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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 120398" data-attributes="member: 22">1993Heather Trott on her New Year’s resolution for 2011: Mine’s to find a bloke.Shirley Carter: You’ve been saying that for the past twenty years.Heather: Oi, that ain’t funny — it’s only been eighteen!Sam James: I thought things would change when Dexter came along, but it didn’t.Ava Hartman: So you just ditched us?Sam: I tried to stay.Ava: Not hard enough, Sam.     Sam to Dexter: I wasn’t mature enough to be a dad. That “all you need is love” talk is rubbish. You need strength, real steel. I didn’t have it. That’s no excuse, but it’s the truth. I hated myself for it. I mean, proper hate. I truly believed you were better off without me.Ava, speaking to Sam in 2013: Twenty years ago, you walked out on me and our three month old baby and you didn’t look back.Sam to Ava: I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t give me one. I didn’t just jump out of your lives, I was pushed, partly by you.Sam to Dexter: Why did I run out on you all those years ago? Simple answer is I wasn’t strong enough. A big man like me and I couldn’t cope. Couldn’t take the strain. My head filled up with panic, panic about being a dad, panic about being a husband and I got terrified about it all. It wasn’t you and Ava I ran out on, it was all the things I found out about myself.Ava to Sam: Do you remember the last thing you said to me? “I’m just nipping out for a pint of milk.”Dexter Hartman on Sam: He went for a pint of milk and he never come back. You treat dogs better than that.Ava to Sam: I thought you’d been hit by a bus, attacked, mugged — which would have been better. At least we could have mourned you properly.Ava on Sam: He had problems back then.Dexter on his parents: She hated him for walking out on us.Ava to Sam: You disappeared and we got by. We managed, me and Dexter.Dexter on himself and Ava: It’s always just been me and her.Sam: You two were better off without me.Ava: No, we weren’t.Ava to Sam: All those years of me trying to be mum and dad, he [Dexter] never stopped wanting you. I’ve been dealing with the fallout from your mistakes for the past twenty years.Dexter to Ava: Everything you’ve ever done has been for me.Cora Cross: It can’t have been easy bring Dexter up on your own.Ava: You weren’t there.Cora: No, I wasn’t and if I had been, I wouldn’t have been much help.Tanya to Cora: I don’t recall you being much help when it came to Rainie. In fact, I don’t recall you being around at all.Little Mo Morgan: "She walks in beauty like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies,And all that's best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes."We had to learn it at school. It just sort of stuck.Shirley: Hev’s never read a poem in her life.Little Mo: My prefect's badge — it's the oldest thing I've got.Lynne Slater: When were you a prefect, Mo?Little Mo: I wasn't, but Martin O'Donnell was and he gave it to me as a token of his love.Belinda: [He was] the fat one.Little Mo: He was not fat, he was big-boned.Little Mo: I didn't go behind the bike sheds, thank you very much.Alfie Moon: Oh, were you a bit like Miss Goody Two Shoes or something?Little Mo: No. Nobody ever asked me.Little Mo: I remember when I first saw my Trevor, all wobbly inside I went — and I weren't [yet sixteen]. Proper childhood sweethearts we was. Swept me off my feet. I couldn't believe me luck, someone as good-looking as Trevor interested in little me.Little Mo: Trevor noticed me. No one's ever done that [before].Little Mo on an ornament of an angel: That was the first present Trevor ever bought me. I saw it in a magazine and I said I liked it. We'd only been going out together a fortnight. Next thing I know, he's bought it for me and he's saying to me, "This is to show you how much I love you and that you'll always be mine."Little Mo: Me and Trevor, we made a pact because we've only ever been with each other, if you see what I mean. It was all we ever really wanted, really.Little Mo: It's so romantic, that first bit [of a relationship]. My Trevor used to spend hours telling me how pretty I was.Kat Slater: Was that before or after he hit you?Little Mo: All I ever wanted was for you to love me and not hurt me.Trevor Morgan: I didn't want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.Trevor: Do you remember what I said I would do to you if you ever went with somebody else?Little Mo: You said you'd kill me.Big Mo on Trevor: That boy's been a psycho from