Maggie Sullivan - Mother’s Day on Coronation Street

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Coronation Street is an ITV Studios Production

Copyright © ITV Ventures Limited 2018

Cover photographs © Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images (boy); © Stephen Searle / Alamy Stock Photo (Coronation Street)

Maggie Sullivan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008256531

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: [eISBN] 9780008255169

Version: 2019-01-07

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

March 1942

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Acknowledgements

Coronation Street – Still the Nation’s Favourite

Keep Reading…

Also by the Author

About the Author

About the Publisher

To absent friends: Barbara Reid and Renée Byrne

Annie Walker lay in the middle of the generous-sized bed, ready to close her eyes. It was a rare treat for the landlady of Coronation Street’s Rovers Return to enjoy the luxury of an afternoon doze, for the pub was the busiest and best in Weatherfield as far as she was concerned. The sunlight that was slanting through the sash window illuminated the dust on the dressing-table drawers and it was almost enough to make her get up and go in search of a duster – but she resisted. Her cold wasn’t completely cured yet.

Annie yawned and stretched, lazily grateful that she had been able to persuade her mother to come and look after the children for a few days while she took to her bed.

‘You won’t have to worry about serving in the pub,’ Annie had said when she’d asked for Florence’s help. She’d sensed her mother’s hesitation at the thought of having to pull pints behind the bar.

‘It’s not that, dear,’ Florence said, almost too quickly. ‘I was just wondering whether you might be better off going to the hospital. This flu that so many people are going down with can be very dangerous, you know, and you don’t want to take any chances, not with two little ones running around.’

Annie didn’t want to admit that it was probably the two little ones and their boundless energy that had led to her getting so run-down in the first place.

Thankfully, Florence had agreed to come and Annie had been able to indulge in what she considered to be a well-deserved rest. But enough was enough. Now Florence was beginning to irritate her and, grateful as she was for her mother’s help, Annie knew it was time for her to take back control of her own household.

Annie closed her eyes, about to drop off, when Florence made an unwanted appearance. She was brandishing the Weatherfield Gazette .

‘Have you seen what it says here?’ she said, waving the paper under Annie’s nose. ‘There’s going to be a special service for Mothering Sunday at the Mission of Glad Tidings.’

‘So?’ Annie’s eyes were already heavy with sleep.

‘So, I thought we might go.’ Florence began to hum ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. ‘It might be interesting.’

‘You can please yourself.’ Annie sounded cross. ‘But I shall go to Mount Zion Baptist Chapel where I always go. It’s where Jack and I were married and where, I believe, I shall be expected.’ So saying, she closed her eyes and turned on her side.

Yes, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, it would be timely to go to church and give thanks, if only for the fact that, although German bomber planes continued to fill the skies, the barrage balloons forced them to fly so high it had been some time since the Luftwaffe had managed to drop their bombs with any accuracy on Weatherfield.

After the horrors of the 1940 Christmas Blitz that had laid bare the centre of Manchester and flattened parts of residential Weatherfield, Annie had wondered whether there could be any more bombs left in the Germans’ arsenal to be dropped on Britain. But the Air Raid Precaution wardens had warned people to be vigilant because there could still be the occasional air raid even though the Blitz was over. Their advice was to flee to the shelters at the first signs of danger. Annie dreaded the thought of being woken up by the wail of air-raid sirens and having to rush to get dressed and make herself presentable. Regardless of the fact that they were encouraged to leave immediately the sirens sounded and not wait to gather any belongings, she certainly didn’t like being bullied by one of the ARPs or the fire wardens into having to seek cover without checking first whether she was decent enough to be seen in public. Annie was thankful she at least had her own cellar where she and any of the staff and customers could flee to whenever necessary. She could not imagine having to run with her two little ones down the street where she would be crammed together with all the neighbourhood hoi polloi who were seeking shelter in the basement of the Mission of Glad Tidings. Even the thought of having to rub shoulders, quite literally, with all those people was more than she could bear.

But, when she stopped to think about it, she was already doing so many things that in the past she would have thought were beyond endurance. Since war had been declared people everywhere, not only in Weatherfield, were suffering hardships and acting in ways they weren’t used to, doing things that, until the start of the war, they would not have dreamt of doing. And they had been doing them for so long now it was hard to remember things ever being any different. Not that Annie was a stranger to change and hardship. She had endured sudden loss and a dramatic change of life style when she was a young girl to such an extent that she would have thought it was enough for a lifetime. But even she had to admit that they were now living through some of the most challenging and troublesome times she could remember.