Grass

Tuesday, a thump-thump-thumping sound might have been heard in the Weatherfield Police Station: Les Battersby turning in his figurative grave. His daughter Leanne was there to grass up her son.

During a football game, Simon seriously injured another player. Was it just in the course of play or was it deliberate? No one knows for sure, but Simon tells Zeedan that he had intended to hurt the kid. Zeedan then tells Leanne. She asks Simon and he gives mixed messages in his replies. With his recent history of violence toward her, she cannot simply take it on faith that he did not intend harm.

So, against every maternal instinct and every predisposition in her Battersby genetic structure, she goes to the police. She tells them everything, not just Simon’s attack on the boy but also his violence toward her. I don’t think she’d planned to do that. Maybe, once she started, she couldn’t stop until she had got the whole story out. Maybe the police became her counsellor, her confessional.

Video replay

The police question Simon. He says he did not intentionally injure the boy. In the end, it turns out that is the truth. A parent had recorded the game and caught the moment of the fight. It was an accident. Simon is surprised and angry that no one automatically believed him. He, however, conveniently overlooks his initial statement to Zeedan that led to everyone’s erroneous assumption. He blames his mother, piling more guilt on top of that she already feels for not having believed in him and for turning him in.

Simon phones his dad so that Greatest Absent Father in the World Peter can rip into Leanne about the horrible things she is doing to his son. And somewhere Les Battersby is smiling to himself and saying to Leanne, ‘that’s what you get for being a grass.’

Other side of the family

Too bad Simon only knows his father’s family. If he knew his adoptive mother’s family, he would learn that there is nothing he can do that would shock them, no bad behaviour that they had not already done, and they would likely be able to teach him quite a lot that he’s never even thought of. Leanne has wanted to be a good role model for him. That has meant keeping her sketchy past and that of her family from him. Perhaps it’s time to let him know that his family has some big bad-boy shoes, and he can’t hope to fill them.