Tom King (James Chase) ramped up his abusive behaviour towards his wife Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper) on a couple of fronts in Tuesday (April 23)’s Emmerdale as he continues to try to isolate her from her friends and make her totally reliant on him.
Since Tom pretended they’d had a break-in at home to cover the fact that he’d smashed the place up in a rage, Belle has felt insecure. Tom has taken every opportunity to pretend to want to make her feel safe while actually making her more scared, because he wants her to be reliant on him.
She recently agreed to having more security cameras installed around the home. Tom had already put a camera in the house, in theory to watch their dog Piper while they’re out, and unbeknownst to Belle he also tracks her with a phone app.
In this episode the cameras were installed and Belle felt safer. ‘Hubbers knows best,’ Tom reassured her, and if we didn’t have the ick with him before we would now for using the word ‘hubbers.’
For a while now Tom has seen the biggest threat to his hold over Belle has been Vinny Dingle (Bradley Johnson).
Vinny and Belle are close friends and Tom really can’t handle that. In a jealous rage he recently attacked Vinny, hitting him over the head at the scrap yard. In the aftermath of that he took the opportunity to belittle Vinny by coercing Belle into having sex downstairs at the Dingles’ while Vinny was sleeping upstairs.
Vinny had previously confided in Belle about not having any sexual experience due to his former wife Liv (Isobel Steele) being asexual. She told Tom about this and when Vinny came downstairs Tom made sure he knew what had been happening and that he knew Vinny was a virgin.
In this episode Belle was anxious that Vinny would be angry with her for talking about his private business with Tom, but Vinny was fine. Tom, however, continued to try to wind him up.
He bought him a drink in the Woolpack. It was a strawberry daiquiri, ‘Virgin, of course.’ Tom pretended that he hadn’t meant any offence and just got something non alcoholic in case Vinny was on medication after the attack.
The atmosphere immediately became strained, with Vinny looking awkward and Belle looking guilty – just as vile Tom had planned.
