Bernie Winter (Jane Hazlegrove) made a drunken mistake in Coronation Street. Now that mistake has turned up on her doorstep and won’t leave her alone.

As Mal Roper’s (Tim Treloar) infatuation with Bernie veers into dangerous obsession, actress Jane Hazlegrove spills the beans on what this chilling new development means

for her character. It was a supposed to be a simple night out. A way for Bernie to hide from the grief she felt from the death of her beloved son in law Billy Mayhew (Daniel Brocklebank).

Bernie Winters has got herself in a nightmare situation

But what started as a drunken girly night out soon descended into something more sinister when she crossed paths with Mal Roper, who clearly fancied his chances. As plastered as she was, Bernie was not about to betray her husband Dev Alahan (Jimmi Harkishin). However, this didn’t stop her from going on a drug-fuelled bender with Mal, only to wake up next morning with a splitting headache and a profound sense of regret.

Sadly, Bernie’s problems didn’t disappear with her hangover. Unfortunately for the feisty co-proprietor of Roy’s Rolls, Mal just so happens to be the husband of Alice, the mysterious pen pal of Roy Cropper (David Neilson). However, Mal’s less concerned about his wife, and more concerned about following Bernie around like a shadow – hence why he bagged himself a job as an electrician doing some rewiring in Roy’s flat.

What’s that I hear you cry? Why doesn’t Bernie just admit what happened to Dev and face the music? Easy – to save her marriage. Bernie rejects Mal’s advances too hard, he is liable to spill the secret to Dev at any time. But the truth has to come out sooner or later.

Upcoming scenes in Corrie will see Mal the unstable cable guy seize his chance to get a moment alone with Bernie by locking her in Roy’s Rolls before declaring his undying love! Actress Jane Hazlegrove gives us a guided tour of where Bernie’s head is at right now.

‘She’s really quite frightened, Jane explains.

‘She’s been on the end of an aggressive, violent man a lot. So this is absolutely terrifying, she’s in deep now. It is really dangerous. She’s made herself  vulnerable—somehow she thinks she can kind of pull down her armour. Yeah. That’s her superpower, the way she has this hard shell that keeps her safe and. But this is really bad. He’s unhinged. Then she also then discovers that someone has cut her head out of her wedding picture. I mean, this is stalker territory, he’s been in the house!’.

It goes without saying that Mad Mal does not take Bernie’s rejection well. So when Bernie discovers that someone has cut her head off her wedding photo in true Fatal Attraction style., it doesn’t take a genius to guess the culprit.

Terrified, Bernie is faced with the dilemma of confessing everything to Dev before Mal can and risking her marriage. Is she tempted to fess up and potentially damage her marriage just so her twisted stalker can’t do it first?

‘Yeah that is definitely part of it.’ Jane reveals. ‘And I think that she’s kind of looking at Mal and going, “Gosh, right, this man is going to take this somewhere else and that he’s not perhaps what he makes out to be and could be dangerous.” That he’s completely fixated for no reason other than that’s his personality. ‘

But will Bernie come clean to Dev? Or just continue to bury her head in the sand?

‘(Bernie) has an enormous capacity for burying things. She locks it up, she locks up the secret in her head, and she just hopes and prays that nobody’s going to get access to the loft. And if they do, and that case comes open, she’ll do everything she can to sit on it and stop it from actually coming out. This kind of denial is a very, very strong part of her personality.

‘So the half-truth’s kind of all right, yeah, because she can bury the rest until it raises its ugly head, and inevitably it does, doesn’t it? And now she knows the full ugly truth needs to come out because she might need help.’

Oh, she’ll need help all right. Pretty soon, word on the street is that Mal is obsessed with Bernie. When Mal gets wind of this, he furiously confronts Bernie until Roy throws him out of the Rover’s. Finally reaching breaking point, Bernie warns Mal in no uncertain terms that she will kill him unless he leaves her alone. Mal laughs in her face and asserts that he’s not going anywhere…

Famous last words. Not long after in Weatherfield Police station, Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) informs Kit Green (Jacob Roberts) about a bloke who was found lying in the street with a head injury. Perusing the file, Kit is shocked to realise that Mal is in hospital in a critical condition.

Did Bernie attack Mal? Jane gives nothing away, but admits her character looks pretty guilty.

‘It’s not a good look because she’s been heard threatening him. She is definitely going to be under suspicion so in the end telling Dev has not made it go away. If anything, things have got worse.’

‘She knows she’s messed up. If she had told the full truth from the start they might not have got to this place but here they are and it is down to her.’

First introduced in 2019, Bernie has earned her place in Corrie fans’ hearts as the non-nonsense matriarch of Roy’s Rolls, handing out hard truths and dry quips with her bacon barm. Jane reflects on what she likes best about playing Bernie.

‘I absolutely love it. I know quite a few women, you know, that still have a foot in the nineties, as far as they’re, yeah, they’re all of those things. They are the great-grandmother, but they’ve still got that in them that they can make 10 pence turn into £10 that day. They’ll go and wait till the end of the day for the yellow label and all of that. And she’s a survivor. And I think that’s very much a working-class thing as well. But no, I love it that she’ll never get rid of the tie-dye or that wretched bag.’

Fingers crossed that Bernie isn’t trading her tie-dye for prison overalls anytime soon…