Bernie Winter-Alahan (Jane Hazelgrove) has got a guilty secret. Now that secret is walking around Coronation Street and threatening to blow up her marriage.

All has not been rosy between Bernie and Dev Alahan (Jimmi Harkishin). Their delightfully mismatched pairing has bought joy to the Cobbles ever since their calamity filled wedding, where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

However, relations between the pair first started to go south thanks to Bernie’s well-meaning meddling in the life and mental health of her husband’s daughter Asha Alahan (Tanisha Gorey). Now the couple are on the rocks once more as Bernie struggles to contain her grief over the death of beloved friend Billy Mayhew (Daniel Brocklebank).

Losing Billy in the Corriedale crash hit Bernie hard, because he was basically family to her. He was the husband of her son Paul Foreman (Peter Ash), who passed away after a long battle with Motor Neurone Disease, and the grief brought them closer together.

Executive Producer Kate Brooks recently teased that Bernie’s grief would take a story in a new dark direction.

‘Bernie is brilliant, she’s such a fun character.’ Kate enthused. ‘She’s really stoic. She’s watched her son die, which was horrific, and now she’s having to come to terms with the fact that Billy has also died. The thing with Bernie is she wants to take care of people, she wants to be people’s rock. As a result of that she’s buried a lot of grief. If you cast your mind back to when Paul died it was very rare that we saw Bernie lose it or burst into tears. She was strong for everyone and the strength of that whole family.’

‘So we wanted to explore what would happen if she had to deal with another really tragic death and how that grief manifests. We take Bernie on a really interesting journey as she struggles. It gets to the point where, because it’s been bubbling for such a long time, it actually kind of erupts. When it does, there’s consequences for Bernie. It’s not as straightforward as Dev sweeping in and making everything OK. It’s a really muddy, murky story that we take her on and we see another side to Bernie that we’ve not seen yet.’

Now that one of her closest confidantes is gone, Bernie’s grief spiralled after Billy’s funeral when she lashed out in anger at Dev before storming off for a boozy night with her daughter Gemma (Dolly-Rose Campbell), Sally Metcalfe (Sally Dynevor), Glenda Shuttleworth (Jodie Prenger) and Christina Boyd (Amy Robbins).

Drowning her sorrows, Bernie knocked back shot after shot before drunkenly ending up in a hotel room with a stranger, Mal (Tim Treloar).

Don’t worry, Dernie fans. While Mal tried to kiss Bernie, she pushed him away. The only thing she was guilty of that was emptying the minibar and popping a pill with her new ‘friend’. After being caught out by Ryan Connor (Ryan), she confided her mistake Gemma and swore it would never happen again. After all, it’s not like she’s going to run into Mal again…

… except, of course she is.

It turns out Mal isn’t some random stranger. He is the husband of Roy Cropper’s (David Nielson) pen-pal and potential new romance, the mysterious Alice. Turns out, Bernie will be seeing a lot more of Mal. He’s left his wife and landed himself a job locally at as an electrician. Let’s hope sparks don’t fly…

But it looks like Mal’s definitely made a connection in upcoming scenes where he crosses paths with Bernie. When he turns up in Roy’s flat and gets to work, Bernie hides her discomfort. She suggests a cheaper electrician to Roy, but he refuses, feeling partly responsible for Mal’s marriage breakdown. It

Recent comments from Kate Brooks seems to suggest that Mal is going to be a big part of Bernie’s story going forward.

‘Obviously it’s going to be a test for Bernie and Dev. They are a really strong couple and no matter what we throw at them, they can overcome because they love each other. They absolutely adore each other.’