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When going home to the house she half owned seemed more than she could manage Carla got into her car and drove. It didn’t escape her notice that the route she had taken out of Manchester ended up being the one Kit had sped them along two days earlier. That puts her in mind of a low stakes exchange in a hospital lift and she stops in a siding to google a pub name, then continues northeast.
She finds the Woolpack easily enough, and slips inside. A man with long hair takes her order and pours it carefully. She takes a seat at the bar and studies the weekday punters, one or two might look familiar.
When the pregnant woman appears she has a boy with her (aged 9 or 12? Carla isn’t good at kid’s age's) who she hands off to a tall man she calls Ross; they disappear off outside with a football and the woman takes up residence behind the bar. She’s old to be pregnant, Carla had thought at the time that she must be close in age to herself. She spots Carla fast enough.
“Din’t think you’d actually turn up!”
“Didn’t really plan to, but I want to ask you a favour.” Carla fiddles with a beer mat, then launches in. “The people who helped move my … Lisa’s car, do you know them? They mostly all come in here, right?”
“Yes, I think I know who from our lot was there, I can ask around to be sure.”
“Can I put my card down to buy them all a round, two rounds of drinks later? As a thank you? I don’t know what I’d have done if we hadn’t got Lisa out of there.”
The publican pulls a notepad and pen out. “Let me make a list. She going to be okay then, your Lisa?”
“Healthwise, yes, she’s recovering fine. How about your husband?”
“Yeah, they fixed up his arm, that should heal okay. He’s still in the hospital though.”
“I’m surprised you are here and not there.”
“If I was there we’d just be having the same argument around again.”
They go silent for a moment. Then the woman remembers the paper and starts writing out a list, saying names as she goes.
“Moira, and our Cain, our Aaron and Rob, our Chas and Joe fuckin’ Tate. That’s probably it, I think Liam and our Sarah and Jacob were helping with other patients.”
“Is that the doctor and the medical student that were helping everyone alongside Asha? Better include them and all. Sounds like you’re related to a lot of them.”
“There's a lot of Dingles in the village.” She tears off the sheet and tucks it into the till. “I’ll make sure they get their drinks and send you an account. I’m Charity Dingle by the way.”
“Carla Connor.” Carla gives her details and returns to her drink as Charity moves to serve another customer.
Over the afternoon Charity moves back to talk to her between tasks, asks her about her big and smaller issues. Carla tells her the whole sorry dead-Becky story, about the supposed gang and the way Becky had manipulated and gaslit Lisa, about what she now suspects their marriage must have been like, about how Lisa had slept with Becky. She supposes it’s easier to tell a stranger this, she certainly doesn’t feel she can talk about it with anyone in her real life, anyone who knows Lisa.
“It’s not like I can give advice on handling cheating,” admits Charity “I’ve cheated too many times myself. In most cases it was on guys who’d done worse to me, but not always, I've done the unforgivable. But if that Becky did such a number on your Lisa I’m not sure if she’d really have known if she was coming or going. I think you need to talk to her. Maybe get her to talk to someone else, too.”
Carla then listens as Charity, keeping her voice low, lays out an outlandish story of being a surrogate for her granddaughter except the baby might not be hers, and that her husband Mack was so upset because the child might be his and that’s why they had been on the road that night. And she wasn’t sure how Ross fit into it, Charity had started to say something about him, and then said actually he had nothing to do with it, he was just Moses’ father.
She’s gathered that Sarah, the granddaughter who’d been at the accident, is the daughter of Charity’s eldest who lives in Australia, and then there were three or four sons, that the man who’d served her was Ryan the oldest, and the boy she’d seen was Moses.
She notices when a blonde in a jumper comes in, accompanied by a bald guy with a round face. The blonde hesitates when she spots Charity behind the bar, but then continues inside, ignoring Charity’s scowl, taking a seat near the back while the man goes up for their drinks.
The next time Charity comes by Carla nods towards them. “Who's the blonde?”
“Ah, yeah, that’s my ex, Vanessa, local vet. She’s the one who told Mack about the baby.”
“No love lost there, then.”
Charity looks pained. “I fucked up good and proper with her. We were really happy before that. Reckon she hates me now.”
Carla enquires if Vanessa had been her first girlfriend and Charity laughs. “No, my first girlfriend were more than 20 years ago. Pretty much always been bisexual, me.”
They end up bonding over both having been married to four different men. “At least I never managed to marry any of mine twice,” crows Charity.
Moses come back inside with another boy, with dark hair and eyes, who shoots around the bar to give Charity a hug. She tousles his hair, calls him Johnnybobs, and then sends him off to Vanessa in the back of the pub. Moses grabs two packs of crisps from behind the bar and goes to join them.
“Stepson?” asks Carla.
“Adopted son,” says Charity with a note of pride in her voice. “You’ve got a stepdaughter, right?”
“Yeah, Betsy, reckon she’s my stepdaughter now even if her mum and I never marry.” She thinks about holding Betsy in the middle of the mayhem on Tuesday, protecting her, yeah, they’re family no matter what.
“Hold onto that,” says Charity. “That Becky went to a lot of effort to make you let go of your family, you probably don’t want to oblige her now.”
Carla nods. “In that case I’d better get back to them. Good luck with the baby. Reckon it’ll still be family no matter whose genes it’s carrying.”
Charity barks a laugh and salutes her as she leaves the pub. She zips up her hoody and walks faster to the car. It’s a long drive back to Manchester and she needs to think about what she is going to say to Lisa.