The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Emmerdale that hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.
Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) was planning a big move in Friday (December 19)’s Emmerdale. Criminals generally prefer an easy time and things are getting a bit too lively around the village for Celia’s liking – so she’s moving on.
Business partner Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) had previously walloped Celia in the face in the Woolpack after discovering a pile of dodgy invoices relating to their partnership. In this episode she and Cain (Jeff Hordley) headed to Celia’s farm to confront her and Moira said she wanted to be out of their partnership.
Celia’s discovery that Ted, one of the labourers who works on Celia’s farm in conditions of modern slavery, is actually Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards), a man with family living just down the road, has made that side of the operation just a bit more difficult.
There’s Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) and his family, who are currently paying £2k a week to prevent their daughter April (Amelia Flanagan) from having to go out drug dealing for Ray Walters (Joe Absolom). The family are being kept under control at the moment but have made attempts to talk to the police previously.
Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle) is another worry. Though he’s claiming not to know anything about the fact that Ray deliberately ran him over to teach April and her family a lesson, who knows what he could do in the future?
Finally, Ray is showing signs of going rogue, as he’s fallen in love with Laurel Thomas (Charlotte Bellamy) and has started to envisage a version of himself where he’s a nice, normal family man as opposed to a ruthless criminal.
It’s a lot, and in this episode Celia told Ray they were moving on. She’s found a new farm in Wrexham and they’re going to move the entire operation there on New Year’s Day.
Ray didn’t look thrilled by this prospect, presumably because it would mean saying goodbye to Laurel and an end to his romantic dreams for a better future. He made a feeble attempt to persuade Celia that they should stay, saying that Marlon was paying £2k a week for absolutely nothing and they would lose that.
But that wasn’t an argument that swayed his mum, as she already had a plan. They would take April with them to Wrexham, she said. That way, they would still have a hold over Marlon, who would have to keep stumping up a huge sum of money every week to keep his daughter as safe as she could possibly be in Celia’s clutches.
‘You think of everything,’ Ray told her, as he realised that there’s nothing he can do to change her mind.
Meanwhile poor Marlon was consoling himself that at least the family were together so things weren’t all bad. Little does he know that Celia is plotting to take even that small comfort away.
