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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 120203" data-attributes="member: 22">1992Mick Carter to Linda: Of course I’m listening to you, darling. I haven’t missed a word that’s come out that lovely mouth of yours since 1992.Linda Carter: When I was at school, I was obsessed with tarot cards. It was a bit of a craze and one day, I got the Grim Reaper card and it shook me up so much I cried every night for a week practically. Anyway, nothing happened and I got over it. And then a few months later my dad died. I’m not saying that the cards predicted it, but the point is that all the tears I’d shed before didn’t stop the tears that came after.Linda: You think I can forget my dad dying?Stan Carter: Heart attack, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t have known.Linda: He knew.Stan: It was just his time.Linda: He was staring straight at me for help. I couldn’t save him.Stan: You were a kid.Linda: I was fifteen.Stan: Oh Linda, tell me you haven’t spent all these years thinking it was your fault.Linda: I didn’t know what to do.Stan: You screamed. We heard you, came out.Linda: You were there?Stan: You did everything right. Got the ambulance called in seconds — seconds, Linda. You were there for him.Linda: No, I weren’t. They made me let go of his hand. Stan: I made you let go. You had to. So they could take him to hospital, try and save him. You did all you could.Linda: Next time I saw him he was dead.Linda: Don’t tell me how to run that family. I’ve been holding it together since I was fifteen.Stan: I admired you, I really did — coming back from the hospital, leading your mum behind the bar.Linda: You were all just staring at us, wondering when you’d get your next drink.Stan: Wondering how you did it. You at the funeral, holding onto her as she crumbled. You were a good kid, Linda. I was glad my Mick would come to you.Linda: You look after family. That’s what you’re supposed to do.Stan: Family. And not three months later, you announcing you were pregnant.Linda: You saying I tricked him? Mick wanted a family.Stan: Almost as much as you.Lee Carter, Mick and Linda’s son: I was a mistake.Linda: Surprise. We prefer the word surprise. Linda on pregnancy cravings: I ate apples by the truckload.Tanya Branning: Me and Rainie never had much in common, actually.Cora Cross, holding up Tanya and Rainie’s school medals: The cross-country Cross sisters!Max Branning: Bradley was about four. It was his first school sports day. We ran in a piggy-back race. They gave us matching Bugs Bunny mugs. I smashed mine years ago.Bradley to Max: When I was younger, before you ran out on me and Mum, I used to think you were great. I wanted to be you.Max on Bradley: He wanted to be a Hobbit when he was five.Max Branning on himself and Bradley: We went for a walk in the country. He was five and walking in the country is not really my sort of thing and we got lost miles from anywhere. It was getting dark and we had to climb under this barbed wire fence. Bradley went first. He was only little — careful, not a scratch. I go next and just then, there’s this big frumpy girl walking past. She had khaki shorts and walking boots, you know the sort, and me, I can’t resist, can I? I’m looking up, copping an eyeful — so I’ve got this cut across me head, right across the top — probably no protective covering, that’s what it is — and I’ve got this blood running down my face and Bradley’s got this handkerchief with a little dog on it and he gave it to me, and we’re walking back across the fields and I had it held to my head. I kept looking back and there was little Bradley just checking out my cut. He was worried, you know, concerned, not bothered that his mutt of a dad had got him lost or that he was two hours late for his tea. He was just concerned for his dad, and that’s my son. That’s Bradley.Max on Bradley: He always was a good timekeeper.Derek Branning on Joey: He’s always been handy round a football.Alice Branning on Derek: The river — he took Joey fishing there once.Joey Branning on childhood memories: Waiting outside the pub for four hours the day Derek got released out the nick, visiting me mum in the hospital when he broke her collarbone.Charlie Cotton, Jr on Nick: He treated me and my mum like dirt for years.Charlie on Nick: He used to hit Mum. The two of them together, it’s poison. He knocks her about and then he walks out. She loves him and she takes him back every time.Derek Branning: I had a Triumph Stag. You was proud as punch when you saw it.Joey: It was yellow. It was a pretty cool car. It was like ... what was that comic I used to read? It was like the superhero’s car.Derek: