The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Emmerdale that hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.

Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins) is at risk of having her secret exposed in Emmerdale, but not by Ross Barton (Michael Parr).

After sleeping with Charity earlier this year, Ross got word that she was pregnant. As he arrived in the pub, he found Charity’s loved ones celebrating the news, all under the impression that Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill) was finally going to get her wish and become a mum.

Outside, Ross confronted Charity and asked if the baby is actually his. She outright denied it, telling Ross that the baby belongs to Sarah as part of the surrogacy plan.

Sadly though, as much as she’s tried to ignore it, Ross has been right all along.

After receiving the paternity test results which confirmed Ross is the dad, Charity started spiralling. She was found by Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter), who simply took one look at Charity and realised something was wrong.

Charity confessed, and Chas said that she needed to tell everyone the truth. Charity knew in her heart that Chas was right, but when she once again witnessed Sarah expressing her excitement towards becoming a mum, she just couldn’t bring herself to break her granddaughter’s heart.

Instead, she booked an appointment for an abortion. Yesterday’s episode allowed us to discover that Charity never went through with it, and it left Chas under the impression that she’d soon be preparing herself to tell Sarah the truth.

Charity made it clear to Chas in that moment that she absolutely wouldn’t be doing that. She said that she would come up with an alternate plan, because Sarah can never find out the reality.

Charity’s cover-up story saw her first pay a visit to Ryan Stocks (James Moore). She explained that she needed some help with editing documents. Ryan wondered if his mum was involved in something illegal, and she then lied to him (seriously, how many more people) and claimed that she needed to forge some documents for the pub paperwork.

In reality, Charity created another test result that said Ross isn’t the father of her baby. She then arrived at Butlers Farm and presented it to him. Ross was unsure at first but once he checked the document over, he felt relieved that he wasn’t about to become father again.

Not awkward at all.

Back in the pub, eagle-eyed Chas spotted Charity acting oddly again and was delivered another update. The two characters started bickering over Charity’s decision, but they were then interrupted by Sarah.

After Chas lied to her, Sarah told Ryan that she knows something is up between her Gran and Chas – and it’s definitely more than just ‘pub stuff’.

Sarah believes that she can’t be left in the dark and is determined to discover their secret – but how close is she going to get to the truth?

‘She has a choice to tell those that need telling, or to keep it a secret’, star Emma Atkins said.

‘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.’

She added: ‘The jeopardy that she’s in, it’s palpable, and there’s so much that she stands to lose, she’s devastated.

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

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.’