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After one of the most draining business meetings she’d sat through in months, Carla wanted one thing and one thing only - to get back to the factory, finish the last of her paperwork, and go home to Lisa and the girls and Ryan.
Sarah was still talking in her ear as Carla turned the corner, barely listening as she cut across the cobbles with purposeful strides. Her whole body went cold in an instant as she turned the corner and saw the billowing smoke.
“Sarah, I’ll call you back.” She ended the call before Sarah could answer, phone already limp in her hand as she stared, her heartbeat suddenly hammering so violently it made her feel sick.
Dev was outside, phone to his ear, Bernie beside him, both of them staring in horror toward the café. Carla was moving before she fully registered it, her boots striking hard against the cobbles as dread rose sharp and fast in her throat.
“Is that a fire?” she asked, though she already knew it was.
“Yeah, we think so,” Bernie replied, voice tight, while Dev kept talking rapidly into the phone, giving details to the operator, confirming the fire brigade was on the way. Carla’s eyes were fixed on the smoke pouring from Roys. Her stomach dropped so hard it felt like the ground had vanished beneath her.
“Is Roy in there?” she asked, and even to her own ears her voice sounded wrong, already cracking around the edges with fear.
Bernie turned to her immediately, hearing the panic there, seeing it spread across Carla’s face. “No. Him and Nina have gone to a Bat convention.”
But Carla barely heard the reassurance. The last few months, everything with Becky, had rewired something in her, fear no longer arrived in manageable doses when it was in regards to those she loved. It came all at once, brutal and absolute, snatching the breath from her lungs and flooding every inch of her with catastrophic certainty.
“Roy’s definitely not in there?” she asked again, more urgently this time.
Bernie stepped closer, softening instantly at the look on Carla’s face, hand rubbing her arm in an attempt to soothe.
“No, no darling, he’s gone away, he’s gone away.”
But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough because bad things happened when people assumed other Peoples safety, ahe was the textbook example of that after three weeks of being held hostage while her loved ones presumed she was abroad. Her hands were already shaking as she pulled out her phone and called him.
Straight to voicemail. Her heart lurched as she tried again, hoping they were in some stupid cave looking at ugly bats and had no signal. It went straight to voicemail again. Her chest tightened so viciously she thought for one dreadful second that she might actually collapse right there in the street. She swallowed hard, fingers clumsy against the screen as she rang Nina instead.
She answered quickly, cheerful at first. “Hi Carla…”
“Nina, please can I speak to Roy, it’s urgent.”
“Carla, Roy’s not here. He didn’t feel well so he went home last night. I spoke to him an hour ago, he was going back to bed…”
The world narrowed to a single point. Carla didn’t respond, she just stared at the building as the meaning landed in her whole body like a blow.
Home. He went home. Roy was upstairs - he was inside.
Terror tore through her so suddenly it made her gasp. It was like ice water flooding her veins, like every instinct in her body had been hijacked by one single thought, ‘Roy is in there.’
“Roy’s inside,” she said, though it came out strangled, barely audible. Then louder, panicked, to Bernie and Dev, “Roy’s inside!”
Before either of them could react, Carla’s hand was already in her bag. Her fingers closed around the spare key Roy had given her years ago as she ran forward.
“Carla!” Bernie shouted, horrified. “It’s not safe!”
But Carla was already gone, sprinting through the café doors, ignoring the cries behind her. Inside, the heat hit Carla like a wall.
The moment she shoved the door open and stumbled into the café, smoke clawed at her lungs, thick and black, making her cough so hard it doubled her over. Her eyes streamed instantly.
Mal was standing in the middle of the café, calm as anything, pouring petrol across the floor.
For one disbelieving second Carla simply stared. “This was you!” Her voice cracked through the smoke, ragged with fury.
Mal looked over at her, expression almost blank as though this were any other ordinary meeting. As though he were doing something reasonable. There wasn’t a flicker of shame in him.
