As Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) and Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) struggle to keep their family safe on Emmerdale, one member of the family threatens to blow everything apart.

Rhona’s mum Mary Goskirk (Louise Jameson) is fiercely intelligent, with a journalist’s instinct for trying to get to the bottom of things. She’s exactly the wrong person to arrive back

in a situation where everyone’s ongoing safety is reliant on people being quiet and keeping secrets.  Mary was away in Cornwall when Marlon and Rhona discovered that

their daughter April (Amelia Flanagan) was in deep trouble with drug baron Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) and her son/sidekick Ray Walters (Joe Absolom). She hasn’t been around to see the family being threatened and intimidated by Ray, and didn’t know anything about April’s boyfriend Dylan (Fred Kettle) being deliberately run over to teach them a very harsh lesson.

Poor Mary

As soon as she arrived back she found it strange that nobody had messaged her about what happened to Dylan, but might have let things go at that point.

In Tuesday (December 16)’s episode, however, her curiosity was piqued again when Rhona came home and found Mary chatting to Ray. Rhona reacted really strangely, as far as Mary was concerned, warning Mary not to have anything to do with Ray. She didn’t trust him, she said.

This was puzzling to Mary, because she knew that Ray is romantically involved with Laurel (Charlotte Bellamy) and that Laurel is quite a good judge of character. She even asked Laurel if she had any idea why Rhona wouldn’t be a fan of Ray, but of course she didn’t.

Realising she’d gone over the top in her reaction to Ray, Rhona told Marlon that Mary was now very suspicious of why that should be. She knew that Mary wouldn’t stop digging for the truth, and that could put her in danger as well as the rest of the family.

She decided she was going to have to get Mary away from the village, even if that meant that Mary would end up hating her.

Rhona put this plan into action later on, starting by telling her mum that the family need their own space after everything that happened to April earlier in the year. She said it was too crowded in the house and there was too much pressure.

Mary wasn’t entirely buying this story and wanted to know what was behind it – which was exactly what Rhona had feared she would do. As she persisted, Mary became angry and shouted at her daughter for trying to make her out to be the unreasonable one.

In desperation, Rhona finally delivered the killer blow. She said that the family were sick of Mary being overbearing and they were sick of her, and would be happier without her.

Mary just crumbled. Absolutely devastated, she said she was going to pack and would be gone first thing in the morning.

Louise Jameson described how Mary was feeling at this point.

‘What they’ve very cleverly done is putting the audience in possession of the secret why Mary is booted out of the house, and hopefully out of the village as far as Rhona is concerned, in order to keep her safe.

‘All Mary gets is this rejection on an enormous scale, that she’s no longer valued, needed, wanted. She can offer nothing to the family except grief, so would she please eff off. How hurtful is that?’