Day One.Little Mo to her sisters: You all loved [Trevor] as much as I did in the beginning, you remember? Dad thought the sun shone out of his bum.Lynne: We all did.Trevor on Viv Slater: She never liked me.Little Mo to Kat: You never liked him — Trevor.Trevor on Little Mo: Her family have always hated me.Trevor on the Slaters: It's them, it's always been them. We never stood a chance with them interfering, sticking their noses in, whispering in your ear.Little Mo: They just wanted what was best for me.Trevor to Little Mo: You've never been strong mentally.Kat on Little Mo: She's had her dream wedding planned since she was sixteen.Little Mo: We always talked about becom[ing] a proper family, just me and Trevor and a couple of little kids. Poor old Trevor never really got on with his own family, bless him.Kirsty Branning: I don’t do the family thing. Left home as soon as I could. It didn’t make anything better. Not anything good, really.Nigel Bates: My old mum had premonitions all the time. She always backed the winner of the Derby. My mum always knew when a member of the family was going to die.Nigel: Mum always said it was her liver that would get her in the end. She was down the old British Legion six nights a week, supping the old milk stouts. "Good for the circulation," that's what she always said. Then there was the scotch. Cor dear, you should have seen her — knocking it back like there was no tomorrow. She went out bowling three times a week. Bingo — well, you couldn't keep her away. She was a game old bird.Grant Mitchell: How long have you been drinking alcohol?Tiffany Raymond: As long as I've been old enough for people to buy it for me.Glenda Mitchell: I've spent most of my adult life pouring drinks.Paul Trueman on his brother Anthony: Never could handle a drink.Irene Hills: I once spilled a Bloody Mary in a jacuzzi. Caused no end of fuss. They thought I'd been stabbed.Dan Sullivan: My boy had [a rubber duck]. He loved it at bath time.Carol Jackson: Well, bath-time is when most blokes show up. It's easy to get sentimental about the last half hour of the day.Bianca Jackson: Alan wasn't like that.Carol: No, he wasn't.Bianca: I remember Billie wore one white glove all summer once. Do you remember?Jack Branning: Yeah, he was obsessed with Michael Jackson, weren't he?Bianca: Only because he thought he was his uncle.Alan Jackson: Yeah, that's because I told him he was.Bianca: Yeah, till you said you fell out because you was a better singer!Bianca: Do you remember when you was little and I had you believing that Mick Hucknall was my dad? Sonia: What you talking about?Bianca: Yeah, Mick Hucknall — Simply Red, big in the eighties.Sonia: You didn’t.Bianca: Yes, I did.Sonia: No, you didn’t. Bianca: I did. [Sings:] “Holding back the years …”Sonia: All right. You fooled me.Jean Slater to Sean: Your dad used to be good. You and him together was good. You were best mates, sitting on the wall outside waiting for him to come home from work and "fee-fi-fo-fum", chasing you up the stairs at bedtime.Jean: Sean idolised his father. He was a real daddy's boy.Dan: I was such a lousy dad. I don't just mean the usual things like leaving everything to the woman or going down the pub. I used to look at the two of them together, you know, mother and son, and ...Carol: What, you felt left out?Dan: I couldn't feel a thing.Carol: These feelings, they did pass, didn't they?Dan: Yeah, of course they did, yeah.Carol: Well maybe you were just too young for the responsibility.Dan on his son: We sort of drifted apart, you know. I was playing away and ... it was ages ago now, anyway.Dan: The Drum Sergeant - that pub down the Stoke Road. I used to go out with a little barmaid in there.Patrick Trueman, mid-anecdote: ... You kidding? That barmaid didn't talk to me for a whole year!Dan on women: You got to show them who's boss. Take my ex. I used to do the old disappearing act — you know what I mean, make myself scarce for a few nights so by the time I got back at the end of the week, she couldn't get enough of me. She used to think I'd gone missing.Phil Mitchell: Missing?Dan: Yeah, whatever Miss I could lay me hands on!Dan: I did have a [drink] problem. With me, it weren't just the booze. I was like, you know, gambling and all that. I lost me marriage — that went right out of the window — quickly followed by the business. It was a right mess.Phil: What made you stop?Dan: Got on the wrong side of a bottle of scotch one night, paid me ex-wife a visit. She was there with her boyfriend and well, he made himself