Recently the lovely Beverley Callard spoke on Loose Women about how hard it was to live so far from her grandchildren and that she would like to see more of her grandsons, who live 200 miles away in London.
However, mum Laura Cross watched in disbelief, cuddling one-year-old daughter Harrie in her Salford home, the grandchild Beverley could easily see if she only wanted to.
Laura says: “When I saw Beverley on the TV that afternoon my stomach flipped.
“My only wish is that Harrie could be part of her life.”
After the show, Laura tweeted the actress: “break my heart that my baby has no contact with her dad’s family at the best of times @loosewomen today was a tough watch @Beverleycallard”
Harrie is the daughter of Beverley’s step-son Jon McEwan so there’s no biological link between them but Laura says that doesn’t matter.
On TV Beverley had referred to her and her husband as being grandparents – even though he is not the biological grandfather of her grandsons. So in the same way, Laura hopes Beverley will one day acknowledge that she is Harrie’s grandmother.
Laura, 34, has tried to make contact with Beverley so she can play a part in Harrie’s life. “Beverley spoke on TV about how much she missed her grandchildren – when she has a granddaughter just down the road in Manchester who’s crying out for time with her.
She added: “This is her husband’s first grandchild. She’s spoken about how much he means to her so surely she’d love his grandchildren too. I don’t know if she knows Harrie exists.”
“It is so sad. They’re missing out on the most important times of her life. Harrie looks just like her dad. They only need to see her once and they’d all fall in love with her.”
In a crazy twist to the sad story, it turns out that life really does imitate art because there’s a storyline on Corrie about Beverley’s curly-haired character Liz having a secret grandchild!
Her wayward on-screen son Steve is having a baby with Leanne Battersby – with his none-the-wiser other half Michelle pregnant at the same time.
Now Beverley’s real life has a plot good enough for any soap, with Harrie’s mum Laura begging the baby’s dad – Beverley’s stepson Jon – to have contact.
The pair met through the dating app Tinder last year, slept together and broke up shortly after. A month later, Laura discovered she was pregnant, which came as something of a shock as she thought she was infertile following an op on her fallopian tubes.
She says she hoped for a good relationship with dad, Jon, but it wasn’t to be. “I sent him a text asking him to call me, explaining it was important, he refused so I had to break the news via text and send a scan.”
He then asked Laura not to contact his family but later agreed to make CSA payments to Laura to help with Harrie’s upbringing.
But Laura has said that even though Harrie’s dad might not be interested she doesn’t “want Harrie to grow up, watch Coronation Street and say ‘that’s my grandma’ on TV and that be the closest she gets to her dad’s family.”