“He started all of this with those letters to my wife.”
The words landed with sickening force. Carla looked from the petrol can in his hand to the flames already beginning to lick hungrily along the back edges of the room, and something inside her recoiled. There was no remorse in him. No horror at what he’d done.
“So you’re going to kill him!” she shouted.
He barely reacted. “Kill him, he’s gone away.”
“No!” Carla snapped, coughing, tears streaming down her face from the smoke. “He came back, he’s upstairs, now move so I can save him.”
At that, something shifted in his expression, indifference. A flat, awful indifference. He looked at her as though Roy being upstairs was an inconvenience but ultimately didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He simply turned his back on her and kept pouring.
It was that, more than anything, that lodged like a blade in Carla’s chest. That Roy’s life meant so little to him, a man who was the gentlest, most caring, forgiving man Weatherfield had ever known.
Carla’s fear for herself barely existed. It was there somewhere, buried deep inside, but as always when she was faced with those she loved being in danger, Roy came first.
She made the decision in a heartbeat. Shoving past Mal with all the force she had, ignoring the way he swore at her as petrol sloshed onto the floor, Carla bolted for the stairs.
“Roy!” she screamed, voice already shredded raw. “Roy!”
Behind her, the fire crackled louder.
Outside, the crowd surged back with a collective cry as smoke thickened and flames became visible behind one of the café windows. It was at that exact moment Lisa turned onto the street with Connie in the pram. Connie was fussing softly beneath the rain cover, Lisa distractedly rocking the pram as she walked and then she saw the crowd and the smoke.
“What’s happened?”
Bernie turned, pale and shaking, words tumbling out too fast. “It’s Roy’s, love, there’s a fire, Roy’s inside and Carla, she ran in…”
Lisa’s face drained of all colour. “What?”
“Carla went in,” Bernie said, voice breaking. “She ran in as soon as she knew Roy was inside.”
For one awful second Lisa simply stared. Then she screamed. “Carla!”
It ripped out of her as she lunged forward instantly, abandoning all thought, all reason, one hand already pushing the pram toward Bernie as she tried to run after her fiancé.
“Take her, take Connie…”
But Dev was faster. He caught Lisa around the waist before she could reach the door.
“No! Let me go!” Lisa screamed, fighting him with everything she had. “Carla! CARLA!”
Connie startled in the pram and began to cry, great frightened wails cutting through the street. Lisa was sobbing now, genuinely sobbing, trying to tear herself free as she watched the building belch smoke.
“Carla’s in there! Let me go! Carla!”
Dev held on grimly, even as she kicked and twisted. “You can’t go in!”
“She’s in there!” Lisa choked out. “Carla’s in there!”
“I know!”
“Let me go! Dev. Now. Let me go!”
But he didn’t, because if he let her go she would run straight into the flames and he knew it. Bernie grabbed the pram with trembling hands, trying to soothe Connie through tears of her own, while the crowd looked on in horror.
Inside, Carla could barely see. The staircase was disappearing into smoke, every breath like swallowing the fire itself. She dragged herself upward anyway, one hand on the banister, the other covering her mouth as she coughed and gagged and stumbled. “Roy!”
Her voice came back to her distorted and swallowed by the crackle of flames. “Roy, answer me!”
By the time she reached the flat above the café, she was shaking violently. The heat was rising fast now, creeping up through the floorboards and through the walls. Smoke had already invaded the whole of the flat, thickening by the second.
Roys bedroom was blanketed in black, everything blurred, but she could just about make out Roy. He was half-curled under the duvet, disoriented, barely moving, his face slack with confused sleep and smoke inhalation.
“Roy!”
Carla lurched toward him and fell to her knees by the bed, grabbing at his shoulders. “Roy, wake up! Wake up!”
He stirred weakly, brow furrowing. “Carla…?”
“Yes.” Her voice broke. “Come on, you need to get up, there’s a fire.”
