Emmerdale viewers watched one of the show’s most beloved couples, Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) and Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock), completely fall apart in Tuesday (May 7)’s episode as their marriage imploded in front of some of their closest friends.
The previously solid couple have been at loggerheads ever since Rhona ensured Gus Malcolms (Alan McKenna) got a long jail sentence after she unexpectedly changed her victim impact statement in court.
To Rhona, the man who’d stolen her embryos and then tried to deprive her of baby Ivy deserved to face justice. From Marlon’s point of view, Rhona was being unnecessarily cruel and inflicting punishment on a man who’d already agreed to them having guardianship of Ivy.
In this episode we saw them invited to a dinner party at the home of Tom and Belle King (James Chase and Eden Taylor-Draper). Tom and Rhona’s other vet colleagues Paddy (Dominic Brunt) and Vanessa (Michelle Hardwick) were also invited, along with partners Mandy (Lisa Riley) and Suzy (Martelle Edinborough).
It was a difficult watch. Viewers could see the underlying tensions between Tom and Belle, because we know that Tom’s treatment of his wife is manipulative and controlling and this storyline came into the foreground in the second half of the episode with shocking consequences.
The first half mainly focused on Marlon and Rhona, and again because viewers know what’s been going on behind the scenes for them we could understand – in a way that the other dinner guests couldn’t – that every remark they made to each other was loaded with a double meaning.
‘The more alcohol they have the more free they get with what they’re saying with each other and the less subtle their mutual resentment becomes until the point where it just explodes,’ Mark Charnock told us.
After a while the couple were having a screaming argument at each other in front of everybody else, as Marlon branded Rhona ‘selfish,’ and she said he was ‘boring.’ When Marlon accused her of stabbing Gus in the back she mocked him by calling him ‘Saint Marlon.’
Finally they revealed that they’d been sleeping separately and Rhona brought up Marlon’s previous comment that he sometimes wished she wasn’t there. She said from now on she wouldn’t be – and walked out.
Marlon followed, as did the other guests because the party was well and truly over.
Zoe Henry told us that at this point Rhona has let her feelings run away from her and, in her heart of hearts, she doesn’t really want to be ending things with her husband.
‘That’s definitely not what she wants. But she’s humiliated and hurt by how Marlon and her have treated each other that night and in the lead up to it. And it’s like a runaway train that she just can’t stop. Once she’s opened her mouth, that’s it, it all comes out.’
Is there any way back for the couple after this?
