Chapter Text
Carla had expected the prison to feel oppressive, the last time she had been to one was to see Rob, and look how that turned out for her in the end.
She had expected the locked doors, the harsh instructions, the fluorescent lights that were unflattering on anyones features. She had expected the metallic clunk of bolts shifting into place. She had even expected to feel uncomfortable.
What she had not expected was for Lisa to have protested her visit quite so insistently.
“You can’t seriously be considering going.”
The argument had started the night before in the kitchen. Carla had been working from home at the island, the visiting order in one hand, checking the time and identification requirements. Lisa had just come in from work, still in her coat, her expression changing the second she saw the paperwork. Carla had known immediately that she was not going to like it. She had not anticipated quite how much.
“I’m not considering it,” Carla had said, glancing back down at the letter. “I am going.”
Lisa had dropped her keys into the bowl by the door with considerably more force than necessary. “Carla, you can’t.”
Carla’s head had lifted slowly, brow arching. “You’re telling me I can’t?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t.” Carla had responded. “Sarah’s asked to see me. I’ve got a visiting order. So I’m going to see her.”
Lisa had walked further into the kitchen, shoulders rigid. “She was arrested by me, she’s part of my investigation.”
“And?”
“And you’re my wife.”
Carla had stared at her. Lisa had exhaled heavily and dragged a hand through her hair, already frustrated. “Carla, people at the station know who you are. They know I made the arrest. You turning up to visit her makes me look compromised.”
That had landed badly, not because Carla did not understand professional appearances. She did, but she also knew Kit was visiting, and if one of their own could go, why couldn’t she.
“She’s my friend,” Carla had said.
“She’s the main suspect in a murder investigation.”
“No offence Lise, but that doesn’t mean too much to me when Roy was in the same position two years ago.”
Lisa’s jaw had tightened. “For god sake Carla… I’m not wrong, not this time.”
Carla had pushed the visiting order flat against the counter. “Sarah’s worked beside me for years. She’s run that factory when I’ve been in hospital, when I was missing, when I’ve barely been able to stand upright. I’m godmother to her son, for God’s sake.”
“And none of that changes what she’s accused of.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Then why go?”
The question had been too blunt, impatient, the full authority and pigheadedness of DS Connor-Swain. Carla had felt something inside her harden. “Because Lisa, she’s a good person and she’s struggling!”
Lisa’s face had changed at that. A flash of regret first, then anger. “A murderer can’t be a good person Carla.”
“You thought that about Roy once, Roy Lisa! I’m not abandoning her just because it might make things awkward for you at work.”
“It’s not about awkwardness.”
“You just said it makes you look bad at the station.”
“It does.”
There had been no attempt to soften it. No hesitation. Lisa had planted both hands on the edge of the island and leaned towards her.
“I’m the detective who arrested her. People already talk, Carla. They talk because half the cases I touch seem to lead back to this street or the factory. They talk because every time something happens, there’s a personal connection. You walking into that prison to visit one of my arrests gives them more ammunition.”
“One of your arrests,” Carla had repeated, incredulous. “Listen to yourself. She’s your friend too, Lisa. Your neighbour, your mates fiancée.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s exactly how it sounded.”
Lisa had shut her eyes briefly. “I’m asking you not to go.”
“And I’m telling you I am.”
“Carla.”
“No.” Carla’s voice had sharpened. “You’ve arrested half of Weatherfield at one point or another. Am I expected to cut off everyone you’ve ever put in cuffs so no one at the station can gossip. There’d be no one left!”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
Lisa had gone very still. At the time, Carla had thought it was because she was fighting not to say something cruel. Later, she would remember that pause differently.
“Because Sarah is close to you,” Lisa had said finally. “Because I’m the lead detective. Because she could use you.”
Carla had laughed once, without humour.
“Use me for what? It’s not like I know anything, you don’t tell me nowt do you, and she’s hardly going to ask me to smuggle her a wrap in is she?”