He blinked at her, confused, coughing almost immediately as the smoke hit him properly. “A fire?”
“Yes, Roy, come on.” She was crying now, though she didn’t notice. “Please, please get up.”
He tried but he was groggy, disoriented, moving too slowly, one hand fumbling to untangle from his bed while Carla hauled at him with frantic strength.
The smoke was so thick now she could hardly see the door.
Another cough tore through Roy, deeper this time, painful and wet. Carla felt fresh panic rip through her as she wrapped an arm around him, trying to lever him upright. “Come on, Roy. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Below them there was a sudden roar. Some of the windows blew out with a deafening blast. Outside, the crowd screamed as glass burst outward in a shower of shards and flame surged violently through the now gaping spcae.
Lisa’s scream rose above all of it.
For a second Carla couldn’t hear anything but a violent high ringing in her ears. The room seemed to tilt, the walls swimming in and out of focus through the smoke. Roy sagged against her. Carla tightened her grip around him instinctively, one arm hooked hard around his back, the other fumbling for purchase against the wall as she forced herself upright. Her lungs were already screaming. Every breath was shallow, ragged, unproductive, as though she was trying to breathe through cloth soaked in ash.
“Roy,” she coughed, the word barely there. “We need to move.”
He tried to answer, but it dissolved into a fit of coughing so deep it seemed to wring him out. His whole body shook with it, face greying, eyes streaming. He looked horribly frail in that moment. Fragile in his blue pyjamas in a way she didn’t often associate with her father figure.
She could not get him down those stairs safely, not like this, but there was no other choice. The heat below them was intensifying by the second. Smoke was forcing itself through every crack, rolling along the ceiling in thick black layers before dropping lower, denser, making the room smaller and smaller around them. Somewhere beneath them, the structures creaked.
“Come on,” she whispered hoarsely, even though she was no longer sure Roy could hear her properly. “Come on, Roy. Lean on me.”
She hauled him along, Roy’s legs nearly gave at once. Carla staggered with him, catching his weight badly, one shoulder slamming into the wall. Pain shot down her arm, but she ignored it. They lurched toward the flat door together, Carla half dragging him, half carrying him.
The corridor outside was worse. Smoke had filled the stairwell completely now. Carla instinctively ducked her head lower, pulling Roy with her as she tried to peer downward.
The stairs were ablaze. Orange fire licked greedily up one side of the narrow stairwell, fed by petrol and old wood and varnish and everything else the building had ever held. The banister was beginning to blacken, the wallpaper was gone in strips. Heat battered at Carla’s face so hard she recoiled.
“No…”. It came out as a cough as Roy swayed beside her, disoriented. “Carla, leave me…”
The sight of the blocked staircase nearly finished her. For one horrible second panic fully took her, paralysing her for a moment. They were trapped. The way down was gone. The air was disappearing. Roy could barely stand. She was getting weaker by the second.
But then, through the smoke, she saw it, a narrow strip at the far edge of the stairs where the flames had not fully spread, a little gap between the wall and the worst of the fire. Smoke banked thick above it, but low down there was just enough room.
“Absolutely not, Roy,” she rasped. “We can get through there. We can.”
He looked where she was looking but he was too dazed to make sense of it, so Carla made the decision for both of them.
“Listen to me.” Her hand clamped around his jaw for a moment, forcing his focus to her. Her own face was streaked with soot and tears, hair plastered against her, eyes wide and pleading.“You stay low. As low as you can. Hold onto me.”
Then she put his arm around her shoulders properly and started moving. The first step through the heat was almost unbearable. Carla bit down on a scream as the temperature surged around them. Her skin felt scorched, even though the flames hadn’t touched her. Roy stumbled immediately, but she held him up, dragging him sideways toward the gap, one hand on the wall to keep them oriented.