We got through bags of [flying saucer sweets] on that trip to Southend. You sitting on my lap steering, me working the pedals. Driving down the front, beeping at the girls, your mum laughing. We did used to laugh, me and your mum. We had fun that day.Joey: It was all right, yeah. Never got the chance to drive the old Triumph though, did I?Derek: Only the lucky few do.Joey: I always wanted to.Derek: You loved the bones of me once.Joey: What — after one week in Southend?Derek: You were sitting there on my lap! We were laughing!Max Branning on Derek: I know he ain’t been the best dad in the world. I know he ain’t been much of a dad at all.Derek: I’ve been a lousy dad.Derek: You never was worth bothering about.Joey: Because I saw through you?Joey to Derek: I remember things — you bent over Mum, beating the hell out of her. I can see it now, peering through the door into the kitchen, you and Mum going at it, then you whacking her in the stomach.Derek: No, no, no. I’ve done some bad things, I admit it, but I would never hit a woman.Joey on Derek: He used to hit me mum all the time. He even hit her with the phone once. Thought she'd been chatting some other bloke down the pub so he took it off her and he smacked her with it.Carol Jackson: Did you hit Joey's mum? I knew the pair of you had your moments.Derek: Yeah, moments. That's all they were, moments.Derek to his daughter Alice: Me and your mother, we used to have almighty rows, smashing things, shouting, and then in the morning, it would be like nothing had happened.Carol, speaking in 1994: I can't remember the last time we was both working.Alan Jackson: Got to be two years [ago].Lenny Wallace, speaking in 1996: Me, Alan and his brother Malcolm used to work on a building site in the city about four years back.Paul Trueman, speaking in 2002: I used to be a Redcoat, for two weeks one summer ten years ago.Patrick Trueman on Milton Hibbert's daughter Rebecca: The last time I saw her, she was about ten years old.Kim Fox on Denise: Let me introduce you to the fifth member of Eternal that never was.Denise Fox: They said they were going to call me for an audition, you know.Julie Perkins: Fergie had [Prince] Andrew for all those years and she ended up waist-high in debt and her toes in some other man’s mouth.Syed Masood: We used to have this family party at the end of the summer holidays. Dad called it Camp Cowboy. It was just a load of family sitting around in the garden, tons of kids charging about. We’d have this fire going and Dad insisted on cooking all of the food on it. He’d just burn everything. We’d have to wear these cowboy hats and we’d sit round the fire and toast marshmallows.Christian Clarke: Sounds like fun.Syed: Yeah, it was.Bianca Jackson on being fifteen: Back then, we didn’t even have mobile phones. Or Jeremy Kyle.Ava Hartman: We didn’t even have mobile phones in my day.Dexter Hartman: What was it your day then — carrier pigeon?Ava: Yeah.Robbie: You had prissy little flowers [on your bedroom wall].Bianca: So? You're allowed flowers when you're fifteen.Bianca: I hated school most of the time but I went, I tried.Bianca, speaking about Walford High School in 2013: That heating’s been breaking down since I went there.Natalie Price: Bianca and Tiffany used to hang around together at school just to wind each other up most of the time, about boys and that.Tiffany: What was that cocky little git's name? You know, the one with the funny eyes, he was in the fifth form.Bianca: Oh, Darren. Poor bloke. He'd hardly puckered up before you chucked him.Tiffany: Yeah I know, but he kept dribbling in me ear. He drove me mad!Bianca: You thought you were so hard!Tiffany: Oh, and you didn't? You had a right reputation.Bianca: Well rather mine than yours.Tiffany: What [was that]?Bianca: Slapper!Natalie on Bianca and Tiffany: When them two got together, they wouldn't let me join in.Natalie to Bianca: You always were a bully, even at school.Tanya: I don’t do bullies. Never have.Natalie, quoting Bianca: "It's all right, Natalie, go and sit in the playground with the losers. It's all right, Natalie, you don't have to come out with me Saturday night, I've got plenty of other mates." Do you know how many times I've heard you say that? Have you got any idea how you made me feel — always getting pushed away like I didn't matter, like I wasn't interesting or attractive or anything?Natalie: I've always known you could be a bit of a cow.Bianca: You've always been a bit of a square, haven't you?Andrea Price: They can do wonders with foundation. With her spots, [Natalie] would never have got through her teens without it.Natalie: I never seemed to have much luck in the boy department. [Bianca] was