busy, he got lairy. I ended up bashing him, he went to hospital, and I got nine months for GBH. And I thought, "This is the time to clean me act up."Dan speaking about his son in 1999: He must be about eleven now. His mum asked me not to go round and see him anymore.Dan: The last words my ex-wife said to me can't really be repeated in public.Rachel Branning: I thought we were happy. I don't think it was some big act.Max Branning: It wasn't an act. We were happy.Max to Rachel: Why can't good ever be good enough? Why has every single thing got to remembered and analysed and gone over about five hundred times? Because that's when me and you went wrong, Rache. Why can't anything just be water under the bridge?Bradley: My mum and dad, screaming and shouting and slamming doors. I've not got one single memory of them actually sitting down and talking. Not one.Tanya, trying on a pair of boots in 2007: I used to have a pair just like these. I used to wear them clubbing. I broke the heel falling out of a cab. Those were the days, eh?Jean: My Brian bought me a pair of [thigh high leather] boots once. I thought I was the bees knees in them. He did too. His eyes when he first saw me in them were as big as saucers! Then it rained and it was like walking through a river. The stitching on the back was terrible. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, though. He was so pleased that he’d finally bought me a present that I really liked.Shirley: So you risked getting double pneumonia just to save his feelings?Jean: No, I put plastic bags inside. They still leaked but my feet were dry as a bone.Shirley: That’s quite sweet.Jean: Me and Brian, sweet? You wouldn’t think that if you’d heard the rows that we had. I used to throw plates at him sometimes when I was really mad. It weren’t perfect, we could both be a nightmare on occasions, but you don’t give up, do you? You just try and make it work.Tina Carter: I haven’t worn proper high heels in years.Stacey Slater: Bit of a goer, were you?Tanya: Do you know, when I think about some of the stuff we used to get up to ... Put it this way, we didn't sleep much. I used to go straight to work from the clubs. I'd turn up at the salon totally wrecked. I'd sneak in the back room early — I'd wash me hair, fix my clothes, swallow a couple of packets of mints and then spend the rest of the day trying not to breathe on the boss. We had such a laugh.Cora: Always took a good drink, my Tan. Remember that time you got arrested for nicking a Thunderbird down the social? For nicking a kid’s bike!Rainie Cross: Talk of the estate for weeks!Rainie to Tanya: It’s always about you, isn’t it, eh? All my life.Abi Branning: The first time you done it, was it with someone special?Rainie: No, not exactly.Rainie to Tanya: You've always had such a fabulous pair of knockers. Do you know how much I used to envy you? I always loved you.Rainie: I’ve always been playing second fiddle to you.Tanya: Playing the victim, more like.Rainie: And why do you think that is? Because you drove me to it.Rainie: Four As and then three Cs I got at GCSE. I would have got a place at university. I was all set, but two weeks before I was supposed to sit my A levels, "Come to a party, Rainie. Let me introduce you to some of my friends. Here, sniff this, Rainie, it'll get you through the night. Have a toke, why don't you? It'll calm you down. Oh come on, Rainie, don't be a sissy. It'll make you feel good."Tanya: Yeah, I did start you on the weed and the speed and that. We were just kids, you know? We were just doing what kids on the Ainsworth [Estate] do.Rainie: I’ve lost so many years to one drug or another and it was a bloke very much like Ryan Malloy that got me started on the heroin.Tanya to Rainie: The way you talk, it was all my idea. I never injected and I always told you not to.Rainie: We knew how to live. Do you remember that time we got pulled over by the Bill after that three-day bender? You, me, Jackie Smith, Benny Cohen — what was that other bloke, what was his name?Tanya: I don't remember.Rainie: We was all bricking it. God knows what we had on us. We could have been in a load of trouble, but you was brilliant because you said, "No understand. We from Barcelona. My friends speak no English." You remember that?Tanya: Vaguely.Rainie: And they just let us off, didn't even search us. Kicked us out the van. "Too much paperwork," they said. I was wetting myself!Stacey, speaking in 2007: I like making mischief.Tanya: That is exactly what I used to say.Stacey: I never had you down as a raver.Tanya: