Since Noah Dingle (Jack Downham) got out of prison in Emmerdale a couple of years ago he’s been a changed person, and in particular he really stepped up to support girlfriend Amelia Spencer (Daisy Campbell) and her daughter, Esther.
Esther’s biological father is Samson Dingle (Sam Hall), and he proved to be spectacularly useless at fatherhood, at one point calling social services on Amelia in an effort to get the baby taken into care. Later he tried to get Noah to pay him to keep away from Amelia and the baby when he found that Noah had come into some money
Noah, meanwhile, always seemed to have Esther’s best interests at heart and even set up a trust fund for her. He’s taken care of her and supported her financially, practically and emotionally and saw his future as being a family along with Amelia and Esther.
He’s always been irritated by the fact that Amelia still wanted Samson in her daughter’s life, and recently he saw a chance to get rid of him from the village.
When he saw Samson beating up Josh (Osian Morgan), he called the police. This led to Samson being arrested and being sent to prison. He was already facing prison for lying about what happened when he was ‘stabbed’ by Matty Barton (Ash Palmisciano), but being arrested for assault made everything worse for him.
When the truth came out about who grassed Samson up, Amelia was furious with Noah to think that he’d put Esther’s dad behind bars. She declared their relationship was over and no amount of pleading from Noah could convince her otherwise.
In last night’s episode Noah had apparently finally accepted that he and Amelia were over, but he told Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter) that he couldn’t accept not being part of Esther’s life. He said she felt like she was his daughter. Chas advised him to talk to Amelia and tell her how he felt.
So he talked to Amelia – and the response wasn’t what he’d hoped for. She’d clearly been thinking about it and she told him he could have the trust fund money back. Neither of them would be able to move on if they were still in each other’s lives, she said.
He pointed out that she lives with Chas, who was his family, but Amelia said that they would obviously keep bumping in to each other and could be on friendly terms, but that was it.
Trying again, Noah opened his heart saying that he really loved Esther, who would also miss him. Amelia was sticking to her guns.
‘She’s still young enough to forget you,’ she said, and immediately regretted how harsh she’d sounded. But Noah had received the message loud and clear. Even though Amelia said it was ‘the best for everyone,’ he knew it wasn’t the best thing for him.
As she left the room, Noah was in tears at the thought of losing his girlfriend and the child he thinks of as his daughter.
