mark quickly settled into no.11 but all the time there was an edge to his relationship with elsie, not helped by him telling her how much alan had loved laura. elsie was not fooled and sensed that mark was making a hopeless attempt to reconcile his parents though alan assured her that there was no chance of that happening. mark made a good impression in the rovers where annie walker concluded that he was a nice young man and looked on favourably when he chatted up her ward lucille hewitt. for her part, although she was interested in him, in the main lucille agreed to go out with him to spite ray langton who she still held a candle for. the date was initially a success with lucille being charmed by his manners though as the night wore on he upset her with his crude jokes and she confided in a worried elsie that she thought he had a dark side to his character, going so far as to describe him as "dangerous". when pushed, she admitted to elsie that mark had asked lucille for sex on their first date, using offensive language to do so. that same night, mark revealed his true colours: he and alan made arrangements to go to a football match but mark had cottoned on to the fact that elsie and len fairclough were old friends. he cried off the match at the last minute and quietly entered no.11, knowing that len was visiting elsie. stood in the hallway, he listened at the closed doorway to the back room as len and elsie chatted, swapping their old suggestive banter between one another. mark eagerly reported the conversation back to his father, putting on a front of being shocked at what he had heard. alan asked elsie what was going on and, in turn, she confronted mark who denied the conversation. he told her that all he wanted was for his father to be happy, but told her obliquely that she wasn't the one to do that. she walked out on the two men and alan, at last starting to see what was happening, told his son that he wouldn't let him come between him and his new wife and there was no way he was returning to laura. mark walked out on his father and alan and elsie were reconciled.