‘The fact that she’s cheated on Mack (Lawrence Robb) at a point where Mack is very vulnerable anyway, with everything that he’s gone through with the kidnapping and with John (Oliver Farnworth), she just can’t bear to throw more pain his way.

‘So there’s that moral dilemma. And then obviously, with Sarah, it’s, how could she ever forgive Charity for this, you know? I can’t imagine ever being in that situation where you would lose your granddaughter and your husband together and family, and probably the outer circle of the family.’

Emma said that the idea of either Mack or Sarah finding out that the baby was Ross’s would both be ‘unbearable’ outcomes – so Charity decides they must never know.

‘She has a choice to tell those that need telling, or to keep it a secret. And I think secrets and lies is the avenue she goes down for obvious reasons, that there’s too much at stake. There’s too much to lose. She wants to gift Sarah with this child that she’s promised her, and she can’t bear the thought of all of this falling apart, so to keep everything together, she decides to tell the biggest lie of her life.’

Keeping this secret on her own proves too much for Charity, so she decides to confide in Chas (Lucy Pargeter).

‘They have a conversation, and then it just spills out of her, and there’s no going back after that release,’ Emma said.

‘Unfortunately, Chas takes the higher moral ground and says, “Under no circumstances can you not consider telling everyone, you have to come clean.” And obviously, Charity is horrified that her best friend, her cousin, is telling her to do the right thing morally. She says, “You cannot take this lie into the baby being born, and present Sarah with a child that’s not even hers.”’

This leads Charity to contemplate an even more desperate action – to have a termination.

‘She feels it’s the only way out,’ Emma told us. ‘To maybe just try and make it go away and bury it once and for all, and it’s such a an immoral thing that she’s considering doing, but she feels it’s her only option at this point. She feels this is her only option, even though it is also awful, an unbearable, unforgivable act.’

When she returns from the appointment, Sarah has made a box of keepsakes for the baby, with scan pictures and letters from her and Jacob. She suggests that Charity could write her own letter to the baby.

‘The idea of all of it’s just so much shame and guilt and panic and everything, all these emotions rolled into one,’ Emma admitted.

‘The worst thing is she’s got to cover it all up. So it’s all going on inside and on the surface she’s got to sustain this calmness and this acceptance. The audience get to see that level of horror in Charity’s eyes, but obviously she can’t show it to Sarah.’

Eventually Charity’s secrets will come out, as Emma told us:

‘It will simmer for a while, and then, obviously, we know that secrets and lies do have a way of coming out, one way or another, of course.

‘There’s so much riding on this.’