What’s a mother to do?

When my partner and I first moved in together we infected each other with two particularly virulent and long lasting maladies. I caught Coronation Street off him and, for his sins, he now suffers a strange spasm most week nights from 7pm, for half an hour or so. We have sat in front of the goggle-box through Mike Barlow’s decline, Huia Samuels’s explosive end, Sarah Platt’s aborted wedding, and Chris Warner’s return. Neither of us go in for Home and Away, Neighbours or Eastenders, but Coro and Shortie are our guilty pleasures.

The current water cooler conversation at Soap Watchers Anonymous, at least in our shaky isles, is Tracy Barlow’s murder trial. For those unfamiliar with the plot line here’s a quick summary:

1. Charlie is an emotionally abusive arsehole who almost ruins the life of the very nice Shelley.
2. Sometime after Shelley leaves Charlie at the altar, he and long-time Coro troublemaker Tracy start a relationship that could be made for the cliché “they deserve each other.”
3. The two nasties basically play games with each other, until Charlie has an affair and Tracy breaks it off in outrage.
4. Surprisingly, Tracy quickly goes back to Charlie. In fact, she has decided to exact her revenge by the long-winded route of creating the (mostly false) impression that he is abusing her and eventually killing him. Her intention all along is to plead not guilty on the grounds of self-defence, by virtue of being a battered spouse.
5. Tracy puts her plan into action, manipulating her neighbour Clare and her mother Deidre, amongst other unwitting Coro St residents, to create witnesses to Charlie’s supposed abuse.
6. Eventually Tracy tries to goad Charlie into physically attacking her so that she can kill him in the process of a fight. When he refuses to rise to the bait she scones him one with a statuette anyway. After some suspense he dies and she is arrested for murder.
7. Tracy sets about giving herself the best possible chance of getting away with it through a sex-for-eye-witness-testimony deal with the Teen From Hell David. She also guilts her parents into funding an expensive legal team, including a lawyer who specializes in helping abused women to escape their violent partners.
8. Deirdre, Tracy’s mother, works it all out and confronts her daughter, who rather remorselessly confesses all.

This last happens a few days before Deirdre is due to testify as the final witness in Tracy’s defence case, backing up her daughter’s accusations of abuse by Charlie. As a woman who has done jail time herself, Deirdre cannot stand the thought of losing her daughter to prison. She also knows that if she doesn’t lie on the stand she will lose her anyway, as Tracy will excise her mother from her life, and take Deirdre’s grand daughter away too.

As a mum, Deirdre feels extreme guilt for her part in raising a daughter who could murder, and also has a parent’s natural inclination to want to do anything to save her child. Plus, Charlie was genuinely a horrible abusive man, although his manipulation wasn’t particularly effective on the woman who actually killed him. All up it’s a twisted situation, fraught with moral dilemna.

What would you do in Deirdre’s brogues? Would you do anything to save your child from many years in prison? If your offspring committed a heinous crime, and you knew all about it, would you shop them? And is Coro St being irresponsible by promulgating the idea that a woman would make up a serious case of abuse to get away with murder?

Thoughts, dear readers, in comments, or if you prefer to write a post on your own blog about this matter please do share a link.