“Come on,” she gasped. “Come on…”
The flames flared, forcing them both lower. Carla shoved Roy down with her, nearly to their knees, pulling him through the narrowest point where the fire had not yet fully crossed. Roy faltered again, his foot slipping, and for one awful second he started to go down.
“No!” Carla grabbed at him with a strength born purely of terror. “No, Roy, no. It’s okay, we’re okay.”
She practically hauled him through the last of it, shoulder and hip burning as they scraped the wall, but then suddenly they were past the worst of that pocket and into the café below.
Only the café was hell.
The fire had spread violently since she’d gone upstairs. It was no longer confined to the back of the room. Flames were rolling across the floor where the petrol had spread, leaping up table legs, curling around the counter, biting at the walls. The front windows had already blown. Glass littered the floor in glittering shards. Smoke boiled through the open cavity where the windows had been, fed by the rush of oxygen.
The noise was immense now. Roaring and crackling around them.
Roy was hanging off her now, barely upright, each breath a broken rasp. Carla herself was no better. Her chest was heaving but nothing felt like enough. She could taste chemicals and ash. Her knees were buckling under Roy’s weight and her own failing strength. Still she looked for a way through.
The front door was there, not yet engilfed, but flames were licking across the area in front of it.
Roy’s head dipped against her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, so faintly she almost didn’t hear it.
The words cut through her, clearing theough her own fear. “Don’t you dare,” Carla choked out immediately. “Don’t you dare apologise to me.”
Her voice broke badly on the last word.
They were both very close to collapse now. She knew that with a horrible certainty. The kind that came when panic burned itself out and left only brutal fact behind. Her arms were trembling uncontrollably. Her vision kept narrowing and blurring. Another minute, maybe less, and neither of them would still be standing.
She sensed movement and watched as Mal shoved his way back through the smoke from deeper inside the café, face slick with sweat, expression distorted now, not by the initial cold calm he’d held, but by fear.
He was heading for the door when he saw them.
He lunged forward.
“Get back!” Carla shouted, instinctively pulling Roy behind her as much as she could.
Mal shoved at Roy first, hard and clumsy, clearly trying to force them away from the exit, back toward the spreading flames so he could get past and save himself. Roy cried out weakly, already too ill and disoriented to defend himself.
Carla reacted before she thought. “No!”
She slammed into Mal with everything she had left, one hand planted against his chest, the other clawing for balance as all three of them staggered.
Mal lashed out again, but in his panic he misjudged the distance. His forearm hit part of the burning counter and he recoiled with a scream, flesh catching the heat badly enough to make him stumble.
“Arggghhhh!”
That second of distraction changed everything. Mal kicked hard at the already damaged front door, the frame giving under the impact, splintering wider, enough for him to wrench himself through the opening in a frantic scramble to save his own skin.
The sight of him emerging from the inferno, clothes blackened, skin reddening, face wild with panic when he should never have been there made it obvious that something nefarious had happened.
Kit was already there, having forced his way through the gathering crowd from the other end of the street. He took one look at Mal stumbling clear of the doorway and moved.
“Police! Stay where you are!”
Mal tried to keep going, disoriented and burnt and half-mad with adrenaline, but Kit and was on him within seconds, dragging him down onto the cobbles as he shouted incoherently, coughing, trying and failing to pull free.
“Mal!” Bernie cried, horrified. “He’s done this!”
Lisa barely looked at his way, because behind him, through the smoke, two shapes were emerging.
“Carla!” It came out shattered.
Inside the doorway Carla had one last surge of will left in her. The broken door had opened enough. The fire had shifted just enough. Mal’s escape had made a route, a dangerous route, but a route.
“Come on,” she rasped to Roy, though her voice was almost gone now. “Now. We need to go.”
She pulled him desperately. One stumbling step, then another, dragging Roy with her as both of them lurched through the ruined doorway, through smoke and broken glass and finally out into the open air.
