There was massive drama in Wednesday (April 24)’s Emmerdale as Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) stood up in court to give her victim impact statement about Gus Malcolms (Alan McKenna)’s actions when he stole her embryos.
Gus was facing a prison sentence for fraud, but hoped that the statement Rhona had agreed to make would ensure he got a lighter sentence. In return he’d agreed to sign over guardianship of his daughter Ivy to Rhona while he was in prison.
In court Rhona started to read the prepared statement, but soon faltered over the words. ‘This isn’t true,’ she told the judge. Gus’s defence attempted to delay proceedings while Rhona produced a new statement, but the judge asked if she wanted to speak now and Rhona said she did.
What came next was a description of what had happened since Gus first appeared asking to use the embryos that Rhona had assumed had been destroyed. She said she’d been ‘too shocked to object,’ but then changed her mind. Gus had gone ahead and stole her identity to be able to use the embryos, which made Rhona feel ‘violated.’
She said when they discovered by accident that Gus’s wife Lucy was pregnant she felt like they were stealing her child. Then, after Lucy’s death, Rhona felt that ‘Ivy was mine and she had no mummy. Was I supposed to just leave her like Gus had?’
Gus was looking more and more upset as this went on as he realised that Rhona’s presence in the court was having the opposite effect to what he’d hoped for. Marlon (Mark Charnock), sitting behind him, was also looking concerned.
Rhona continued her story, talking about the moment when Gus said he was taking Ivy abroad and she was eventually arrested and charged with kidnapping her own child after she fled the village with Ivy.
‘Here’s where I do get to take control by telling the truth,’ she said. ‘He nearly destroyed me and my family. I need you to understand what he did to me, to us. I don’t think we will ever get over it.’
After this, the judge made her decision. She sentenced Gus to eight years in prison. ‘How could you?’ he said bitterly to Rhona as he was taken down.
With Gus now in prison and Ivy safely and legally living with Rhona and Marlon it should have been a time of happiness and relief that the ordeal was over. But Rhona’s change of direction in the witness box has left Marlon absolutely livid.
He asked Rhona whether everything she’d said was real, because she hadn’t shared it with him. He said that it was ‘getting to be a habit’ that she did huge, life-changing things without talking to him about it first.
Marlon accused his wife of acting out of vindictiveness in the court by going back on their agreement with Gus.
‘It’s about you,’ he said, adding that she wasn’t the person he fell in love with: ’I don’t recognise you any more.’
Has Rhona just won her daughter only to lose her husband?
