding, and could they prove dangerous as Carla attempts her escape?