Oh I was, I was a right one.Tanya: I was going to travel. I had my whole itinerary mapped out — Australia, Goa.Rainie speaking in 2007: I'm clean.Tanya: I remember telling Mum that one and all.Tanya to Lauren: I used to moan at Rainie. All my life — well, since I was your age [eighteen], anyway — I’ve sort of lived with this permanent dread of getting that phone call telling me that she’d died. It never even occurred to me that she might outlive me.Tanya: A lot of things used to go missing when Rainie wasn’t very well.Tanya: I haven't smoked so much as a spliff since I was eighteen.Stacey: What happened then?Tanya: Well, I met Max.Tanya, speaking about Max in 2013: That man has dictated my life for the last twenty years.Lauren: I’m allergic to weddings.Tanya: I used to feel like that till I met your father. I just knew he was the one.Max to Tanya: I ain't ever seen anything so gorgeous since the first day I met you.Tanya on herself and Max: We were a match, the pair of us, from the moment we met.Rainie: Didn’t you used to have hair once?Max: Yeah, yeah. Loads of hair.Rainie: Is it because of my sister [that you lost it]?Vanessa Gold: I hear you started your career as a hairdresser. Wasn't Max one of your first clients?Tanya: Yeah, he was.Max to Tanya: I’ve always loved you, from the first moment I saw you, tussled and blonde and flushed from running. I fell in love with you at that moment.Tanya: You’re Max Branning, the man who seduced his hairdresser.Max: It's always been your dream to have your own beauty salon. I remember you talking about it the first time I met you. I'd only gone in thehairdressers because I saw you through the window.Tanya: Yeah — and nothing to do with that ginger mop you had!Max: Yeah all right, that as well, but I kept coming back. You couldn't keep me away. Cost me a fortune getting me hair cut every week.Tanya: Yeah well, I was worth every penny.Tanya on Max: I used to cut his hair, when he had hair.Lauren on Max: He actually had hair?Cora: For about thirty-five minutes. Constantly playing with it.Max speaking to his great-niece Tiffany in 2011: Look at that red hair. You know what that means, don’t you? You’re brave. I used to be brave before the fairies came and took all [my hair] away.Tanya: Do you remember the first time you met Max?Cora: How could I forget? He sold me a dodgy insurance policy.Tanya: What did you think of him?Cora: He was a married man with a child. What do you think?Tanya: Still, you grew to love him, didn’t you?Cora: That’s one way of putting it.Tanya: I never listened to my mum when I was [young].Phil Mitchell: So what was your mum telling you when you was a teenager?Tanya: Mainly that Max Branning was the wrong man for me.Tanya: My mum lectured me about you.Max: Interfering wombat.Tanya: I followed my heart.Cora, speaking to Tanya in 2012: If you tell [your daughter you disapprove of her boyfriend], she’s going to run straight back into his arms — exactlywhat happened with you and Max.Cora: It was Rachel I felt sorry for.Tanya on Max: He was married, he had Bradley, I know — but I just thought he was gorgeous and he had this little twinkle in his eye.Tanya to Lauren: I was young and stupid. Probably why I fell for your dad.Tanya: When I was a kid, me and me mates were always so skint we just used to nick our drinks off otherpeople’s tables.Kat: Surprised you didn’t catch anything.Tanya: I did — Max! Said it was one of the things that attracted him to me. Said I was trouble he wouldn’t mind getting into.Abi on Max and Tanya: They started young and they did not have a clue.Max, looking at an old photo of Tanya and Rainie: Look at the pair of you! That's the first thing I remember saying to you that night, do you remember? "Have to do something about that barnet."Tanya: You’ve never really been the hearts and flowers type, have you? Where did you take me for our first date?Max: I don’t know. As far as I remember, most of it was spent in the back of the car, weren’t it?Tanya: You took me to that old ballroom in Lewisham. Someone told you the drinks were cheap.Max: Well, I had a wife and kid to support.Tanya: I had a right panic on that night, you know, because my mum told me never to marry a man who couldn’t dance.Tanya on Max: When we was first getting it together, he used to snuggle into my neck at night and go, "Night, bunny. Nighty-nighty, little bunny."Max: It was "Night, honey", it was "Night, honey"!Tanya: It was "Night, bunny". It was "bunny."Max: I don't remember ever calling you my little bunny.Tanya: I didn't know