The cold struck Carla’s face like a blow. So did the oxygen. She tried to breathe it in and couldn’t.
Instead she folded, dropping to her knees on the cobbles, one hand still clamped to Roy’s sleeve as though letting go of him was not an option. Roy collapsed beside her heavily, coughing in harsh, tearing fits. Neither of them could get a proper breath.
Carla’s lungs were spasming, drawing in air in short, useless pulls that made a horrible high sound in her throat. Soot ringed her mouth. Her eyes streamed uncontrollably. Every cough burned. She could hear people around them but they sounded far away, muffled, outside of her immediate reality.
Roy was in even worse shape. He was grey beneath the soot, breaths shallow and frighteningly weak between coughing spasms. He looked like he might simply crumple into unconsciousness at any second.
“Roy,” Carla wheezed, turning toward him despite her own body screaming. “Roy…”
He gave the smallest nod, though it barely looked voluntary. Then Lisa was there.
She dropped to her knees in front of Carla so fast, her hands hovered for one split second, terrified of hurting her, terrified she was too late, before finally gripping Carla’s face with shaking fingers.“Oh my God. Oh my God, Carla. Darling.”
Carla looked at her, but she seemed dazed now, shock setting in around the edges. She tried to answer and only coughed again, body curling with it.
“I’ve got you,” Lisa said instantly, voice cracking apart. “I’ve got you, darling. Stay with me.”
The paramedics were there within seconds, dropping to the ground, one moving immediately to Roy, another to Carla, and then more behind them with oxygen and equipment.
Lisa had to be physically guided back half a step to give them space.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please, help her…”
“We are,” the paramedic said firmly, not unkindly, already fitting an oxygen mask over Carla’s face while checking her airway, her breathing, her pulse. “We need room though pleqse.”
Lisa nodded and didn’t move at all. Her hands were shaking so violently she could barely keep them still. Soot was already smeared all over her palms, over the sleeves of her coat, where she had touched Carla’s face, her shoulders, her hair.
Connie was crying somewhere behind her, Bernie had her, thank God, Bernie was rocking the pram and crying too but Lisa couldn’t turn around, couldn’t look away, couldn’t do anything except stay close enough that Carla could see her when she opened her eyes.
Roy was being lowered carefully onto oxygen too, the other paramedic speaking calmly, steadily, trying to keep him alert.
“Roy, can you hear me? Stay with me. Nice slow breaths for me.”
He nodded faintly, though the mask fogged and shook with every weak, shuddering inhale.
Carla tried to sit up. The paramedic at her side immediately steadied her. “No, stay down for me. You’ve had a lot of smoke exposure.”
Carla flinched away from the pressure for a second, disoriented, still trying to look for Roy through streaming eyes. “Roy…”
The word was little more than a croak beneath the oxygen mask.
“He’s here,” Lisa said instantly, dropping back to her knees beside her despite the paramedic’s attempt to keep the area clear. “He’s here, love, Roy’s here. He’s out. You got him out.”
Carla’s eyes found Lisa at last and that was when Lisa broke completely. Because up until that second Carla had been moving, coughing, dragging breath into herself, and there had been enough action to hold terror at bay. But now Carla looked at her properly, and Lisa saw the shock sitting behind her eyes. Saw how close she’d come. Saw the tremor running through her entire body, the helpless aftermath of adrenaline and terror, again.
Lisa made a sound that was half sob, half laugh of pure relief.
“Oh God,” she cried, cupping Carla’s soot-covered face between trembling hands despite the oxygen tubing, kissing her forehead, her temple, the corner of her eye, anywhere she could reach without dislodging the mask. “Oh my God, oh my God. You’re okay, you’re okay.”
She kissed her again and again, not caring that soot smeared across her own cheeks, her lips, the front of her coat. Carla’s skin was hot beneath the smoke and sweat, frighteningly hot, but she was alive.
.
The paramedic gently shifted the mask for a moment when Carla started trying to speak, leaning closer.
