In a shocking new plot, Caleb Milligan (William Ash) of Emmerdale will attempt to take advantage of a character’s approaching death.
Ruby’s (Beth Cordingly) dying mother Helen (Sharon Moore) is going to try to get in touch with her estranged daughter, Caleb, and her husband Caleb’s marriage is about to be upended.
Fans observed Ruby trying to contact a withheld number on Friday as she was leaving the hospital after the barn fire. Caleb answered and ordered them not to call again.
It turns out that it’s Ruby’s mother, who hasn’t seen her in thirty years, when they do try again the following week.
Actor William Ash explains to that Helen and her husband cut Ruby totally out of their lives as they did not approve of her relationship with Caleb.
‘He’d come out of a care home, he didn’t have any family and thought he was beneath their daughter,’ William tells us, who describes Helen’s call as ‘totally out of the blue’.
‘Because she’s been so manipulative and behaved terribly in the past, he just doesn’t trust anything that she’d ever say.
‘He decides to go just to see what she actually wants – because if she is on her deathbed, then maybe Ruby does need some kind of closure and there’s a potential for sorting it out.
‘As it turns out, that’s not what happens…’
While it becomes clear Helen hasn’t got long left, Caleb then seizes an opportunity to make some money from the situation, in his efforts to raise enough funds to secure Jimmy King’s share of the haulage firm.
‘What he does is devious, but for the greater good is how he sees it,’ William explains. ‘He goes “right, if you want to see your daughter, I want some money off you,” so he can get these shares.
‘The way Caleb rationalises it is he goes “Ruby’s never going to get any inheritance from this woman, this woman has been awful to her, so I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done”.
‘On the surface it’s a really sly and devious move, but in Caleb’s head it’s payback for all those years of what she did to her and it’s a chance to secure Ruby and Caleb’s future.’
He adds: ‘Caleb’s scared because Helen’s always hurt Ruby, Ruby always gets emotional when the family is brought up, it’s very, very hard for her. And so he’s just going to protect her as much as he can.’
However, William admits that is likely not how Ruby will see it when she finds out.
He explains: ‘I think he knows that if she finds out he’s been to see Helen and he’s gone behind her back, she will be furious. There will be a real question of whether she can trust him ever again.
‘The stakes are massive in that moment.’
William also reveals how meeting Helen will help viewers peel back the layers of Ruby’s character.
‘We have scratched the surface with her and she’s quite brittle beneath it all because of how she was treated by her family. That’s the thing with this backstory becoming a story, it fills in all those gaps and makes sense of why Ruby is the way she is.’
Will Ruby manage to reconcile with her mother before she dies?
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