A startling discovery appears to be about to unravel Harper’s (Jessica Redmayne) strategy to keep her distance from Tane (Ethan Browne) starting next week.
On the eve of his sentencing back last month, the two had shared a bed together, thinking he would be off to prison for kidnapping little Poppy.
After Tane was given a seven-year intensive correction order (ICO) to serve in the community, Harper realized she had grown attached to him as he was being sent to the city for counseling.
When Tane returned from their passionate night out, Harper was a little irritated by his casual demeanor, but he later pointed out that it was she who had made it obvious she was content to remain friends.
Harper, however, decided to put her distance from Tane in an attempt to move past her feelings after Tane revealed that he wasn’t ready for a relationship in the first place. This was made more challenging when Harper consented to be the social worker involved in Tane’s youth program in order to gain its approval.
Tane, who seems to have already forgotten about the other youths, sets out this week to teach Perri (Cantona Stewart), a participant in the program, about their shared Māori culture.
Tane asks Perri where his “mana” is as he arrives late for their session. Perri is unaware of the significance of Tane’s taiaha, the ceremonial weapon that plays a significant role in Tane’s history, nor does he understand what it means.
Tane chastises Perri for using his taiaha as a lightsaber, and Perri tells him to shove it since he doesn’t need any more lectures from him.
Later, Tane warns Perri that if he doesn’t respect his own culture, he won’t get very far. However, Perri responds that he doesn’t know anything about that aspect of his family. Perri’s mother, a Māori, passed away while she was relatively young, and his father is a native Australian.
Tane advises Perri to show his father some respect by going home and having a conversation with him after Perri spends the night on the beach, trying to avoid doing a task that his father had requested him to complete.
Later on, when Perri returns with multiple burns and tells him that his father purposefully pressed a cigarette against his arm, he regrets this.
Perri acknowledges that his father had given him the order to go steal some tools—exactly the kind of misbehavior that had put him in jail in the first place. Perri had refused for the first time, and this was what happened.
Tane calls Harper in so Perri may speak with a professional because he is proud of Perri for advocating for himself.
Perri worries that Harper will call the police, but she explains that since he is older than 16, she can’t legally do so without his consent.
At the farmhouse, Tane provides Perri a bed. Later, he tells Harper that witnessing Perri’s mistreatment is killing him inside, but he assures her that he has learned his lesson about how to react. He’s only been facing prison for six weeks, but in that time he’s learned a lot.
As Tane brings up the timeline, Harper suddenly realizes something that might help to explain why she’s been acting a little strangely.
Harper goes home later that day with a pregnancy test, and after making sure everything is okay, she uses the restroom.
Following a nervous wait, Harper’s pregnancy has been confirmed!
In another scene in the Beach House, Irene (Lynne McGranger) is dealing with the fallout from Bronte’s (Stefanie Caccamo) deception, and she is hurting to see how it has impacted her loved ones.
The only person who first suspected Bronte was suffering from a fatal autoimmune disease was Dana (Ally Harris), who later found herself at conflict with both Irene and her lover Xander (Luke Van Os) while attempting to substantiate her claims.
Bronte and her accomplice Chase (Joshua Mehmet) abducted Dana as she started to become a liability. This was done to get her out of the way while Irene and Leah (Ada Nicodemou) tried to obtain $100,000 so Bronte could participate in a research trial in Canada.
Fortunately, when Bronte stated that Dana was making a quiet retreat, Xander began to realize that something was wrong. He teamed up with John (Shane Withington) and Bree (Juliet Godwin) to go to the police.
Later, John and Xander followed Bronte to the location where Dana was being held captive after noticing her operating Irene’s vehicle.
Irene was horrified to discover that she had been duped, especially because Dana was safe and Bronte and Chase were imprisoned.
Dana is finding it difficult to forgive Xander, pointing out that he chose to trust a total stranger over his own lover, even though she was able to forgive Irene rather fast.
The following week, Dana still ignores Xander’s messages. When he suggests that she should at least have a chat with him, she angrily responds that she owes him nothing!
After observing the outburst, John goes to the Beach House to see how Dana is doing. He tells her that she shouldn’t be concentrating all of her resentment on Xander because several of them were at fault.
Meanwhile, Irene is tense since she believes she is solely to blame for ruining Dana and Xander’s relationship and endangering her friends.
Later, when Leah, Marilyn (Emily Symons), and John discuss how Bronte is to blame, Irene yells that they ought to quit absolving her.
That night, Irene begs Dana to give Xander another chance, saying that she shouldn’t let her relationship fail because they’ve all suffered enough because of what Bronte did.
John and Leah interrupt the talk to insist on taking Irene to Salt for supper. John’s admission that he is paying convinces Irene, even if she still doesn’t feel it.
But while they wait at the bar, Irene, who is in recovery from alcoholism, can’t take her eyes off the bartender as he pours John a glass of whisky.
Irene arrives home later that evening, having treated herself to a bottle of whisky.
She takes off the cap and starts to pour herself a drink when she has a change of heart.