“Don’t force it. Little words only.”
Carla swallowed, then coughed violently, the sound tearing through her, one hand instinctively clutching weakly at Lisa’s sleeve. When she managed to drag in enough breath, her voice was wrecked, barely a whisper, raw and shredded.
“It was that Mal.”
Kit, who had just moved over from where uniformed officers were hauling Mal toward a police car, turned immediately. Carla’s eyes flicked toward him, then back to Lisa.
“It was Mal,” she repeated, each word broken by breathlessness. “He…” another cough, harsher this time, “he tried to push us back in.”
Lisa went white. Kit’s expression changed instantly, hardening into something cold and dangerous. He gave one curt nod to the officer nearest him and moved away at once, clearly to make sure that detail was added before Mal said another word in his own defence.
Lisa barely registered him going. She was staring at Carla, the information opening the old wound of Becky having tried the same thing a matter of months ago. “He what?”
Carla’s chest hitched under the blanket the paramedic had draped over her shoulders. “He poured peteol… he saw us… tried to shove Roy…” Her eyes squeezed shut, face tightening with the effort of remembering and saying it. “Tried to push us back.”
Lisa let out a broken sob. Her forehead dropped against Carla’s, careful, like Carla might shatter under any sudden movement.
“You nearly died,” she whispered, and there was no anger in it at first, only naked devastation. “Jesus Christ, Carla, you nearly died.”
Carla’s eyes opened again, red-rimmed and exhausted. She looked wrecked. Absolutely wrecked. But when she focused on Lisa there was still that same instinct in her, even now, to soothe, to minimise, to drag herself past the edge of collapse for the people she loved.
“I’m okay baby, I’m here,” she whispered.
Lisa made a helpless, shattered noise, because of course she was. Of course Carla had run into a burning building for Roy without a second thought , nearly die, and still try to reassure her, because that was who she was. Because she loved too hard and too fearlessly when it came to her family.
That didn’t make it easier to bear.
Lisa kissed her again, more frantic now, pressing
trembling lips to her soot-streaked cheek, her forehead, the side of her head, tears falling freely as she did.
“Don’t you dare do anything like that ever again,” she sobbed. “Do you hear me? Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again.”
Carla tried to speak, but only coughed. Lisa’s hands shook as she smoothed filthy strands of hair away from her face. “I can’t lose you,” she whispered, voice splitting apart completely. “I can’t. I can’t lose you, Carla.”
Carla’s expression changed something soft and full of love moved through it, visible even through the exhaustion and shock and smoke damage. She lifted a trembling hand and Lisa caught it immediately, pressing it to her mouth.
“I’m here,” Carla managed. The words were almost nothing, just breath and pain and stubbornness.
Lisa nodded like they were everything. “You are,” she cried. “You are. You’re here.”
She kissed Carla’s knuckles, then her palm, then held her hand against her own wet cheek like she needed proof, something tangible, that she really was alive.
Nearby, Roy was being loaded carefully onto a stretcher, still coughing, still pale, but conscious.
The fire crew were still battling the blaze behind them, the café now charred and gutted at the front, smoke pouring into the darkening afternoon.
At the centre of it, for Carla and Lisa, the world had narrowed entirely to just each other. The paramedic crouched back in. “We need to get her on the stretcher now.”
Lisa nodded, though she looked as though she might physically refuse to let go.
As they shifted Carla carefully, she winced, another cough tearing through her chest, and Lisa was right there, one hand on her shoulder, the other clasping hers.
“I’m coming with you,” Lisa said at once. “I’m right here.”
Carla looked up at her, eyes glassy with pain and fatigue and love. Her fingers tightened as much as they could around Lisa’s. Lisa tightened back instantly. As the stretcher began to move, with soot on both of them and tears still wet on Lisa’s face, their hands stayed locked together, thumbs rubbing gently, reassuring one another that they were together and safe.