the one who had a way with men. The boys at school loved her. She went from one crush to the next. You couldn't keep up with her.Bianca: When I was a teenager I got a crush. I got loads of crushes. Crushes all the time.Natalie on Bianca's boyfriends: You had some dipsticks in the past.Bianca: Like who?Natalie: Paul Simmonds.Bianca: He wasn't bad.Natalie: He had the IQ of a frog.Bianca: He was gorgeous though, wasn't he?Natalie: If you like that sort of thing.Bianca: You're just jealous because I saw him first.Carol Jackson to Natalie: You've always been jealous of Bianca, haven't you?Bianca: You were just jealous because I was more popular. Just admit it, Natalie, you never had anything of your own. Remember that boy in the record shop? You knew I fancied him. Couldn't wait to get off with him, could you? Even pretended you liked reggae!Natalie: At least I went after blokes my own age. I wasn't the one sleeping with married men when I was still studying for my GCSEs.Bianca: I used to hate exams. I didn't pass any of my GCSEs.Carol: Only because you weren't interested. You never put the effort in.Bianca on herself and Robbie: We’ve barely got a GCE between us and do you know why? Because you are a bad mother. Spent so much time thinking about yourself, you never had time to sit down with us and go through our homework or exams.Carol: You did badly at school because you couldn’t be bothered, simple as that. I mean, half the time you never even turned up. What was I supposed to do — drag you there myself, handcuff you to the desk?Bianca: Yeah maybe.Carol: Then you would have done what you always did when I put my foot down - threatened to call Childline or bunk off even more just to spite me.Bianca: Where did we go [on school trips] in our day?Kat Moon: Can’t remember. I was always bunking off. Bianca: Yeah, and me.Bianca, speaking in 2009: I did not sit down with my school careers officer and put down scrimping, saving and cutting out coupons as one of my interests. It’s not exactly a life choice.Yvonne Cotton: I can’t say it was my life’s ambition to wipe elderly backsides.Babe Smith: Slaving over a hot stove isn’t exactly how I imagined my twilight years.Carol on Bianca: She'd come rushing in from [clothes] shopping and give us all a fashion parade up and down the living room.Blossom Jackson: I remember Alan's sister doing that once.Carol: We used to have such a laugh when we went shopping together. You know, we was more like sisters.Carol: Time was you used to tell me everything.Bianca: Believe me, Mum, there's never been a time when I'd tell you everything.Natalie: [What] about the time you and Tiff went with those brickies to Yarmouth for the weekend?Bianca: Well, at least when we fancied blokes, we got them. Remember the school disco, do you, Nat? Me and Tiff were wetting ourselves laughing watching you trying to get off with that DJ. It was pathetic.Sonia Jackson: I used to see them all, all dressed up and ready to go out — my sister, Tiffany, Natalie. I used to wish I could go out with them. My mum would say, "It's all right, Sonia. Your turn will come."Natalie: At least I wasn't the one sleeping with married men when I was still in Year 11.Bianca: That was a one off.Whitney Dean to Bianca: You weren’t sat at home at fifteen watching telly. You was out pulling blokes twice your age.Bianca: By the time I was [fifteen], I had loads of blokes.Kirsty Branning: Where I come from, you get to sixteen without having sex, you’re the weird one or a nun.Carol on Bianca: She's always been really warm and affectionate. She's just always chosen the wrong people to be affectionate to. I wasn't much cop at choosing the right blokes either. I suppose I set her a bad example.Bianca to Carol: Maybe you pushed me into it. What ordinary fifteen year old girl goes all starry-eyed over a middle-aged man?Dan Sullivan on Bianca: She was in a bar. She was with some mates. I met her. We had a laugh. I was crazy then.Bianca on Dan: From the minute he picked me up in that bar when I was fifteen, he just took advantage of me and then he just used me.Dan: You was a dirty little slut who [went with] anyone who bought you drinks all night long.Bianca: You were married.Dan: Which I never lied to you about and as far as I remember, you was all right about all that.Bianca: I didn't know any better. I was just out for a good time. I was a kid.Dan: I've always been no good. I was a bad husband. I hurt people — my wife, my kids. I cheated on her. I was a drunk and I played around.Carol on Bianca: She was fifteen years old.Dan: I didn't know that. She didn't tell me.Carol: Doesn't make it legal though.Dan: She lied to me.Carol: How did you meet a fifteen