Next week on Emmerdale, Charity and Cain go in search of Belle but are shocked by what they find, Mandy is in financial difficulty, Billy comes clean, and Jai exposes Eric.
1) Charity and Cain go in search of Belle
Charity (Emma Atkins) and Cain (Jeff Hordley) are horrified to find out the reality of what Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper) has been facing in her marriage to abusive Tom (James Chase) next week, but as the pair race across the country to save her, will they be too late?
Tom has dialled up his coercive control over Belle to the max in recent weeks, following the discovery that she had terminated their baby. With a suspicious Charity’s interference also getting on Tom’s nerves, he has secretly applied for a veterinary job in a remote corner of Wales.
In tonight’s episode, after hearing that he’d been given a second interview for the job, Tom guilt-tripped Belle into agreeing to a spontaneous ‘holiday’ at the Welsh cottage he had shown her a few weeks back, and the two made a quiet getaway from the village. To ensure they wouldn’t be disturbed, Tom hid Belle’s phone in a kitchen drawer.
Charity is extremely concerned when she hears about the job interview on the village grapevine, together with the fact that Tom and Belle have already left the village without so much as a word to their family.
With her anxiety gnawing away at her, Charity goes to Cain to voice her concerns, noting that Tom’s demeanour reminds her of her own abuser, DI Mark Bails (Rocky Marshall).
“They’re very subtle things that are going on,” Emma Atkins told EverySoap at recent press event. “But I think the fact that Charity has, over the past 20 years, experienced levels of abuse from certain people she’s been with—most of all Bails—she recognises the signs.”
“He’s an interesting character and she’s got her eye on him. She sees that Belle’s suddenly become a shadow of her former self.”
The following day, Cain is unable to get hold of Belle and begins to wonder whether Charity is onto something.
“Tom’s been really clever in the way he operates, and he’s masking everything that’s going on really well,” Jeff Hordley explains. “Cain doesn’t have a clue and doesn’t sense there’s anything amiss with Tom, it’s only Charity that alerts him to this.”
When Charity then learns that Belle has missed her mental health appointment, she and Cain decide to let themselves in to Dale Head to investigate, but are alarmed by the extent of Tom’s security system.
Charity finds Tom’s ‘budget book’, an oddity in itself, in which he happened to write down the address of the Welsh cottage. Once they discover Belle’s phone hidden away, the worried pair then decide to hot foot it to Wales.
However, they are taken aback by what they discover when they do go to the cottage that evening. There is blood on the door and the place is completely wrecked. What took place?
“Charity can definitely sense there’s trouble but I don’t think Cain quite believes it until he gets there,” Jeff continues. “Even when he’s driving there, he’s still not 100% if they’re going to turn up and Belle and Tom will be really happy and we’ll be like ‘Oh, erm, okay…hi!”
2) Belle’s horrifying experience is disclosed
On Wednesday, there will be a special flashback episode in which we go back four days to the time when Belle and Tom arrived at the cottage.
At first, their holiday appears to be cheerful as they both look forward to getting to the cottage with their dog, Piper. However, Belle is mad at herself for losing her phone.
But as time goes on, Tom’s manipulation ramps up, and Belle is confused when she overhears Tom on the phone arranging to extend their stay in the cottage…
Soon enough their seemingly pleasant trip turns into a truly harrowing ordeal for both Belle and Piper whilst at the mercy of a volatile Tom, in what we can promise is a very intense episode.
The cast and crew didn’t have to go far to find the idyllic cottage location, in fact they didn’t even need to leave the estate. ‘Bwthyn Affalon’, as it’s named in the show, is in reality Burden Head Farm, which sits at the entrance to the private access road for the Emmerdale village.
“The location is actually part of Emmerdale’s village complex, it’s on the outskirts and hasn’t really been seen by the viewers so it’s believable that it’s a property 300 miles away from the Yorkshire Dales,” explains Emmerdale’s Head of Design Gillian Slight.
Newly built last year, the cottage provided a blank canvas for the team to create the perfect Welsh hideaway.
“We have total access and control over the building, so we were free to decorate and furnish the interior and exterior. The garden was basically a pile of builders rubble, so landscaping and planting was necessary, to make it look pretty. The whole job took about 4 weeks to complete.”
