This article contains spoilers for the Emmerdale episode airing on Monday October 21, which is available to stream on ITVX now.
Tina Dingle (Samantha Power)’s shock arrival at the funeral of Zak Dingle (Steve Halliwell) certainly put the cat among the pigeons as it quickly became clear that she wasn’t just there to pay her respects to her late father.
Tina was last seen in the Dales in 1996 when she turned down Frank Tate (Norman Bowler)’s proposal and left her job and vanished from the village.
Since then we haven’t heard very much about her, to the extent that the younger Dingles were a bit confused about who this loud woman who turned up at the funeral might be. Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper) had clearly never given much thought to her absentee sister, and Vinny (Bradley Johnson) didn’t seem quite sure who Tina was.
She was clearly not welcomed by the other family members and soon had everyone squabbling – particularly when she mentioned that she planned to stake a claim on Wishing Well, the beloved Dingle homestead. As one of Zak’s children, she felt she had a right to it.
Understandably, the others disagreed with this, given that Tina has had nothing to do with the village for almost 30 years and wasn’t in touch with Zak over that time.
In Monday (October 21)’s episode the Dingles’ hopes that Tina might have quietly left the village were quickly dashed when she turned up at the salon. Vinny was there with Mandy (Lisa Riley), but on seeing Tina, Mandy quickly ushered Vinny out to go and see Gabby (Rosie Bentham).
Tina had questions about Gabby – especially when she heard she lived in the ‘big house,’ and she said she was interested in Vinny’s life.
‘It’s natural for me to be interested,’ she said, with special emphasis on ‘natural.’
Mandy pushed Vinny out of the door and then rounded on Tina, telling her to stay out of the village.
‘You don’t get to tell me where I can or can’t go,’ Tina fumed. ‘Especially now I’ve got interests round here.’
Mandy insisted that if she was talking about the house, Zak’s wishes about the inheritance were clear. Tina refused to accept this, insisting that Wishing Well belongs to the family, and she’s family.
The reason that Mandy was so tense about Tina and Vinny being in the same room then became apparent as she said that she’d come for everything that was hers. As Mandy looked like her world had shattered, Tina told her that it made her sad thinking about everything she’d missed with Vinny.
‘What’s mine is mine. My house. My son,’ she told a tearful Mandy, who looked devastated but not surprised by this.
Mandy brought Vinny up for most of his life after she was in a relationship with his father, Paul Ashdale (Reece Dinsdale) and we know that she thinks of him as her son, and he’s always considered her to be his mum.
They have a lovely bond together and Mandy knows that Tina could rip that apart with this revelation that, as well as being ‘Aunty Tina,’ she is also his mum – and that Mandy has been keeping this from him.