She tells them, “I’m just one step away from falling off the wagon.” “I sincerely hope you can persuade me otherwise!”
Even though it was a long night, Irene was able to get through without touching alcohol when the helpline rang back the following morning.
When John then shows up, Irene quickly rings off since she is afraid that she hasn’t shown up for her shift at the diner.
A displeased Irene informs him, “I slept in, big deal,” and while she tries to shake him off so she can get ready, John insists on assisting by preparing her breakfast.
However, when Irene digs into her toast, John unintentionally causes her discomfort by revealing to her how much Xander is going through right now as a result of Dana’s hurt.
An affective After requesting that John depart, Irene takes the whisky out of its hiding spot.
Irene spills a big glass, knocks it back, and for the first time in nine years, she falls off the wagon.
Irene was portrayed by Jacqy Phillips in 1991–1992, but longtime viewers will recall her as an alcoholic and violent mother to Nathan (David Dixon), Finlay (Tina Thomsen), and Damian (Matt Doran).
When a sober Irene returned to Summer Bay permanently in January 1993, Lynne McGranger assumed the part; it would be sixteen years before she would have to portray the character as drunk.
Not that there hadn’t been any near misses over that period.
Irene became an outcast in 1995 after siding with Dodge (Kelly Dale) on his unwanted return to the community.
When it became clear that Dodge had not only staged his death to put the blame on Steven Matheson (Adam Willits), whom Irene had demonized after Dodge vanished, but also killed her own estranged husband Murdoch (Tom Richards), Irene was left cursing herself.
Irene was at her lowest point in 1998, having lost her job at Summer Bay High where she worked as Don Fisher’s (Norman Coburn) secretary. Irene had previously quit the Bayside Diner because she didn’t think the new, youthful design was for her. As a result, she was jobless for the first time in years and had financial difficulties.
Irene sat down sobbing with a bottle of wine and looked through her family book. She then poured out her glass and accidentally spilled it over onto pictures of her grandson Paul, which fortunately made her realize what was going on.
The first time we witnessed Lynne’s Irene go off the wagon was in 2009, after a very painful incident. The yacht was discovered drifting several weeks after she left on a sailing excursion with her boyfriend Lou De Bono (David Roberts), 100 kilometers off the coast.
Irene, who was drunk and paranoid, fired shots at Angelo (Luke Jacobz) and his fellow officers, injuring one of them.
It turned out that one night, while Irene was sleeping, Lou had vanished from the yacht. After being lost at sea for several days, Irene had started to drinking, terrified that whoever got Lou would come back for her and unable to operate the radio.
Irene was placed on remand without any explanation for what had happened, suspected of both murder and wounding an officer. Lou’s enraged ex-wife Donna (Suzie McKenzie) paid a jail guard to put alcohol in Irene’s cell in an effort to further damage her reputation.
After forensic evidence on the boat revealed that there was a third person present, Irene was freed, but she kept drinking.
When Annie (Charlotte Best) discovered Irene’s secret bottle of gin and tried to throw it down the sink, Irene slapped her across the face, bringing everything to a climax.
Irene joined AA meetings after this served as the wake-up call she needed to get help. The next year, it was made public that Lou had died in a fight with people-traffickers Hugo Austin (Bernard Curry) and Derrick Quaid (John Atkinson).
Up until 2015, when a disturbed Olivia Fraser-Richards (Raechelle Banno) returned to Summer Bay to live with her, Irene stayed sober for an additional six years. Olivia told Irene that she had been abused by a family friend back in London after it was found that she was cutting herself.
Irene was devastated by the revelation and told Olivia and Leah (Ada Nicodemou) that she, too, had been abused by her Uncle Pete when she was just 14 years old.
Irene, however, was struggling with a deeper secret to the extent that she bought a bottle of alcohol to drown her sorrows.
Later, when Irene had broken the bottle and wounded her hand, Leah found her crying on the kitchen floor. She used a nearby baby blanket to compress the wound. When Irene realized, she was terrified and yelled at Leah.
She then disclosed that the child had been placed in foster care and that she had given birth as a result of her abuse at the hands of her Uncle Pete. Irene never found out what happened to her baby and hadn’t even been allowed to hold her.
Irene kept drinking and didn’t try to disguise it even after her secret was revealed, and this time her relapse had even more of an impact on the community.
Even a talking to from Alf, who spilled her grog down the sink, didn’t stop her from calling Olivia a leech in her inebriation.
Chris (Johnny Ruffo) drove Irene home after she embarrassed herself at Zac (Charlie Clausen) and Leah’s wedding, where she hit him for trying to take her hip flask away.
Once more, it was this violent incident that snapped Irene out of it. After talking with Leah—who was still wearing her wedding dress—Irene decided that she had to find out what had happened to her baby in order to finally lay her demons to rest.
The next year would prove to be an entirely different experience as it became apparent that her son was Mick Jennings (Kristian Schmid).
Will Irene be able to overcome herself once more, considering that this is her third relapse in 15 years?
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