Questions Answered: Locating Linda

A couple of weeks ago, I asked you if there were any questions you wanted answered, be it trivia or a storyline point. Brenda asked whatever happened to Linda Sykes Baldwin. As Matthew pointed out, the actress who played Linda, Jacqueline Chadwick, was pregnant at the time and was having health problems. She had to leave Coronation Street suddenly so Linda had to be quickly written out. Jacqueline Chadwick gave birth to a premature baby boy but all turned out well. She's now running an acting school. Here's a quick run down on the last few months that Linda spent in Weatherfield and how her fate played out after she left.

Linda Sykes disappeared just before Fred's wedding to her mother, Eve Sykes. She and Mike had been having trouble on and off since they married the year before. When Mike discovered Alma was ill and dying, Linda did not want him spending time with his ex-wife and tried to lay down the law. Mike, however, did what he wanted and spent more time with his dying love.

Linda proceded to have a fling with a buyer, Harvey Reuben, and later, Mike overheard her tell her ex-lover Mark that she could wrap Mike around her little finger. Mike and Linda argued at the country house where the wedding would be and Mike frog-marched her to the car and kicked her out of his life. Linda sped off in Mike's car and is not seen from again.

Mike gives all her clothes to Emily's charity but Geena rescues them, and then becomes concerned because all of Linda's favourites are there and she doesn't think Linda would have left without them or a word to anyone at all. Other than Geena and Eve, nobody seems all that bothered about Linda's disappearance but When Mike's car is found in a river in Yorkshire, and one of Linda's shoes is found in the river as well, suspicion starts to fall on Mike. Did he kill Linda? The Police do charge Mike with Linda's murder in spite of there being no body and not concrete evidence. People seem prepared to believe the worst. Mike hires a private investigator to try to track her down.

We discover months later, via a message she sent to her father, that she took herself off to Dublin, the farthest she could go without her passport. She had some money stashed away and was now living with another fella. Her mother decides not to tell the police so as to leave Mike in hot water but gets Linda's new mobile number. It's about now that Fred discovers that Eve never divorced Linda's father. Eve spills the beans about Linda during an argument about it and Fred promptly tells Mike. Mike eventually forces Eve to tell the police and the whole sorry affair and failed marraige can be put behind him.