Spending time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit was a massive shock to Coronation Street’s Roy Cropper (David Neilson), and even though he’s been a free man for some time now he is still suffering the effects.

Roy was thrown into jail as the chief suspect in the Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton) case. As the last person to see Lauren alive, he’d also later behaved in what was deemed a suspicious way by trying to clean up Lauren’s flat – where blood traces were later found.

With Roy’s trademark honesty, under police questioning he only got himself deeper and deeper into hot water as every innocent action looked in hindsight like the behaviour of a guilty man. His prison experience was horrific, as he was attacked in his cell.

No wonder the poor man has been left with a lot of trauma to process, and his friends have been worried about him as he’s hardly ventured out of his flat since his release.

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Roy terrified in Victoria Gardens as a group of youths leave him in a bad way in Coronation Street
So Yasmeen Nazir (Shelley King), Nina Lucas (Mollie Gallagher) and Shona Platt (Julia Goulding) come up with a plan in which Shona will call in sick, so that Roy will have to put his apron back on and help Evelyn Plummer (Maureen Lipman) in the cafe. This is successful – but soon Roy is hit by a fresh blow.

Heading out to take some soup to Shona – who he still believes to be ill – Roy is confronted by a gang of yobs calling him names. Confused and frightened, he stumbles to the floor. Carla Connor (Alison King) spots this and rushes over, and finds Roy obviously in pain.

He’s angry when he discovers that Shona’s ‘illness’ was just a ruse and he sends her and Evelyn away.

Later, Shona is talking to Nina on the corner when they see an ambulance drive past and pull up outside the cafe. Terrified, they dash over and see Roy on the floor, being given CPR by the paramedics. He’s rushed to hospital, where he drifts in and out of consciousness.

In a lucid moment he tells Nina that he had a visitor by his bed while he was sleeping. Nina is worried that it’s a hallucination, but Roy is adamant – the person really was there and stayed some time before disappearing.

Who has he seen? And is it a real person – or a result of the terrible shocks he’s been through this year?