Caleb Miligan (William Ash) had a lot on his plate in Monday (September 16)’s Emmerdale, as he arrived at the hospital to visit sister-in-law Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb), who has just been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
He got there just in time to find Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb) trying to calm down Cain (Jeff Hordley), who’d reacted badly as the neurosurgeon told Moira they were adopting a ‘watch and wait’ approach to her treatment.
As well as Cain and Moira, there was someone else who needed Caleb’s help and that was his wife, Ruby (Beth Cordingly), who was recovering from almost being killed in the barn fire last week.
Moira had been hallucinating that Ruby was her old foe Emma Barton (Gillian Kearney), and threatened her with a shotgun before accidentally starting a huge blaze in the barn. Both women were lucky to escape with their lives.
Ruby was clearly struggling to deal with the experience, but while she needed Caleb’s support he was busy worrying about the Dingles.
When Chas (Lucy Pargeter) saw Ruby getting flustered after dropping her bag, she took her back to the Woolpack. The two women have never exactly seen eye to eye, as Ruby’s superior and sarcastic manner has seen her taking issue with most members of the Dingle family since she arrived in the village. But Chas recognised that Ruby was feeling vulnerable and Ruby’s mood was soon improved after tucking into Chas’s booze supplies. She even invited Chas to dinner the next day.
When Caleb arrived, it was clear that Ruby’s good mood didn’t extend to her husband, as he admitted he’d been checking in on Cain rather than worrying about her.
On the way home she told him what the problem was. ‘I have been head-butted, held at gunpoint, shot at, knocked out, almost burned to death, all thanks to Moira who I can’t even be mad at because she is doollally and sick and it’s heartbreaking what she is facing,’ she summarised.
She said she wasn’t sleeping or coping, and Caleb reiterated that she was the most important thing in his life. He said he didn’t want to think about how close he came to losing her. ‘Who am I without you?’ he said.
‘A waste of space,’ she said. ‘You need to step up and be the one I can lean on.’
Moments later, after Ruby had gone inside, Caleb showed just how far he’s prepared to go to protect his wife. He had a phone call, presumably from the same person who called him a couple of times previously and who he’d told not to call again.
‘I’ll protect Ruby from you with everything I’ve got,’ he told the caller. The person then said something that made him call them a ‘liar,’ and asked to meet tomorrow. Caleb agreed – but issued a dark threat.
‘I’ll be there – if only to put you six feet under myself.’
The caller is a mystery for now, but we know that Ruby’s dying mother Helen (Sharon Maughan) is set to appear in Ruby and Caleb’s lives. Ruby hasn’t seen Helen for 30 years, after she cut Ruby off from the family because of her relationship with Caleb.
‘He’d come out of a care home, he didn’t have any family and they thought he was beneath their daughter,’ William Ash told us. ‘Because she’s been so manipulative and behaved terribly in the past, he just doesn’t trust anything that she’d ever say.’
Helen’s reappearance comes at the worst possible time for Ruby and Caleb is willing to do whatever it takes to protect his wife, as William explained.
‘Caleb’s scared because Helen’s always hurt Ruby, Ruby always gets emotional when the family is brought up, it’s very, very hard for her. And so he’s just going to protect her as much as he can.’
Will he go as far as murder?
