Revenge

Revenge is the episode in which the pressure breaks people. Tracy, in hospital after Dez's attack, is brought screaming out of a coma by dreams of her past and present, and Carol, carrying the guilt of Gina's death and the fear of the killer, finally snaps.

Her breakdown takes a shocking form. With Curly, the middle-aged client whose fetish for stockings has unsettled her from the start, she goes too far and pours a kettle of boiling water over him. It is an act of violence against a man who may be harmless, born of terror rather than evidence, and it removes Carol from the story for a time: when the next episode begins she is in a psychiatric ward. The collapse comes at the end of a long strain, not as sudden madness.

Anita has her own crisis. Questioned by the police, she begins to wonder whether George Ferguson, the businessman who keeps her and owns a share of her life, has something to do with the killings. Anita is a woman who has traded independence for comfort and is starting to count the cost. George's interest in the women's lives, and his connection to the loan shark who pursued Gina, will matter at the end of the series.

Tracy's story takes the darkest turn. Released from hospital, she goes home to her parents in Harrogate and cannot stand their rules. The reason is worse than teenage rebellion. Her father abused her, and she is not sure her mother believes her. Her sister resents her for the arguments her leaving caused. Tracy runs away again, and Rose goes with her to London. Her hostility at home makes sense only once the truth is out.

Kay Mellor's handling of the abuse is direct without being lurid. The series does not explain every girl on the Lane by a single cause, but it makes plain that Tracy did not choose the street from a range of better options.

The weakness is the Curly scene, which is so extreme that it threatens to turn Carol's suffering into a set piece. The episode's strength is that it gives the three central women separate crises at once, so that the murder inquiry recedes and the cost of the life becomes the subject. It ends with the women scattered: Carol in hospital, Tracy and Rose on their way to London, and Anita alone with her suspicions.