Nate Robinson (Jurell Carter) was left reeling in Monday (February 5)’s Emmerdale episode when his wife Tracy Robinson (Amy Walsh) told him she wasn’t in love with him any more – but there was worse to come as Nate pressed her for an explanation.
Viewers are aware that Tracy has been conducting a secret affair with smooth businessman (and Nate’s uncle) Caleb Milligan (William Ash). What started out as purely a sexual attraction that Tracy tried and failed to resist soon turned into something more, with Tracy telling Caleb that she loved him.
Any idea of a future with Caleb was turned on its head when his wife Ruby (Beth Cordingly) reappeared. With Ruby still a fixture at Mill Cottage, despite Caleb’s repeated insistence that they’re still going through a divorce, it seemed that Tracy and Caleb were over.
The whole affair with Caleb has made Tracy realise that something was missing in her relationship with Nate. The couple only got married last summer, but already Tracy was convinced that there was no future for them together.
She told Moira (Natalie J. Robb) that her own childhood had been a ‘car crash.’ Her parents, Evette Shankley and Frank Clayton (Michael Praed), had had a volatile relationship and when Frank walked out on the family Tracy lost contact with him. Her mother developed a drinking problem in the aftermath of him leaving.
Tracy was worried that trying to stay with Nate would mean that their daughter Frankie would end up in the middle of similar turmoil and it was better to end things now. ‘I’ve tried to love him,’ she told Moira. ‘But if I keep pretending it’s going to keep getting worse.’
Moira’s advice was that Tracy needed to make her decision and stick with it. So at the next opportunity she braced herself to tell Nate their marriage was over.
Of course he’d chosen that moment to bring her some flowers and a photo of the family that he’d had framed, but Tracy held firm. ‘I don’t love you any more,’ she told him.
Nate’s automatic assumption was that he’d been right to be suspicious of Caleb and obviously Tracy was having an affair. She said it wasn’t to do with anyone else.
What Nate couldn’t get his head around was that they’d been married so recently and Tracy had told him she loved him then.
He was stunned by her answer. ‘Maybe it was the idea of it all that I loved,’ she told him. She said she’d rushed into marriage, wanting them so badly to be a family ‘that maybe it was that that I fell in love with. Not you.’
Ouch. ‘You told me you loved me since then. Were you lying?’ a stunned Nate wanted to know. Tracy’s reply was just a weary ‘I don’t know. Sometimes people just fall out of love.’
Again Nate suggested that there might be someone else and again Tracy said there was nobody else and they just weren’t working as a couple, even though she’d tried.
It was Tracy’s suggestion that they could split amicably and still be a mum and dad to Frankie that really sent Nate over the edge and he angrily smashed the photo of the family and walked out, leaving Tracy in tears.
Later, Caleb was driving home when he saw Nate wandering aimlessly along the road. He stopped and asked his nephew what was going on. Nate told him what Tracy had said and how he’d previously thought she was having an affair with Caleb. He said nothing was making any sense.
‘Something’s going on and I’m going to find out what,’ he vowed, as Caleb must have been thinking that starting an affair with Tracy had been a very bad idea indeed.
