fiancée and was devastated by her brush-off, so much so, that he halted the wedding by not coming initially and dragging Linda out of the church to speak to her. Linda's bridesmaid, Geena Gregory (Jennifer James), stalled the ceremony with a worried Mike standing at the altar alone while Mark proposed to Linda. She turned him down and returned to the church, telling Mike that he'd need to get a new best man as Mark had scarpered. Mark drowned his sorrows while Mike and Linda got married on 10 September 2000. However, Mark arrived at the wedding reception to tell his father that he and Linda had been having an affair. The bride admitted to Mike that, in a moment of weakness, she'd had a brief fling with Mark when he first arrived but it was over and she loved him more than anything else. Taking his new wife's side over his son's, an angry Mike disowned a devastated Mark and left for his honeymoon with Linda. After returning, Linda did almost everything in her power to make her marriage successful and keep Mike happy, so that he would not throw her out for her infidelity. However, it soon became apparent that he still had a soft spot for his ex-wife Alma. This became more apparent when both Mike and Alma and other residents of the street were held hostage on 12 October 2000 at the supermarket Freshco's by two young thugs. The police eventually burst in and one of the young thugs was shot. However, when Linda arrived at the scene, she not only found her husband with his ex-wife, but also recognised that the thug who had been shot was her younger brother Dean Sykes (Ciarán Griffiths). Accompanied by Mike in the ambulance, a devastated Linda held her brother's hand as he died. After that she swore revenge on Emma Watts (Angela Lonsdale), the police officer who shot him. It was then that Mike was introduced to Linda's family at Dean's funeral. Linda was very cold and distant to all her family members, treating them as if she was now above them, and she was especially hard towards her mother Eve. However, after the funeral Linda managed to patch things up with her mother and Eve returned to the street with her, where she met and fell in love with Fred Elliott (John Savident). In February 2001, Mike