Christmas on Coronation Street: The perfect Christmas read
A wonderful Christmas read full of nostalgia and charm, perfect for fans of Coronation Street and readers who love Fiction set in Wartime.Elsie Grimshaw lives in one of the worst streets in Weatherfield and is desperate to escape from life at home with a brutal father and the drudgery of working at the local mill. Grabbing at the slim chances that come her way, Elsie emerges from the heartbreak of first love and her marriage to bad boy, Arnold Tanner at only sixteen years old, if not much older, then certainly wiser.Going under her married name of Elsie Tanner, she and Arnold move in to No.11 Coronation Street in 1939 as war breaks out. Her cheeky self-confidence immediately puts her at loggerheads with local busy-body Ena Sharples and Annie Walker, landlady of the Rovers Return.As Christmas approaches, the residents of Coronation Street must put their petty squabbles aside if they are to survive the worst that Hitler’s Luftwaffe can throw at them. And as the Manchester Blitz grips their home town of Weatherfield, the residents must pull together to make this a Christmas to remember – for all of the right reasons…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Coronation Street is an ITV Studios Production
Copyright © ITV Ventures Limited 2017
Archive photograph in end matter © ITV / REX / Shutterstock
Jacket photographs © Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock
(Coronation Street set); Topfoto.co.uk (children playing); John Topham/
Topfoto.co.uk (women chatting and van); © Ivan Cholakov/Alamy Stock
Photo (Flying Fortress).
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
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 authorâs 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: 9780008256524
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: [eISBN] 9780008255138
Version: 2018-09-25
Mum, Dad and Bram, my everlasting inspiration.
Table of Contents
Coronation Street â Still the Nationâs Favourite
Elsie Grimshaw stopped and stared at the newsagentâs window, like sheâd done every day since the small Christmas tree had appeared. The same as every year, it was draped in silvery tinsel and dotted with fluffy wads of cotton wool pretending to be snow. On the topmost branch was a fairy with a glittering wand. She shivered and wrapped her arms round her skinny body, trying to rub some feeling into them. It felt cold enough for real snow today though, and her arms were too puny and her coat too thin to offer any defence against the wind. Under the lower green branches of the tree, several gift-wrapped parcels were lying and she longed to pick them up. They were different shapes and sizes; all in fancy coloured paper, though much of it was faded. Some were strung with a ribbon that ended in a bow.
Must be some kind of chocolates, she had long ago decided as she gazed enviously at the packages. Seeing her own reflection in the newly cleaned glass, she was momentarily distracted and she stared at her outline. She pulled a funny face, laughed and then frowned, then stared straight ahead, a gradual smile coming to her lips. Her nose was all right, if a little pointed. She never had managed to scrub off the dusting of freckles. Her dark green eyes, which she knew were her best feature, looked huge against the paleness of her face. Lots of expression in those eyes, she was always being told. Nowt but bloody cheek and impudence, according to her dad. But it was her long eyelashes the girls at the factory envied. Much darker than the flame-red of her hair. She moved closer until they almost touched the glass. Everyone seemed to want long eyelashes. Not that she could see hers. Her fringe was too long. Long and lifeless, despite the curls, like the rest of the tangled mess that hung in different lengths around her shoulders. Sheâd tried to smooth it out but it wasnât easy. Maybe she could get her sister Fay to have a go at it if they could cadge some scissors off one of the neighbours. Of course, it would look quite different if it was washed and cut properly. She thought of the women she saw regularly coming out of the hairdressers in some of the nicer streets of Weatherfield. Then she could look like her favourite film star. Fiery hair, fiery temper her mother always said. But Elsie didnât mind, not if it made her like Maureen OâHara. Maybe the hairdresser could make her look like that one day. Elsie peered again at her reflection and pulled another face, this time stretching her thin lips, then pouting. Nothing a spot of carmine couldnât improve.
She rubbed her fingers over her cheekbones, which Fay reckoned stuck out like film starsâ bones. They stick out because I donât get enough to eat, Elsie had thought. Not the kind of problem Hollywood film stars have to worry about. She pictured herself stretched out on a sofa like she had seen in the films, munching through the contents of the chocolate boxes, deliciously soft and sweet. She imagined licking the melting chocolate from her fingers, though it wasnât chocolate that coated them now, stuck as they were with all the cotton fluff and grime from the machines at the factory. It never occurred to her the boxes might be dummies.
