Coronation Street's Joel Deering finds Lauren Bolton amid return as star says she's 'not the first'

Joel Deering is set to get his hands back on Lauren Bolton as these Coronation Street first-look pictures show. It was confirmed during Monday night's (July 8) edition of the ITV soap that the teen was alive after disappearing from Weatherfield back in February.

It was revealed in flashback scenes aired last month that Roy Cropper, as everyone already knew, was innocent after he was charged with the suspected murder of the missing teen and that it was really Joel who was her 'secret boyfriend' and had something to do with her sudden disappearance.

After making a swift exit from Roy's homecoming, after he was finally released from prison, Joel was met by Hope Stape who handed him a necklace that she found in his car when cleaning it, which viewers recognised belonged to Lauren. Then, a flashback clip revealed him to be Lauren's secret 'boyfriend' and him brutally attacking her with a chair leg.

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But after months of pondering whether Lauren had survived after being in the solicitor's clutches, the character appeared distraught as she came to Roy's bedside after he collapsed in his beloved café and had to be given CPR.

Speaking about how Joel is feeling about seeing Lauren in the hospital, Calum Lill, who plays him, told us: "The immediate worry [for Joel] was that the police are going to find her and he's going to get arrested and then the police don't find her and she's not in the flat so she must be alive but just waiting for her to go to the police - but she didn't.

"So he's gone from guilty and keeping his head down to back to that arrogance of, 'I've