Caleb Miligan (William Ash) and his wife, Ruby Fox-Miligan (Beth Cordingly), have an intense and very close relationship in Emmerdale, which we know developed when they were very young and Ruby’s wealthy family made her choose between them and Caleb.
She chose Caleb, with the result that she hardly saw her family in the years that followed as they strongly disapproved of her romance with someone who grew up in the care system without a penny to his name.
Recently Ruby’s mother, Helen (Sharon Maughan), attempted to contact her shortly before her death but Caleb intervened thinking he was protecting Ruby from further pain.
‘Helen had been so vicious and brutal with Ruby and she’d discarded her and cut her out from her life, so he was going there to protect her,’ William Ash explained to Metro.
Caleb also took £100,000 of Helen’s money with the promise that he would try to get Ruby to visit, and this huge secret is poised to come back and bite him in the wake of Helen’s death and Ruby’s distraught reaction to never getting closure with her mother.
With this secret swirling around, there’s going to be even more drama for the couple as we learn more about their past – and particularly about their daughter, Steph.
William Ash told us that Ruby is desperate to mend her relationship with her daughter, particularly now her mum is dead and their son, Nicky (Lewis Cope), has left the village.
‘Partly because they’re not seeing Nicky, the spectre of Steph has risen to the surface. We need to try and reach out to her and reconnect. I think for Ruby, having lost her mum and having realised how precious that mother/daughter relationship is, she wants that relationship with Steph.’
In the process, we’ll find out a lot more about what went on between Ruby and Caleb in their youth, William said.
‘There’s a huge amount to excavate there, really, with both of their pasts but Ruby’s past in particular. How much she gave up for Caleb with her parents, because she was from a really, really wealthy background and he was a 16 year old who’d just been released from care, didn’t have any money or anything. They went on this journey together and made lots and lots of money and became really successful and set up a really good life for themselves.
‘And as young people having children at a very young age, because they would have had Steph at 16, then Nicky would have come along when they were 19, 20. So having kids very young and just being this little tight unit, there’s so much the audience don’t know about that past and there’s loads of interesting avenues of drama to explore.
‘A big thing is it was such a volatile and tempestuous relationship that Ruby had with her parents, because of Caleb a lot of the time because he was a care home boy and they were very wealthy and wanted more for their daughter. There’s a lot to excavate there, I think.’
William promised drama ahead. ‘There’s a massive story there that’s going to be coming up, very complex relationships are about to come out, lots of secrets are going to be exposed. Lots of combustible elements are about to raise their heads.’ And we don’t have long to wait. ‘It’s close,’ he confirmed.
William said he was excited at the prospect of new Miligan family members joining the show.
‘That’ll be great because I think the possibility of those characters will bring so much to Emmerdale and to our family unit. It’ll explode things, I think – in a good way.’
