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Paper and Handcuffs
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The world didn’t end, it never did when it should have, instead it kept turning, with thumped bins, sighing buses and the Rover’s wiping sticky rings off tables and putting out bowls of peanuts that no one trusted.
Inside the police station, however, the temperature had dropped by a degree or two like a storm, attempting to blow away the roof.
Someone above Costello’s pay grade had read Lisa’s report, a pencil in hand. Someone else who had once owed Costello a favor had decided, that the debt had been finally paid in full and Becky had been called in for a “final briefing,“ but had instead found two police officers in uniforms waiting for her
She had laughed at first. “You can’t arrest me,” she’d said, the words came out thin, but when the cuffs had clicked, her face had hardened. The faca of a woman who had picked the wrong hill and would now die on it.
On the charge sheet, the words had read bald and bureaucratic, fraud, misconduct in public office, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and yet none of them had covered the smell of a bathroom that one night and the taste of an old song used like a crowbar or the way a good person had been turned into a tool by someone who had remembered what buttons to push.
Costello had resigned before they could decide whether to shove him or to arrest him. His office door had stayed closed ever since, his desk had been cleaned out by hands in gloves. His commendations had remained on the wall for two days too long, then had been taken down in a neat stack, glass against glass.
The street had never gotten the full story, it never did, but everyone had understood enough to nod and move on, grateful and suspicious in equal measure. Some had whispered the word “corrupt” under their breaths, others had said “shame“ as pumpkins on door steps had caved inward and then had collapsed.
Lisa had kept her badge, she’d also kept the peace of mind after choosing correctly, it hadn’t feel like triumph, more like a long, cold swim, realizing the shore was still miles away.
The Quiet After
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That night, when Becky had been taken away, Lisa and Carla had spoken for a long while, softly, knowing what words were capable of when dropping them recklessly.
“She’ll go,” Carla had said, meaning prison, and also away from us. “He’ll disappear into paperwork and rumor.”
“Good,” Lisa had replied. “Let the paperwork have him.”
They hadn’t talked much about what had happened in the bathroom of the Rover‘s, they didn’t pretend it hadn’t happened either. But trust, when it had returned, didn‘t ring a bell, it just took off its shoes and sat down quietly where it used to sit.
On a night in November, when the rain eased and the street flickered in extinguished bonfire amber, Lisa and Carla walked past the Rovers. Some one had hung fairy lights, making even the loneliest corners look somewhat forgiving. Eva, standing in the doorway, waved a towel in their direction like a flag.
“Fancy one?” Carla asked.
“Later,” Lisa replied, squeezing her hand, just because she could, because there was a hand to squeeze. Carla‘s hand.
They turned instead towards Roy’s. The bell chimed overhead, high and clear, as they entered.
Warmth rose from the ground up to meet them.
The café was almost empty, the hour too late for tea and too early for breakfast, nonetheless Roy passed two mugs of coffee across the counter, as if he’d been expecting them since autumn had started.
“How are we?” He asked, that pronoun was a small, deliberate kindness.
“Still here,” Carla said.
“Still here,” Lisa echoed, feeling the truth of it settle around her like a fluffy blanket.
A gust sent a shoal of leaves across the cobbles, somewhere, a bus sighed and drove off. The street exhaled the way small towns did, when they’ve kept a secret long enough.
Carla watched the window fog slowly. “There’s a bit of me,” she said carefully, “that will always flinch at certain songs.”
Lisa nodded. “There’s a bit of me, that will always check the bathroom in the Rover‘s is completely empty before I breathe.”
They held those words between them like fragile objects that could be carried if they’d only remembered to hold them with both hands.
Roy refilled the mugs, watching the steam rise and vanish. The clock on the wall made the dignified sound of time doing it’s job.
“Hope,” Carla said after a while, “doesn’t feel like fireworks.”
“No,” Lisa agreed. “It feels like this.”
Like two mugs cooling, like the soft scrape of a chair, like the quiet relief of a bell over a door, like rain taking a night off, and a street that had learned their names and decided to keep them safe.
When they stepped back into the dark of night, the air smelled of sugar and smoke, far off, a siren threaded the night and faded. Carla slipped her hand into Lisa’s and didn’t let go. Never again.
It wasn’t the end of danger, danger had no end, it . wasn’t a fairytale ending, nothing on those cobbles ever was, but it was the kind of ending Weatherfield allowed. The bittersweet, leaving the door open and the lights on, embracing two women, scarred but steady, walking home under a sky that had finally remembered how to be night.