The build replaced a similarly shaped cottage on the same site that had been demolished, and the rear of that property will have been familiar to long-term fans as the third and final incarnation of Emmerdale Farm, used on-screen from 1997-2002.
The barn across the yard, where adoptive son Andy (Kelvin Fletcher) ignited the fire that accidentally killed Sarah Sugden (Alyson Spiro), is now visible on screen as one of the Butlers’ barns, where Tom was electrocuted and Minty the lamb died recently.
3) Mandy’s financial woes
In another scene, Mandy (Lisa Riley) is having a hard time making ends meet in the salon and it seems like things are getting close to breaking point.
The fact that Sarah and Paddy (Dominic Brunt) have to pay for their impending wedding and that Paddy is blissfully ignorant of his fiancée’s problems doesn’t help the situation.
Mandy ultimately tells Rhona (Zoe Henry), her new drinking companion, the truth, but she can’t bring herself to tell anybody else.
Later in the week, as her concerns get more intense, will she be able to tell Paddy the truth or will she instead devise a new plan to make some money?
4) Billy comes clean to Dawn
Up at Home Farm, after her plot to drug ex-husband Will (Dean Andrews) went spectacularly wrong this week, Rose (Christine Tremarco) has remarkably come out on top in her ongoing pursuit to destroy Kim’s (Claire King) life.
After Dawn (Olivia Bromley), the daughter, drank the spiked bubbly, she passed out while driving and collided with Ella’s (Paula Lane) vehicle.
As a former addict, Dawn realized she had to have been injected with something, and although Kim was certain of the culprit, she was taken aback when Kim’s gaze went to her.
Kim tried to reassure Dawn that she would never do something like that now that they are family, after Dawn said that it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d pulled off such a ruse, alluding to the time Kim had tried to drug her back in 2021.
Rose was quick to twist the situation when Kim’s lack of motivation was called into question. She said that Rose had been the intended target and that Kim had wanted to get rid of her.
Will and Dawn came to an agreement, while Billy (Jay Kontzle) chose to support Kim.
Dawn would still find it hard to believe that Kim would turn on the family the following week, especially because it was Kim who broke their bubble and brought illness into the home, forcing Evan back into the hospital.
Billy feels very bad about himself now, since he was the one who did the wrong thing that time. After returning home inebriated, he had a few beers with Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb), where Kim had taken him to one of the empty rooms and provided cover.
Instead of letting Billy confess and further strain their marriage, Kim again pretended to have mixed with individuals during a business conference when Evan was unwell.
Billy, unable to stand by Dawn’s mistreatment of Kim any longer, tells Dawn that he was the one who burst their bubble and that Kim should have accepted responsibility for the family’s well-being.
Will Dawn change her mind about Kim?
5) Eric is revealed by Jai
As Laurel (Charlotte Bellamy) asked Jai (Chris Bisson) to return to Holdgate and move out of Mulberry Cottage, the family is still suffering from their separation. Jai was shocked to learn that son Archie (Kai Assi) had chosen to remain with Laurel and his step-siblings, since he had been resolved to take Archie with him.
“I’ve lost my wife, my home, my dad’s dead, and Suni won’t have anything to do with me,” a devastated Jai told Laurel. “And now, you’ve got my son too. So there you go, you’ve got everything you want Laurel, and I’ve got nothing. Well played.”
Embittered by the situation, Jai decides its time to take his revenge on Eric (Chris Chittell), whose blackmailing of Jai over the Amit/Suni situation had only added to his stresses over the past months.
Brenda (Lesley Dunlop) and Rodney (Patrick Mower), who undoubtedly thought Eric’s days of such treachery were long gone, are deeply upset when Jai tells them of Eric’s planning.
Jai is encouraged by Archie’s apparent change of heart, though, as Laurel let the 11-year-old return to Holdgate with his father.
As Jai and Laurel later plan to meet to mark the first anniversary of Rishi’s death, on what would also be their first wedding anniversary, things almost seem civil between the pair.
Is there worse to come for Jai and Laurel, or will they be able to put their disagreements aside and continue to be friendly even after they separate?
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