“Don’t be flippant.”
“Then don’t be ridiculous.”
Lisa had stepped back, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “You are still recovering.”
There it was. The argument Carla could never win because it was disguised as concern. Carla’s face had gone cold.“Don’t you dare.”
“Prison could be triggering.”
“Stop Lisa. Don’t you dare use what she did to justify this.”
“I’m not, but darling, you were held against your will. You struggle with locked doors. You panic in enclosed spaces…”
“I know what happened to me.”
Lisa’s mouth had closed. Carla had felt heat spreading across her chest, anger masking the humiliation beneath it. She hated that Lisa had used the truth like that. Hated that every sensible concern sounded like evidence that Carla could no longer be trusted with her own choices.
“I aint made of glass,” she had said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“No. You’re trying to protect your reputation.”
The words had struck. Lisa’s eyes had flashed. “That is unfair, and you know it.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” Lisa’s voice had risen. “Everything I have done since… Becky… since then, has been about protecting you, loving you.”
Carla had looked away first. Even after all this time, Becky’s name still had the power to alter her breathing. To drag cold metal beneath her fingertips. To leave the taste of blood at the back of her throat. Lisa had noticed. Of course she had. Her expression had softened, but Carla had already raised a hand.
“Don’t.”
“Darling…”
“Don’t use her to win an argument.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Lisa had stared at her for a long moment. Then she had said, quieter, “Please don’t go.”
Something in the way she said it had almost changed Carla’s mind. Almost. There had been real fear in it. Carla had assumed it was fear for her. Fear that the prison would be too much, that she would hear a door lock behind her and lose herself in the memory of the container. She had not considered that Lisa might have been frightened of something else, of Carla seeing the wrong person, or hearing the wrong comment. Learning what Lisa had kept hidden.
Carla had picked up the visiting order. “I’m going.”
Lisa’s face had closed. “Fine.”
It hadn’t sounded fine. She had turned away, removed her coat and hung it with stiff, exact movements, refusing to look at Carla again. They had barely spoken for the rest of the evening. In bed, Lisa had lain with her back to her, that had hurt more than Carla wanted to admit.
Now, standing beneath harsh prison lighting while a sniffer dog moved carefully around her legs, Carla could still feel the cold stretch of mattress between them. She handed over her identification and visiting order.
“Carla Connor-Swain,” she said.
The officer behind the reinforced glass checked the name, compared her face to the photograph and nodded. She emptied her pockets into a tray. Her phone, keys and handbag had already been secured. Her coat was taken. She passed through the scanner, lifted her arms when instructed and allowed a female officer to conduct the final search. The process was impersonal but invasive. Every instruction made her conscious of her own body. Every closed door caused a faint tightening across her ribs.
Lisa had been right about one thing. The locks did bother her. The sound of each one sliding shut landed somewhere too deep to ignore. The container had not had a proper lock she could see, but she remembered the noise of it sealing. The scrape of metal. Becky’s footsteps moving away. The silence afterwards.
Carla forced herself to breathe. She was not there.
The corridor was warm, bright and monitored. Officers stood at either end. She could leave when the visit was finished. She was safe. Lisa’s voice in her head supplied the words automatically, ‘You’re safe, darling’.
Carla swallowed. At the next desk, she gave her name again. The guard looked at his screen, then up at her.
“Connor-Swain?”
“Yes.”
Recognition flickered across his face. He stamped the paperwork, chuckling quietly.
“Been busy with you Connor-Swains this month.”
Carla felt the blood drain from her face. The corridor seemed to tilt slightly beneath her. “I’m sorry?”
The guard’s attention had already returned to his monitor.
“Nothing. Just seen the name a few times lately.”
Carla did not move. A warning crawled slowly up her spine.
“What do you mean, seen the name?”
