When Caleb Miligan (William Ash) was stabbed on Emmerdale by an apparently random man, he woke up in hospital to be told that his kidney had been so badly damaged in the attack that it had to be removed.
What he didn’t know was that the kidney was perfectly healthy – and now residing inside Joe Tate (Ned Porteous).
The whole attack had been a set-up by Joe because his own kidneys were failing and he’d discovered, by manipulating Manpreet (Rebecca Sarker) into testing Caleb’s blood, that his uncle was a match.
Before Joe decided on Caleb as a ‘donor’ he’d already drugged his brother Noah Dingle (Jack Downham) and had him tested.
Noah was found to not be a match and ended up staggering through the woods in a confused state, directly causing the limo accident when his mum, Charity (Emma Atkins), swerved the limo she was driving to avoid hitting her son.
On waking from his ordeal, Caleb obviously had no knowledge of any of this and accepted surgeon Dr Crowley (James Hillier)’s explanation of what had happened. The family were massively grateful to Crowley for saving Caleb’s life.
In upcoming episodes, Steph (Georgia Jay) begins to spiral after Jai (Chris Bisson) misguidedly sends her flowers which are apparently from her d.e.a.d grandfather Anthony (Nicholas Day).
He wants to know what secrets the Miligans are hiding about Anthony, but his actions cause Steph to panic and think Anthony – who abused Ruby (Beth Cordingly) and is Steph’s biological father – could still be alive.
Joe sees Ruby confronting Jai about this and is intrigued. Caleb notices that Joe always seems to be hovering around and is suspicious of what he might be up to. He invites Joe for lunch – and Joe makes a massive mistake.
‘He just wants to keep him on side’ William Ash told us.
‘Initially he doesn’t know that Joe’s behind taking his kidney. He really trusts Joe because Joe basically saved his life, as far as Caleb knows at this point.
‘He knows he’s started digging and he just wants to keep an eye on it, so he invites him round for dinner to scratch away at the surface and see what’s going on with him. It’s like two lions circling each other.
‘He leaves his coat at Caleb’s and when Steph goes to hand it to him his medication falls out of his pocket, and Caleb sees the shifty look on his face as he grabs the pills and puts them back in his pocket.’
Caleb decides he’s going to find out why Joe is so interested in his family, and creates an electrical problem at the depot so he has to call in the professional services of electrician Noah.
As Noah fixes the electrical problem, Caleb questions him – and it’s not long before Noah recalls his strange feeling that, when he was spiked, he saw Joe Tate in the room.
Caleb starts to piece together the jigsaw and vows to get to the bottom of what happened to Noah – and to him.
‘It’s a huge violation, somebody doing that to you’ Will continued.
‘It’s compounded by the fact that it’s somebody he thought had saved his life. He’d be incandescent with rage [if he found out] and he would want to k.i.l.l him. In other situations Caleb isn’t impulsive, he’s quite calculating.
‘He’ll choose a moment to get revenge. But something like that, he’d just go. He’d fly off the handle.’