year old girl in the first place?Dan: I was drunk. I was at a party. It was a mistake, a stupid mistake.Dan: We had a fling. We had a good time, didn't we?Bianca: No, not really. Except for in bed, but that don't mean nothing.Dan: What we had is nothing. It was cheap and it was meaningless.Bianca: You used to drink yourself almost unconscious some nights when I was there.Bianca: I've loved you since I was fifteen.Dan: You didn't love me. I was horrible to you.Bianca: Not all the time. You treated me like an adult. I was aching to grow up and then you came along.Dan: So was I the first then?Bianca: The first that meant anything, yeah. You made me feel like a real person. You never talked down to me. When I was with you, I always felt we was equal and it really means a lot when you're young. And I also remember thinking it was wicked going out with someone in the rag trade.Bianca: We had our moments, didn't we? We had loads of fun.Dan: Yeah I know, but you're making up a history that simply didn't happen.Dan on his relationship with Bianca: There was never anything between us.Dan on his relationship with Bianca: We loved each other.Bianca, looking at old photos of her and Dan: Do you remember where these were taken? They were done after your mate's birthday party. We must have been there for a good couple of hours and I remember that feeling of never wanting to let you go.Dan: Have a look at my hair there. I look like a teddy boy, don't I?Bianca: And mine, look. Don't I look young?Dan: Yeah, but you was, weren't you?Dan to Bianca: I ended it the moment I found out your real age.Bianca: Why do you think I come clean about my age?Dan: To end it.Dan: I was good enough for you.Bianca: Oh no, no, you weren't. And I figured that out pretty soon after you decided to get rid of me.Dan: You got upset.Bianca: You just walked out leaving me crying in that pub, feeling sick in my stomach.Dan: It wasn't that easy for me either. B, you was fifteen. I was married, I had a kid. If I'd never finished it like that, I would never have let you go.Bianca on Dan: What he want[ed was to] shut me up, get me out the way.Bianca: You really hurt me, Dan. I was mad about you. I was in love with you.Dan: It was just a silly little crush, that's all. You didn't know me.Bianca: I did.Dan: I never even knew it meant that much to you. You don't actually think we could have got serious, do you? It never would have worked.Natalie on Dan: He broke your heart.Bianca: He didn't.Natalie: That's what you told me.Bianca: No, I never.Natalie: You liar! You cried your eyes out for a week after he ditched you.Bianca: I was fifteen, Nat. What do you expect? I had a crush on him. I was too stupid to know a creep when I saw one.Natalie: Pretty good looking creep, though.Cora, watching Tanya’s daughter Lauren throwing up in the kitchen sink in 2012: We went through all this twenty years ago with her mother.Tanya on Lauren: I was always on the lash when I was her age.Roxy Mitchell: Mum and Dad had this dinner party and me and my mate Trish found this bottle of wine just sitting there in the hallway, open.Archie Mitchell: It was breathing.Roxy: Yeah, yeah. So we drunk the lot. We were absolutely mullered. He [Archie] comes through, “Do you know how much that bottle of wine cost me?”Archie: Sixty-eight quid!Sean Slater: What did you do, Arch - put her over your knee, give her a good spanking?Archie: Well they were fourteen, rolling around like a pair of kittens, drunk but cute. How could I be angry?Ronnie to Roxy: Do you want to know why he [Archie] didn’t clatter you that time you were drinking wine? Because he was about to sign a bunch of dodgy contracts with Trish’s dad for some ex-council flats.Glenda Mitchell: After Archie, I knew I’d never remarry. I didn’t want to give anyone that power over me again, but I didn’t want to ask him for a divorce either because I knew he’d use it to hurt me, make me beg, so I just put the whole subject to the back of my mind, forgot about it.Glenda: Archie and I were never officially divorced.Peggy: Archie and Glenda were divorced.Glenda: I never signed any divorce papers.Archie’s estate lawyer: You wouldn’t have to. If you were absent and untraceable for over two years, Mr Mitchell would have been able to get the divorce granted without your signature.Glenda: I did come back to the house in Romford a few years [after leaving]. I got as far as the driveway and I saw Archie come in and out a couple of times but you girls, you were gone.Roxy: So why didn’t you just ask Dad where we were?Glenda: Do you really think he would have told me? I knew then that I would never see you again.Ronnie: Why didn’t you ask someone else? You could have