There were only two Connor-Swains and she hadn’t been before today, which meant Lisa had, and she hadn’t mentioned it. The guard looked at her properly then. His smile faded as he shifted in his chair. Carla’s heart began to beat harder. The argument in the kitchen replayed with sudden, brutal clarity. Carla had believed Lisa was ashamed of her visiting Sarah. What if Sarah had never been the real reason?
“There’s only one other Connor-Swain, do you mean my wife has been up here?” Her voice was low. “To see who?”
The guard’s eyes flicked to the screen. A fraction of a second. Barely anything. But Carla had spent decades reading people, she knew the moment someone realised they had said too much.
“You’ll need to speak to the visits office regarding any visitor queries,” he said, his tone suddenly formal.
Carla stared at him and her stomach clenched as a door slammed further down the corridor. The officer beside it motioned for her to continue.
Carla walked because her body understood the instruction even while the rest of her had become fixed on one thought.
Lisa had been here. Perhaps she had come for work. Perhaps she had interviewed someone. Perhaps the guard had recognised the surname from official paperwork, but then, she’d have used the officer entrance, not the visitor one.
Why had Lisa fought so hard to stop Carla coming?
Why had she made it about appearances?
Why had she brought up the container and Carla’s trauma as though the prison itself were too dangerous for her to enter?
Carla felt suddenly sick as she moved through another door. By the time Sarah was brought out, Carla had arranged her face into something passably composed.
She looked so small in prison clothes, fragile and meek, that was Carla’s first thought, and it unsettled her. Sarah always seemed larger than life despite her petite size, striding across the factory floor with files tucked under one arm, competent and composed when Carla needed her to take charge.
Now she looked tired.
Her hair was pulled back and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She sat opposite Carla at the fixed table and gave her a brittle smile. “Didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“Course I came,” Carla replied automatically. The words sounded distant to her own ears.
Sarah studied her. “Lisa know you’re here?”
Carla’s stomach twisted at the name. “Of course she knows.”
“Bet she loved that.”
“Don’t,” Carla said, “She’s worried about how it looks, how the other coppers will gossip.”
Sarah lifted both hands in surrender. “All right. I just wouldn’t have thought Lisa cared that much about gossip.”
Neither would Carla. Lisa cared about her career. She cared about procedure and integrity. She raged against corruption and hated anyone implying she had not earned her position.
But gossip?
Lisa had faced down senior officers without blinking. She had arrested neighbours, friends and colleagues when the evidence demanded it, the proof sat less than a foot from her. She did not usually shape her decisions around what people whispered in the breakroom.
Carla’s unease sharpened as the conversation moved on, though Carla absorbed very little of it. Their conversation should have mattered. Sarah talked about the kids. About what she was missing at Underworld, knowing the pressure Carla was already under with Betsy. About how slowly the days passed and how she hoped her solicitor could help get her out, likening her stint to Summers. She complained about the food and the noise and how she missed Kit, but was so happy that he’d stuck by her.
Carla listened, tried to, but the guard’s voice kept replaying in her head.
Had Lisa sat in this room?
Had Lisa walked through those same doors, emptied her pockets into the same trays and allowed the same dog to sniff at her clothes?
Who had she come to see?
Carla already knew, she simply hadn’t admitted it yet.
Sarah was halfway through recounting an argument on the wing when she gave a humourless laugh.
“Still, could be worse. That Becky is having a right time of it, not that she doesn’t deserve it, what she did to you.”
Carla’s whole body stiffened, the name landed like a blow, Sarah didn’t seem to notice.
“Cowbag. They’ve got her in segregation most of the time.”
Carla stared at her. “What?”
“Becky,” Sarah said. “They keep moving her about, she’s mostly in solitary now. For her own protection.”
The sounds of the visiting hall seemed to recede. Chairs scraping. Children talking. Officers calling out warnings. The hum of dozens of conversations. All of it dulled beneath the sudden pounding of Carla’s heart as Sarah leaned closer, lowering her voice with the grim fascination of someone pleased with the gossip they were about to share, the same mannerism of when she leant across the desk at Underworld to gossip about the residents of Weatherfield.
