Mandy Pearce

Mandy Pearce was Lucy Richards' best friend and attended her wedding to Peter Barlow at Weatherfield Registry Office in March 2003. Although she had never met Peter, she told his step-sister Tracy Barlow that she thoroughly approved of him because of the warm way in which Lucy had described him to her. The wedding was due to take place at 1.00pm on 24th March but that was also the day on which Peter's other fiancée, Shelley Unwin, was burying her Sharon in Bradford. Upsetting Shelley, he managed to attend the funeral but made his excuses during the tea afterwards to make a made dash across the Pennines on the grounds of having a business appointment. He missed his deadline but as another wedding wasn't booked until 2.00pm, they managed to get another slot and Mandy was delighted to see her best friend hitched.

Their marriage quickly hit the rocks though within two days when Lucy found that he had not ditched Shelley as he had promised he would. Lucy gave birth to their son Simon four months after their wedding and she wavered about allowing him access to his son. In the September, Mandy met up with Peter again at Lucy's flat when he asked for access so that he could be a better father, while acknowledging that he had been a rotten husband. Mandy felt sorry for Peter and persuaded Lucy to go and see him about a reconciliation. This well-meaning gesture proved to Peter's undoing as his reluctant reaction to the offer made Lucy visit Coronation Street where she discovered his secret: weeks after marrying her, he had bigamously married Shelley.

The two women met and Shelley was at first shell-shocked. A day later she went to Lucy's and Mandy took Simon out while the two women talked. They reached a decision to start making Peter pay for his deceptions but it didn't take long for Shelley to get cold feet and start to give Peter another chance. Lucy, almost unhinged with anger, was on the point of sending them poison pen letters which Mandy tried to persuade her against. Lucy didn’t post them but a few days later, telling Mandy that seeing Peter and Shelley together was driving her out of her mind, she told her that she was determined to make them pay for their actions. Her act was to persuade Peter that she was interested in getting back together with him provided that they move to Spain where she was setting up a business and she made sure that she was with Peter when he told Shelley. Only then, when she had ruined any chance of Peter and Shelley being together forever, did she reveal that she had no intention of moving abroad with him, that he was on his own and that he would never see his son again. She then left him and moved to Australia where she died of cancer in October 2008 and Peter regained custody of Simon.

List of appearances

 * Episode 5468 (24th March 2003)
 * Episode 5581 (14th September 2003)
 * Episode 5582 (15th September 2003)
 * Episode 5584 (17th September 2003)
 * Episode 5612 (27th October 2003)
 * Episode 5616 (2nd November 2003)