Dee-Dee fears the worst in Coronation Street after unexpected development in Joel case

Evil Joel Deering (Calum Lill) was finally charged in Coronation Street recently, when DS Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) gathered enough evidence to prove that he’d used her daughter Betsy (Sydney Martin) to procure pills that induced Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton)’s early labour – and left her baby Frankie fighting for his life.

Betsy felt guilty about what she’d done when she discovered the effect the drugs and the early labour had had on Lauren’s baby, and she revealed what she’d done to Carla (Alison King) and then to her mother.

Swain was able to access the phone call that Betsy had made to the medical company – and Joel’s voice could also be heard on the recording.

Although this is only one of Joel’s many crimes, it at least marked a start of getting justice against him – but his former fiancée, solicitor Dee-Dee Bailey (Channique Sterling-Brown), knows more than most that there’s a long road ahead before Joel is behind bars where he belongs.

In the meantime he’s on bail, and when his and Dee-Dee’s wedding rings were ready to be picked up from the jeweller in Monday (September 23)’s episode he had another attempt at getting Dee-Dee to reconsider marrying him.

Obviously that’s never going to happen, but Joel was incredibly persistent and wouldn’t listen to Dee-Dee’s attempts to get him to leave her alone. Ed (Trevor Michael Georges) and Ronnie (Vinta Morgan) saw Joel upsetting Dee-Dee and raced over to intervene, sending Joel on his way.

In the wake of this, the brothers were fuming. Ronnie said he wanted to break Joel’s legs, but Ed said he had a better idea.

This idea wasn’t great. It involved Ed trying to provoke Joel into attacking him while Ronnie lurked behind a railing ready to video what happened on his phone. Joel is many things and most of them bad, but one thing he isn’t is stupid – and he quickly twigged what was going on.

This infuriated Ronnie who grabbed him and slammed him against a wall. A small crowd of onlookers had appeared, and Joel made the most of this by shouting for help in his best feeble victim voice, until Ronnie was forced to let him go.

Later they deliberated about what they could do next, and Dee-Dee noticed they were looking shifty and wanted to know why.

When she heard what had happened she was furious, knowing that her dad and uncle could have harmed the case against Joel with their actions, especially as there were witnesses to their aggressive behaviour. Joel knows exactly how to play the system and could make it seem like the Bailey family have a vendetta against him.

Ed admitted that they’d been wrong, but that he’d find a way to ‘make it OK.’ Could he end up making things worse if he doesn’t heed Dee-Dee’s warnings?