Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins) gets the catastrophic news she feared – that the baby she’s carrying is Ross Barton’s (Michael Parr) and she decides on extreme measures to fix things in Emmerdale.

Charity agreed to be a surrogate for granddaughter Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill), but when the first attempt at getting pregnant went wrong and she ended up in a huge fight with Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb), Charity hit the self-sabotage button and went and slept with Ross.

Now she’s pregnant and everyone involved in the surrogacy is delighted, but Ross thinks it’s his child and this thing is about to blow wide open.

Having had pressure from Ross to get a paternity test, she tries to rush the results to end her misery. Seeing how excited Sarah and Jacob (Joe-Warren Plant) are is tying her insides in knots.

Mack’s surprise of an impromptu date just further hammers home what an awful person Charity is and just how devastating her revelation will be.

So, she opts for a lesser damaging revelation – planning to abort the baby and save herself the trouble of admitting it’s someone else’s and tell them she miscarried.

At the brink of breaking, one sympathetic word from Chas (Lucy Pargeter) sees Charity cave and reveal all. Charity confesses that she can’t face telling a soul, but Chas tries to argue she should do it sooner rather than later, especially before someone else – i.e. Ross – spills the beans. This is a shock to Charity that Chas won’t agree to keep it all secret.

‘Chas takes the higher moral ground and says, under no circumstances can you not consider telling everyone, you have to come clean. And obviously, Charity is horrified that her best friend, her cousin, is telling her to do the right thing morally,’ actress Emma Atkins revealed to Metro.

Speaking of the morally contentious decision to have an abortion, Emma adds: ‘She feels it’s her only option at this point, because for Chas to push her to tell the truth, and she knows that she can’t, because she’s got too much to lose.’

Charity decides instead that she must take drastic action to protect her family – she books the termination, and just like that, her way out is confirmed.

Just after agreeing the time, she bumps into Sarah, who is thrilled to have received a letter confirming an upcoming scan. Charity secretly knows the pregnancy won’t survive until the scan and is guilty as Sarah can barely contain her excitement.

Chas tries to get Charity to see sense, but she’s not in a place to hear the hard truth. And fearing that Chas might ruin everything, Charity takes more extreme measures against her too.

‘She says to Chas, Don’t blow it for me, because you are the only person. So she emotionally blackmails Chas,’ Emma reveals.

Alone in her misery, Charity sits in her car and cries. Even worse for her is to return home to Sarah shoving a baby memory box in her face, excitedly showing off all the things they’ve been collecting, with Charity knowing it’s all pointless.

Emma says: ‘She’s just in the most impossible, inconceivable position that she’s probably been in in her whole life. Really, it is just awful.

‘She gets back home, and Sarah’s there with this beautiful, sacred little box for the unborn child. For once it’s born, and she’ll have it there for when the child grows up. So, it’s just the guilt that it’s got.’

Sarah suggests Charity write a letter to the baby to go in the box, but it’s no surprise that Charity is less than forthcoming about this. She’s dying inside but is clear on what she must do. Did she go through with the termination or is she going to give Sarah a baby that’s not hers?