asked Aunty Peg.Glenda: We didn’t really get along in those days. And the Mitchells, they stick together, don’t they?Roxy: You could have found us, you could have tracked us down.Glenda: I didn’t know where to start and the longer I stayed away, the harder it got. In the end I just convinced myself that you didn’t need me.Ronnie: The last time [I made hot chocolate with marshmallows] was when you fell off your rollerblades, do you remember? Right in front of Philip Hadley. Dad thought it was a big laugh. I could see you were trying not to cry.Roxy: You saw right through me every time.Ronnie: Well, what kind of a big sister would I be if I didn’t, heh?Sam James on Ava’s beef stew: I remember it like it was yesterday.Ava: No one’s ever made me feel like Sam did. But then no one’s ever hurt me that badly either.Sam to Ava: The way your mum gave you up when you were a baby, you always said it didn’t matter, but it did. She was this ghost you carried around with you. The whole time we were together, you were so paranoid I was going to leave, you made it impossible for me to stay. Accusing me of cheating every time I was late home, checking through my stuff all the time — you think I didn’t notice?Ava: That’s not the way I remember it.Max to Bradley: Do you remember when you was a kid, that Sunday I took you out? Went out on the toboggan. over and over down that hill. You loved it. Screaming your head off, you were. Little red coat. You were my little mate.Zainab Masood to Tamwar: You’ve had this fundamental personality flaw since when you were Kamil’s age [two years old]. You don’t stick with things. You don’t pay attention to the details, to the little things.Jean: Stacey and Sean were in bed by 7pm every night, thanks to Brian.Stacey to Jean: Do you remember that time you brought that birthday cake up to mine and Sean’s room? Can’t remember whose birthday it was but I must have been about five. It was the middle of the night. You were so pleased, you had to show us even though it meant waking us up. You come running up the stairs, “Look at my cake, look at my cake, see how it’s risen!” We had to eat it then and there even though it was still warm. It became a regular thing, didn’t it — when you were hyper and you needed someone to talk to. Picnics at midnight — you had stuff to say and you couldn’t keep it to yourself so you used to get all this food together and bring it upstairs. Crisps, jam sandwiches, chocolate, you name it. You thought we liked it. I think we did, the first few times anyway.Judy Mackintosh: Coffee cake, your favourite. You used to help me bake it. Do you remember?Fiona “Tosh” Mackintosh, her daughter: Of course I do. I never forget that one year it was your birthday. I stayed up late making you a coffee cake so I could bring it to you in bed in the morning.Judy: I thought that was your sister.Tosh: No, it was me.Judy: You couldn’t bake.Tosh: Exactly. It was a mess, but you still ate it.Jean to Stacey: Do you remember playing bob the apple at your birthday, and pin the tail on the donkey?Jean on arranging a child’s birthday party: I never got to do this with Stacey or Sean. I was always either in bed or in the co-op in my nightie.Jean: I never put my hand out to my little girl. I never put you first.Stacey: I picked myself up. I always have.Minty Peterson: My mum was ill. It's horrible, it breaks your heart, [but] I did it.Alfie Moon: You packed your mum off [to a home]?Minty: Yeah. It was hard, but it was the best for everyone.Minty: My mum went completely bonkers as soon as she walked through the door [of the nursing home].Andrew Cotton, speaking to Rose in 2011: I should have put you in a home years ago, if I could have found one that would have you.Mick Carter on Shirley never telling him she was his mother: I get you being scared as a kid, I was the same age when I had Lee, but then you went and married Kevin and you had more kids. So why didn’t you tell me then? Or when I had kids? I had Lee and you knew he was your grandson. You never said anything. You never said anything because you didn’t care enough.Stan to Lee: You inherited your subtlety from your old man.Dexter Hartman: I was born [confident].Ava: Dexter, my proudest achievement.Sam James to Ava: You were my world, you and little Dexter.Sam: The day he was born, I remember you gazing down at him like nothing else existed. Afterwards, the closest we got was brushing shoulders in the hallway.Ava: I’d just had a baby. Please excuse me if I wasn’t up for it.Sam: I don’t mean that. I’m talking about holding each other, intimacy, tenderness. All I’m saying is maybe it wasn’t black and white.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?