Katie Byrne

'''Katherine Alexandra Rose Byrne (nee. Jones) (b. 10th July 1988) has been a resident of North Grove from 1988 – 2006 and from 2010 – onwards.

Katie is the fourth child of Helen and Peter Jones, the fiance of Ryan Byrne, step-mother to Hayley Byrne and the mother to Mason Byrne.

Childhood
Katie was born at North Grove Genera Hospital in 1988 to her parents. She was two weeks late and that seemed to follow her through the rest of her life.

When she was born, her parents were shocked as they were expecting a baby boy with whom they were to name Alex. Due to this, she didn’t actually receive her name until she was two weeks old. Her grandmother May suggested the name Katherine as it was her mother-in-law Margaret Porter’s middle name and she was close to her.

Her parents loved the name and added Alexandra as a homage to her surprise gender and Rose after May’s sister. She is the only Jones’ child to have two middle names.

May also suggested the name as Katie was a gorgeous baby andshe felt like a name that was fit for a Royal would only do.

Growing up in a seven sibling household, Katie was closest to her sister’s Hannah and Louisa. They were fairly close in age with five years between them and the bond only grew stronger through the years.

Katie wasn’t as close to her other siblings, as Sean wasnever in the house as she grew up unless it was to play with Louisa and Olivia had starting to hang around with bad people and had a dangerous drug habit which her parents kept her away from.

When her younger siblings Lewis and Georgie were born she did try to help them when she was in but as she started high school she was barely seen.

Teenage Years
Outside of her sister’s, Katie’s best friend was Vicki Kershaw. They always hung around with the boys mainly at school like Ryan Byrne, Zak Richardson and her cousin George Weston. They were very pretty and attracted their attention but the fact that they could keep up with their humour kept them around.

It was through Katie that Louisa and Lee Nuttall started to hang around with them and leading to the friendship of Ryan and Lee.

She also started dating Ryan during high school and lost her virginity to him in his bedroom while his dad was out. They were a close knit friendship group that just got more bigger through the school years. During her school years, Katie didn’t concentrate as much as her parents liked, especially as she was very bright.

Going to college, she discovered her love of psychology. She started to knuckle down and actually put her mind to it and due to this, the pressure got to her and she ended things with Ryan during her second year. He was devastated but understood and they split amicably.

They didn’t speak much afterwards though.

University
Katie accepted a place at Edinburgh University to study Psychology which would lead down the Clinical branch. She excelled in her studies, dated a few times and made some friends but she didn’t really feel like she fit in there.

She missed home terribly, especially in her first year and when she went home over the summer between her second and third year she began to date Ben Fox who was four years her senior.

He would come up to Edinburgh and spend the weekend or week with her as he worked for his dad who gave him a bit of flexibility. The two enjoyed spending time with each other and it helped ease Katie into life at University.

Katie passed her fourth year with honours and decided to take her further studies back to Manchester after being offered a work experience role at North Grove General Hospital, which her father helped to secure.

Relationship with Ben Fox
When she moved back to North Grove, she initially moved in with her parents again but after her grandfather Roger Hackman passed away, her grandmother May moved in which made the place a little crowded, which frustrated Katie who was doing her post-graduate degree and needed the peace.

She is May’s favourite grandchild along with her cousin Jenny so Katie enjoyed her grandmother’s presence but with her and Ben having been in a relationship for two years, they decided to move in together in September 2010.

She still barely spoke to Ryan anymore as just as she arrived back, his girlfriend Lizzie Redding had given birth to their daughter Hayley.

Katie was happy for them, until she found out that Lizzie had stopped Ryan from seeing his child. She became furious and stormed round to Lizzie’s house with her sister Louisa to give her a piece of her mind, which Louisa managed to cool, slightly.

Lizzie called out Katie for still having feelings for Ryan but Katie denied it. She said she was just sticking up for an old friend and that Lizzie should never keep a man’s daughter from him.

It was after this that Lizzie began to consider letting Ryan back into his daughter’s life and tried to make things work. Ryan never found out about Katie’s intervention until years later.

Katie’s own relationship with Ben was going from strength to strength, until he met Connor Newman at the end of 2010. Things began to unravel quickly from there.

Connor would spend a lot of time at their flat and it irritated Katie when she was studying. She tried speaking to Ben but he started to become more distant and ignored her pleas.

In August 2011, she was upset and sulking in front of a café when Ryan wandered past. He came and sat down and before she could stop herself, she poured out all of her frustrations to him. He seemed grateful she was admitting all of this to him but it made him angry.

A few days later, while they were in the pub, Ben came in drunk and tried to grab Katie and bring her home but he didn’t get the chance when Ryan punched him a couple times. Katie managed to get in between them – being struck by Ben in the stomach – a punch aimed at Ryan.