“She’s been attacked a fair few times. Word got around quick enough, apparently. Been a bent copper hasn’t done her any favours, and the papers covered some of what she did to you.”
Carla could smell rust. Not really. The visiting room smelled of disinfectant and cheap coffee, but suddenly, vividly, she could smell the inside of the container. Metal and damp. Her own blood. The sourness of vomit. The filthy clothes Becky had left her in for weeks on end.
She pressed her tongue hard against the back of her teeth. Sarah continued, unaware of the fissure splitting open inside her.
“Apparently some of the women have worked out she’s getting regular visits now. Twice a week, someone said. They’re hoping to get at her on the way there or back.”
Carla stopped breathing. Twice a week. Someone had been seeing Becky twice a week, and it wasn’t Betsy, not in her current condition. Twice a week. Only one other Connor-Swain who had visited frequently enough for the officer to remember the surname.
She could see Lisa sitting opposite Becky, listening to her, giving her time. Twice a week.
Carla’s mind began collecting evidence with merciless efficiency.
Lisa leaving the hospital for a couple of hours on her days off, Carla had thought she was taking her advice and looking after herself, but she hadn’t gone home and slept, clearly.
Lisa saying she was busy with work, had been called in and could Carla sit with Betsy for a few hours.
Carla had believed every word because Lisa was her wife and she had spent months rebuilding the trust Becky had tried to destroy. Her wife, who had held Carla’s hand when she woke screaming, had held Carla through the nightmares and promised her there were no more secrets. Despite never actually allowing a proper conversation about Becky and what she had done to her.
The betrayal arrived in layers. First, disbelief, then humiliation followed by a pain so severe Carla felt it physically beneath her sternum.
Lisa had not been worried about her colleagues at the station. She had been worried Carla would come here and find out. The argument had not been about Sarah - it had been concealment.
Every warning had been another attempt to keep Carla away from the truth.
The prison will trigger you.
You’re still recovering.
I’m trying to protect you.
Carla looked at Sarah, but Sarah’s face had blurred. “Who visits her?” Her voice sounded scraped raw.
Sarah frowned. “What?”
“Becky.” Carla swallowed, but it did nothing to ease the tightness in her throat. “Who’s been visiting her?”
“I don’t know.”
The image wouldn’t leave her, it tormented her, Lisa sitting across from Becky in this very room.
Becky smiling at her.
Becky leaning closer.
Becky saying Lisa’s name with all of their shared history behind it.
Carla pushed back from the table so abruptly that the fixed chair screeched across the floor as far as its bolts allowed. Several heads turned. An officer looked over sharply.
“Carla?” Sarah said.
“I have to go.”
“We have time left.”
“I’m sorry, I have to go.”
Her body had begun to shake, she hid it by clenching her hands, nails digging into her palms, but she could not stop the tremor travelling through her arms.
Sarah stared at her. “What’s happened?”
Carla could not explain it, not right now, not in the space it had been happening, saying it aloud would make it real.
Lisa had been visiting Becky.
Lisa had sat with the woman who had kidnapped Carla from her own life and locked her away in the dark. The woman who had bound her wrists until the restraints cut through her skin. Who had kicked her when she cried out. Who had left her without her medication, knowing exactly what that could do to her transplanted kidney.
Was it because Lisa knew Becky was being attacked, that Lisa knew she was in danger. Was that why she visited?
Concern?
Guilt?
Love?
The final possibility cut so deeply Carla nearly flinched. She thought of Lisa coming home from this place and touching her, climbing into their bed after a gruelling day of supporting Betsy and trying to run her business without Sarahs support, Lisa pressing kisses to the faint scars Becky had left across Carla’s wrists. Whispering that she was safe while carrying Becky’s voice home with her.
Had Lisa touched Becky, held her hands across the table?
The thought was unbearable.
Not because Carla imagined anything romantic had happened in a monitored visiting room, but because Becky did not deserve even the smallest part of Lisa. She did not deserve her attention, her compassion or the softness in her eyes when she listened.
