Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) and Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) finally got some news about April (Amelia Flanagan), Marlon’s daughter who’s been missing since Christmas Day, in Monday (February 3)’s episode of Emmerdale.
But when PC Swirling (Andy Moore) arrived at Smithy, his mood was sombre. In fact, he was so upset he asked if he could sit down.
The police officer’s visit came at the end of an episode where Marlon and Rhona had been stretched to breaking point. Marlon had a black eye, which he’d got when he was viciously robbed as he searched the streets of Leeds for his daughter.
Ross (Mike Parr) tried to persuade him to take a step back from the active search and try to focus on his family at home. Leo (Harvey Rogerson) was struggling with the disruption in his family life and Rhona was doing her best to hold the family together and support her husband but she admitted to Mary (Louise Jameson) that she felt like she had already lost Marlon.
When she tried to talk to him about focusing on Leo and Ivy and letting the police carry on searching for April, Marlon became infuriated and started packing up April’s room, as if that was what Rhona wanted. He insisted he would never stop looking for April.
It was Paddy (Dominic Brunt) who finally convinced him to spend some time at home. Paddy said that, when he disappeared from the village during his mental health crisis, he hadn’t given any thought to the pain he was inflicting on the people looking for him and worrying about him. He said he could understand how April was perhaps feeling.
He urged Marlon to focus on making sure that the family was solid, so that April would have something to return to. Marlon could see the sense in this and apologised to Rhona, agreeing to spend more time with the other children.
He was doing a jigsaw with Leo, finally relaxing a little bit and enjoying spending time with him, when there was a knock on the door and a worried Rhona told Marlon PC Swirling wanted to talk to him.
Not knowing if this was the news he longed for or the news he dreaded, Marlon went into the kitchen, where Swirling looked shell-shocked and asked if he could sit down. He said Marlon and Rhona should probably sit down too.
‘It’s April,’ he said, as Marlon’s eyes filled with tears. ‘We’ve found her.’
Whether alive or dead he didn’t say as the episode ended there, but tomorrow (February 4)’s standalone episode will uncover the painful reality of April’s life since she left her home at Christmas. Trying to survive on the streets, her harrowing ordeal means that, when she and Marlon are finally reunited, he will find his little girl changed forever.
‘Her life has changed so much in ways that Rhona and Marlon can’t begin to comprehend,’ Mark Charnock told us. ‘They’re going to have to d.e.a.l with an entirely new human being or try and access the bits of her that they used to know and bring it forward.
‘[Amelia Flanagan] is extraordinary in this, there’s some stuff coming up that k.i.l.l.s you.’
Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV1 or stream from 7am on ITVX.