you were married when we met.Max: When you found out, it didn't stop you, did it? It didn't stop you bedding me and then watching me, running off to see little Bradley.Tanya: I was in love with you, I was in love with you, I was out of my mind with you.Bradley: You should have walked away, told him where to go.Tanya: It was too late by then. I'd fallen for him. I'm not making excuses, but you can't choose who you fall for.Cora to Tanya: You took another woman’s husband. Max was married, had a child. You didn’t care. You didn’t care about her, you didn’t care about the child, because it was all about Tanya.Tanya to Max: My hands ain't clean in all of this. It didn't matter that you were married, it didn't matter that you had a little kid. I wanted you all to myself and I got you, whatever the cost.Max to Tanya: I've never been able to [let you go], as far back as I can remember, with Rachel, little Bradley on the scene — I knew, I knew it wasn't fair on anyone. We both did, but we never had a choice, did we?Tanya on Max: He's the only man I've ever loved.Max: My first wife was a nightmare so yeah, I had an affair with Tan.Tanya to Max: You fell out of love with Rachel. You fell in love with me.Bradley to Tanya: Tell you his marriage was over, did he? Classic. Shame he forgot to tell my mum.Rachel on Max: He stood before me and he said there was no one else in the world and there never would be apart from me.Tanya: Eighteen years of age, I was all dolled up and chasing after a married man.Rainie to Tanya: Who was it who sat through the whole married man thing? "Twenty-four, sis — he's ancient. What am I to do? And should I tell him about the drugs and the non-stop partying?" Hours and hours we talked — "Oh, what's Tanya to do?"Tanya to Max: You know when we first met, those first few weeks together — all that sneaking about, back of the car, hotel bedrooms, all that stuff — it wasn't easy for me, you know, you being married, me being so young. Rainie was the only person that I had to talk to about all that stuff. I was that close to dumping you and you know what she said to me? She said, "He seems like a really nice bloke. He obviously really loves you. You should stick with it." It's all down to her.Rainie on herself and Max: We always had such a soft spot for one another.Rainie to Max: You were never good enough for my sister, you slime bag.Cora: Always had a thing for a blonde, ain’t you, Max?Tanya: Some men, they go for blondes or girls with big boobs. Not Max, he goes for girls who don't like themselves very much, girls who don't think they're good enough for the bloke that they're with, who have got this dirty big black hole inside that just makes them want to be needed more than anything in the world. I was fed the fairytale and all, but the minute you count on a bloke to make you happy, you're done for.Tanya to Max: I’m not like Rainie. I’m not addicted to crack, it’s you. You’re my drug. You always have been. You’re my sickness.Max: Over here, that's our family's future and over here, that's just sex.Tanya: You've spent your entire adult life saying that.Tanya: We only ever went to one gig. I didn't think it was your sort of thing. It was Simply Red.Max: What is it with you and redheaded fellas?Tanya: Then back to that place with the black satin sheets.Rachel on Max: He cheated on me. He cheated on us.Rachel to Bradley: He [Max] was telling you stories, he was telling me lies, and all the time making a new life. He chose her.Bradley to Max: [Mum] caught you, you and that Tanya, in her own bed.Tanya, speaking about Rachel in 2006: I don’t remember her being pretty.Rachel, speaking about Tanya in 2006: I don’t remember her being that pretty.Max to Bradley: I loved you more than I loved anyone. Just because I couldn’t make it work with your mum, because I was chasing every bit of skirt I could, because I was a mad, stupid idiot, it don’t mean I didn’t love you. I’m not a natural at marriage, but I was a natural as a dad.Max on Bradley: I always used to clean his shoes for him, every Sunday night ready for school. I never done much but I used to do that. Rachel used to have a pop at me because I put them to one side. I always cleaned his shoes for him, right up until the day I left.Max: I never hurt you and I never lied to you.Bradley: Yeah, you loved me so much, you just walked out and left me?Max: That’s what she said, is it, your mum, I just walked out? She threw me out.Bradley: I remember it. I was going to bed, you gave me a kiss goodnight, said you’d see me in the morning.Max: When I said it, I meant it.Bradley: You never came back.Max: It weren't quite that simple, son. If it had been up to me, I’d have whisked you up, I’d have taken you with me.Rachel: Max left. Max left us.Bradley: Did he? You didn’t kick him out?Tanya on Max: He didn’t wander from [Rachel], he ran.Max: Me walking out — a stupid young man dumping his family.Max to Tanya: I gave up my marriage for you.Bradley to Tanya: He left Mum for you. Whichever way you paint it, you’re still the other woman.Tanya: I’m the other woman. I’m the tart that broke up your marriage.Max: You can’t help who you fall for, can you?Rachel on Tanya: An adulterous little bitch who steals other women's husbands.Tanya: I didn’t steal anyone. Your marriage was already over. All he had to was get rid of the woman he wasn’t meant to be with and find the woman he was.Rachel to Max: The thoughtless way you behaved, the misery you caused, the damage you left behind.Bradley on Max: I was six, and he went. He blew my world apart. No kid should have to go through what I have.Rachel on Max: No one should suffer the pain he put me through.Max: I never meant to hurt you.Rachel: Well, that’s all right then.Max: I made a mistake.Rachel: Is that what Tanya is — a mistake?Max: No, I’m saying the way it happened. It was all badly handled, not just by me. I ain’t the only one who could have handled things better.Rachel: I know what it feels like to be a wife dismissed.Bradley: I heard Mum on the phone, begging and pleading with him to come back. I used to lay awake at night listening to her cry.Tanya: I didn’t know.Bradley: You turned a blind eye, more like. Were you with him when he was on the phone to her? Sympathising with what he had to put up with? Poor Dad!Tanya: No, it wasn’t like that. I know how rotten this must have been for your mum.Bradley: Rotten? Try devastating.Tanya: There are always two sides. He wasn’t happy, Bradley.Rachel to Max: You destroyed me and Bradley.Rachel to Bradley: After your father left, I suddenly had a five year old boy wetting the bed. You wouldn’t get dressed by yourself anymore. Weeks, every single evening after tea, you’d go and stand by the window. You were waiting for your daddy to come home because he used to play with you before bath, only he didn’t come home and I couldn’t get you away from the window. My lovely little boy, crying by the window, and it wasn’t my fault and it isn’t yours.Bradley: Why didn’t you come and see me?Max: I did. Your mum wouldn’t let me in.Rachel to Bradley: I promised you a bike for being such a big brave boy, for your birthday, and I can’t eat and I can’t sleep and God knows how I’ll get the money, but I will get you a bike and I do. And we start to work things out. We play trains before bath. And it comes to your birthday and all your friends from school are there and your big new bike, and for the first time in weeks, you forget about the window. And then your selfish, rotten father turns up, peering through the gap by the front door with a bunch of flowers and a present for his boy.Max to Bradley: I can still see you now with all your little friends. I could see you through a gap in the door. I weren’t welcome.Rachel: What should I have done, Bradley, let him in?Bradley: You could have told me that he’d tried.Rachel: When? How? Why — to have him pick up your life and drop it again whenever the fancy took him? To watch my lovely little boy go through all of that again and again? Why, Bradley?Bradley: Because he’s my dad.Max: I tried to keep in touch.Bradley to Rachel: You said he didn’t want to know. I thought it was me, me as well [as you] that he didn’t really want. It’s not like I’d done anything wrong. You said it yourself — it wasn’t my fault. I believed you, I got that. I just thought I wasn’t worth the effort, not as good, that I wasn’t good enough. But it wasn’t me, was it, Mum?Rachel: I never said it was.Bradley: You may as well have because you never told me he came back.Rachel: I was protecting you. Children need routine, some sort of order. The ordinary details are important when you’re little.Bradley: But you should have said something, Mum.Bradley: Why didn’t you try [to see me] again?Max: I couldn’t, mate. She made it difficult. It was too upsetting, mate. In the end, it was easier to let go.Bradley: And start another family?Max: Yeah.Bradley: Didn’t you care [Max] had a son he never saw? A son that was growing up without a dad?Tanya: It’s not something we talked about.</blockquote>

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