Becky had taken Carla’s freedom. Her dignity, had left her in a freezing container to rot. Lisa had seen what was left of Carla afterwards. She had seen the bruises, the restraints wounds and the way Carla’s bones pressed against her skin and then she had chosen to visit Becky. Again after that one time. And again.
There would be an explanation. Lisa would probably tell her she had visited for Betsy. Lisa would make it sound necessary. Reasonable - she would explain why she had lied.
Why she had tried to stop Carla walking into this building.
She had let them fight.
She had watched Carla go to bed hurt and angry.
She had lain beside her in silence while knowing that every word Carla had thrown at her had missed the real betrayal entirely.
The corridor out seemed endless. Each locked door forced Carla to wait, the first slammed behind her, and her breathing caught, the second brought the container back so vividly she had to press one hand against the wall.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” an officer asked.
Carla nodded too quickly. She was not. Her body had begun to shake. She could hear metal scraping. Becky’s footsteps. Her own voice, hoarse from screaming, calling Lisa’s name into the dark.
At the final desk, the guard who had made the comment would not meet her eyes. Carla collected her belongings with unsteady hands. Her phone lit as soon as it was returned. A photograph of her and Lisa filled the screen.
Their wedding day.
Lisa laughing, forehead pressed against Carla’s, one hand curved around her waist. Carla remembered feeling almost painfully happy. She remembered thinking that every terrible thing had led her there, to someone she could finally trust without reservation.
Carla blinked, but the tear slipped free anyway. Her phone vibrated. Lisa calling.
Carla stared at the name, she knew she should answer, that it could be about Betsy, but she couldn’t, not right now.
She rejected the call.
A message arrived seconds later: How did it go?
Then another: Are you all right?
Carla almost laughed. The sound caught in her throat and turned into something dangerously close to a sob.
Had Lisa been waiting?
Had she spent the whole visit watching the time, terrified that Sarah might say something?
Perhaps that was why she had called so quickly.
To do damage control.
Carla’s fingers hovered over the screen. She typed slowly: You weren’t worried about Sarah making you look bad. You were worried I’d find out.
She stopped. Deleted it. Typed again: How long have you been visiting Becky?
She deleted that too, knowing that this was a conversation needed face to face. The first sob escaped before she could contain it, small and fractured, pulled from somewhere beneath the rage. She covered her mouth, but there was no one close enough to hear. All she could think about was the argument.
Lisa standing in their kitchen, furious that Carla wanted to visit her friend.
Lisa telling her it made her look bad.
Lisa using Carla’s trauma to frighten her away from the prison.
Lisa saying she was protecting her.
Carla had spent the entire journey feeling guilty. She had wondered whether she was being disloyal to her wife by seeing Sarah. Whether she was embarrassing Lisa at work. Whether her own stubbornness had made her selfish. All that time, Lisa had been lying.
Carla wrapped one arm around her middle, bending slightly as pain tore through her. The betrayal was not only that Lisa had visited Becky.
It was that she had tried to make Carla feel wrong for coming here. She had turned the argument back on her. Made Carla believe she was risking Lisa’s career, ignoring sensible warnings and refusing to accept her own fragility.
Anything to keep her away.
Anything to protect the secret.
Carla had survived Becky by clinging to the belief that Lisa loved her, that she was Lisa’s everything and her wife would never put another woman ahead of her again.
She had survived by trusting Lisa when she promised there would never be another lie between them.
Standing outside the prison, tears spilling down her face, Carla felt something fundamental inside her give way. She had bent over backwards to keep all of the plates spinning, to support their girl and help her regain what little independence she could in her current condition, working from the hospital as often as she could, making sure Lisa and Betsy both were supported, because she loved them, had meant her vows when she’d asked for forever.
But this, this completely violated every aspect of that love and trust, and she wasn’t going to be doormat, not when it came to Becky, never again.