Tonight’s Coronation Street episode could have given us our first hints about how Cassie Plummer might leave the ITV soap. Back in January, it was revealed that Cassie actor Claire Sweeney had quit her role after joining Corrie in 2023.

So far, details of her exit have been kept tightly under wraps, but it could be that her relationship with Steve McDonald and her plan to pop the question have a big part to play.

Steve admits that he is ignoring Cassie, and that while he loves her, he isn’t sure that now is the “right time” for him to get married.

He blames both his dad’s recent death as well as his “track record”, referring to his seven marriages in the soap.

Steve first wed Vicky Arden in 1995 before moving on to Karen Phillips in both 2001 and 2004. He then married Becky Granger in 2009, and Tracy Barlow in 2012, and then again in 2018. His seventh wife, Michelle Connor, he wed in 2015.

It could be that these seeds of doubt, and Cassie and Steve wanting different things from the future, could end in a messy breakup and the eventual reason she leaves the cobbles.

Last year, Claire explained how she would love to see Cassie and Steve tie the knot: “I said this to [Simon] the other day, ‘I’d love us to get married’. He went, ‘Not another wedding’,” she joked.

“I’ve never been married in real life; I’ve been married once in Brookside. It would be lovely to have a wedding in Corrie.

“There’s so much fun in the scenes with [the two characters]. Cassie could have been doing some evil stuff and thinking terrible things, but the minute he comes, she turns into a giggly teenager.

“He just strips all of this away from her, and it’s really very genuine.”