Since Ella Forster (Paula Lane) arrived in Emmerdale there’s been a steady drip of hints that she’s a person with a secret past – which is bound to cause major upheavals in the village when everything comes to light.
Not a lot is known about Ella’s life before she came to the village, apart from the fact that she was working as a PA for an obnoxious man who was something high up in the vet world. When Ella stood up against this man when he was being horrible to Mandy Dingle (Lisa Riley) she lost her job – and was soon taking up a role as a receptionist at Brook Cottage Surgery.
A romance with Liam Cavanagh (Jonny McPherson) followed, and we had some glimpses that Ella mightn’t be all she seemed when she reacted jealously to the threat of Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter) having a previous claim on Liam’s affections.
At that time she mentioned a former friend of hers who was a nurse, who’d suggested she should go into nursing.
Fans speculation went into overdrive with the theory that the nurse could have been Meena Jutla (Paige Sandhu), and Ella might have met her in prison. Could Ella have come to Emmerdale to carry on Meena’s evil work?
One of Meena’s victims was, of course, Leanna Cavanagh (Mimi Slinger) – Liam’s daughter. She was mentioned in Monday (May 13)’s episode after Liam and Ella went on a date – to the scrapyard.
Liam had advised his date to dress casually but not told her where they were going. When Brenda (Lesley Dunlop) saw Ella in the cafe she had some advice for her about making an effort for Liam – after all, his exes have been glamorous people like Leyla (Roxy Shahidi) and Bernice (Samantha Giles).
So Ella went home and got changed, meaning that she was somewhat overdressed for the scrapyard, where Liam wanted to rummage for things he could repurpose for his allotment.
Against the odds the ‘date’ was a success. Ella pitched in and found some useful things and she had good ideas about what to do with them – irrigation systems, plant supports and so on. She told Liam that she had an uncle who taught her all about recycling – another hint about her past life.
Location photographs have shown Ella and Liam at a funeral for someone called June Phillips – which leads to one of the mourners having a go at Ella for being there. This funeral is bound to shed a lot of light on Ella’s pre-Emmerdale existence. Will we learn more about the uncle, the former friends and the mysterious nurse she’s mentioned?
Back in this episode, Ella’s insecurities were on show when she asked Liam about his former girlfriends. Did the fact that he’d brought her to a scrapyard mean she wasn’t as good as them?