Katie was devastated about the breakdown of her relationship and tried to salvage it but when she came home in September 2011 to see her flat trashed she knew it was the last straw. She dumped Ben and a week later he was arrested by the police for possession of a Class A drug.

She didn’t have a clue and despite some vigorous questioning from the police, she was eventually cleared without a mark on her record (which would have been a deal breaker for her career).

2011 - 2013
It was clear to everyone but Ryan and Katie how perfect they were for each other. Ryan was single – he had given up on Lizzie - and Katie was also now that Ben was in prison (sentenced to three years).

She moved in with her sister Olivia and her son Ethan who had a spare bedroom and she started to concentrate on her studies once again, picking her grade back up and helped her sister Louisa deal with the breakdown of her own relationship with Lee after he had cheated on her and her brother Lewis coming out as gay.

She became godmother to her sister Hannah’s daughter Lottie-May and she was also godmother to Vicki’s son Freddie. She enjoyed the family growing around her but children weren’t in her future at the time. She was in her third year of her post-graduate and she didn’t have time to do anything but study.

She completed her degree in full in the April 2013 as top of her class and was also lucky enough to get a job at North Grove General full time. She was offered positions in London, Liverpool and Manchester City Centre but she declined them all to stay close to home.

Her father and brother worked at the hospital and she felt like it was her second home.

On 6th October 2013, Ryan asked her out again and although shocked, she accepted. Her studies were over and she enjoyed spending time with Ryan’s daughter Hayley. It was due to her that they also decided to take it slow.

The Hostage Situation
In March 2014, Katie was working at the hospital when she received a phone call from her father asking her to come down to the Grey Lion Pub immediately.

Katie drove down to the pub and to her horror, discovered that there were members of her family stuck inside of the pub while they were being held hostage. Inside were Jazmyn Fox, Ivy Jones, Louisa, Hannah, Lola Jones, Zak Richardson, Jacob Chadwick, Terry Fox, Molly Groom, Lizzie Redding and Ryan.

Katie was devastated as she stood with her mother, father and brother. She felt worse for Sean whose wife and daughter were in there. Sean was going crazy, especially when after two hours it was revealed that there were three gunmen inside with shotguns.

The longer it went on, the more of a wreck she became and when the gunshots went off, she swears her heart stopped beating for a few seconds in pure fear.

Sean managed to find Ivy through a gap in the curtains and she was able to communicate to him whereabouts they were stood. Sean relayed the information back to the police who were able to choose the best entrances in order to get inside.

They hostages were trapped for five hours altogether. When they were brought out, four people had been shot including Lizzie and Ryan. Katie went to the hospital with him after he was shot in the stomach and kept telling him corny jokes to keep him smiling.

Tragedy struck however when Lizzie died on the operating table from internal bleeding.

Ryan was horrified – he didn’t know how to tell his daughter that her mother is never coming back and Katie helped him through the process of not only helping his daughter but of his own recovery. He wasn’t able to work for three months and the financial pressure was hard.

After the Hostage Situation
After the traumatic events, Ryan, Katie and Hayley grew closer as a family. The began to go on family outings when Katie wasn’t working and they moved in together in December 2013.

On 29th April 2014, while her and Ryan were in Rome, he proposed to her and she accepted. They were both delighted with how things were moving but it didn’t last long.

Katie’s sister Olivia was diagnosed with type two Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which made her increasingly ill. She helped support her family through the pain and babysat Ethan on more than a few occasions to ease the burden – much to the delight of Hayley who doted on Ethan.

She tried to keep everyone feeling positive and after six months of chemotherapy, it started to clear much to her family’s delight.

In March 2016, Katie discovered she was pregnant and on 12thOctober 2016 she gave birth to Mason James Byrne. Ryan and Katie loved him so much and Hayley was always around after she finished school trying to help out with her baby brother.

In 2017, she married Ryan Byrne at the local registar.

Family
Mother: Helen Jones

Father: Peter Jones

Husband: Ryan Byrne (2001 – 2005) ; (2013-)

Son: Mason Byrne (2016)

Step-daughter: Hayley Byrne

Siblings: Sean Jones, Olivia Jones, Hannah Wright, Louisa Jones, Lewis Jones and Georgie Jones

Nieces: Lola Jones, Amber Jones, Lottie-May Wright and Jane Groom

Nephews: Cameron Jones and Ethan Jones

Grandparents: Walter Jones, Patricia Jones, May Porter, Brian Porter and Roger Hackman

Aunts: Pauline Jessop, Denise Burrows, Frances Groom and Sandra Porter

Uncles: Arthur Jessop, Roy Burrows, Charles Groom and Jack Porter

Cousins: Jenny Watson, Oscar Weston, George Weston, Isla Burrows, LoisJessop], Tim Jessop, Annie Buckley, Bailey Groom, Molly Groom, Luke Porter, Rhys Porter and Shannon Porter