When Rose Jackson (Christine Tremarco)’s belongings were found scattered by the road in Emmerdale, the finger of suspicion obviously pointed at Kim Tate (Claire King) and Will Taylor (Dean Andrews).
But in a series of flashbacks in Monday (August 26)’s episode, the truth was finally revealed about what happened to Rose after Will and Kim dumped her by the road and ordered her to leave the Dales and never return.
When PC Swirling (Andy Moore) turned up with Rose’s possessions but reporting no sign of Rose, it seemed that something nasty had happened to her after Kim and Will left the scene.
They automatically went into defensive mode – with neither of them entirely believing the other was innocent, their instinct was to protect each other from any consequences by lying.
This episode showed, in a series of flashbacks, what happened to Rose – and that Dawn (Olivia Bromley) had known all along what happened to her mother and knew that Will was covering, either because he was guilty or he thought Kim was guilty.
After Kim and Will had left Rose by the roadside, Dawn had driven past on her way to or from the hospital. It wasn’t long before her mum was telling her everything that had happened, including how she’d been working for Ruby Fox-Miligan (Beth Cordingly) in trying to split Kim and Will up. Rose even revealed that she’d spiked Dawn’s drink, although it had been meant for Will.
She insisted that she’d ‘fallen in love’ with Dawn, Billy (Jay Kontzle) and their children and hadn’t wanted to hurt them but had been put in an impossible situation by Ruby. She didn’t want to leave, but Kim and Will had thrown her into the car boot and driven her away from the village, and Will had given her money to leave.
Rather than keep this money, Rose then handed it to Dawn, telling her daughter that she should use it to get away from the toxic atmosphere of Home Farm.
Following that, Dawn took Rose to the airport. She then went home, and in the intervening time has been waiting and watching as Will’s lies have mounted up.
She recently told him that her baby son Evan needs a bone marrow transplant. This turned out to be a ruse to see how far Will was prepared to go to hide the possibility that Kim had killed Rose.
As Evan’s biological grandmother it was important for her to get tested to see if she was a match, and Dawn was devastated to discover that Will would even put protecting Kim ahead of doing what was best for Evan.
Dawn said that when Kim told her ‘not to waste a tear’ on Rose, that was the moment she knew they were lying. She told Will that he was an embarrassment to her and she’s ‘done’ with him.
Using the money that Rose gave her, Dawn arranged to rent Holdgate from Jai (Chris Bisson) and she and Billy prepared to move their family in there straight away (even though when we last saw Holdgate there was no furniture in it). She told Will that he knew where she was if he needed anything – but to stay away even if he did.
With Will left reeling from the departure of his family and the unravelling of all his lies, how is Kim going to react when she returns from her business trip to find that everything has backfired so spectacularly?
