Christmas Day at the Rovers Return in Coronation Street serves up one of those high-drama Christmas dinners full of secrets, simmering tensions and explosive revelations – all courtesy of the Driscolls.

Eva Price (Catherine Tyldesley) is keeping a huge secret and, triggered by something her daughter Susie (Aurora Bradshaw) says, gets upset.

Adam (Sam Robertson) finds her crying in the back yard and asks what’s wrong. Eva tells him everything, and Adam reassures her that she had no choice about the decision she made in the past.

He suggests she could write everything down in a letter, pouring out all her feelings as a kind of therapy to work through the issue. He also asks her to look after a jewellery box which is a surprise Christmas present for Alya (Sair Khan).

Maggie Driscoll (Pauline McLynn) has long had a suspicion that there’s unfinished business between Eva and Adam and sees him handing her the box. Suspicious, she later rummages through Eva’s bag and finds the box, but she’s disappointed to find it’s a necklace with Alya’s name engraved on it.

Christmas Day is full of drama

But there’s something else in the bag – the letter Eva wrote detailing her secret. Maggie’s shocked, but she also spies an opportunity. And viewers will have already seen what Maggie is capable of after a special episode reveals that she is, in fact, a killer.

‘Eva and Maggie have always had that sort of relationship where they are going to hurl insults at each other, but most of the time, they laugh it off,’ Catherine Tyldesley explained. ‘But I think, for Maggie, it certainly runs a bit deeper than that in as much that I don’t think anybody would ever quite be good enough for her golden boy.’

On Christmas Day Maggie is waiting for her opportunity to cause mayhem, and is seething inside as she watches a loving Ben (Aaron McCusker) and Eva exchanging their gifts.  Maggie has also invited Adam and Alya to Christmas lunch, so when Eva realises the letter is missing from her bag she panics and tells Adam.