Coronation Street has finally solved the mystery of who killed Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton) months – with solicitor Joel Deering (Calum Lill) being unmasked as the culprit.
We saw Lauren disappear without many traces back in February, leading to a colossal miscarriage of justice that saw kindly café king Roy Cropper (David Neilson) in the frame.
Until this week, Roy has been languishing in prison, facing serious danger from a blade wielding inmate after Lauren’s dad Griff had him targeted.
It’s a bit of a travesty – let’s not get into the flimsy evidence that DS Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) and gang have used to incarcerate him!
However, when Nathan Curtis (Chris Harper) entered the fray after being released from prison and lurking around the Street, it seemed like the more likely culprit in Lauren’s disappearance had been found.
A groomer, sex abuser and rapist, he fits the bill of someone with a known track record of harming young girls.
When Bethany Platt (Lucy Fallon) became convinced, understandably, of his involvement, Sarah (Tina O’Brien) stood up for her daughter and took the risky action of planting Lauren’s hair in the back of his van.
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This led to his prompt arrest, with Joel lined up as a solicitor to defend him.
‘Joel just happens to be in the right place at the right time, and he is sitting there representing a man who is being wrongly accused of the thing that he did,’ actor Calum Lill, who plays him, shared.
‘He is as shocked as Nathan when the hair in Nathan’s car is proved to be Lauren’s. He doesn’t care about Nathan.
‘This could be the thing that gets Roy out of prison and stops Dee-Dee being so stressed about Roy, because he does feel bad about that as he does adore her, that is the one thing that he struggles with and now it looks like the problem is solved.’
So what actually happened then?
As Hope presented Joel with the necklace that was found, we saw through a flashback that Lauren was trying to flee him in the flat.
They had been having a sexual relationship, something which could destroy Joel’s life – and that’s before his sinister actions that followed.
Grabbing a screaming Lauren, he threw her to the ground and repeatedly beat her with a blunt instrument in ghastly scenes.
We don’t yet know what happens next, but recent pictures have shown Calum filming scenes near an abandoned pub, suggesting this is where he could be keeping evidence or even Lauren’s body itself.
He looks pretty on edge and that could be because Bethany and Dee-Dee are nearby – will they soon be onto him?
With Nathan charged with the crime, Joel may think he can now move on – but soap doesn’t quite work out that way.
‘The longer he hides the more chance there is of him making a mistake,’ Calum mused. ‘He’s been good so far in that he’s been engaging in this behaviour as long as we have seen him, and Lauren was attacked in February.
‘No one’s caught him out until now but they don’t actually know they have caught him out. But I think the longer it goes on for, the more chance he’s got of slipping up and I think he knows that.
‘You can see that in him getting more and more anxious that the slightest thing could bring his world crumbling down around him – even just the fact that he slept with Lauren.
‘That’s a breach of trust alone and will be enough to end his career and relationship plus murder on top of that, his life would be over so the stakes couldn’t be higher.’
MORE : Coronation Street casts star of four soaps for big Joel story
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