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) phoned a clinic in yesterday’s episode of Emmerdale, to organise an abortion.

The character has been spiralling ever since she slept with Ross Barton (Michael Parr), which only happened because both of the residents were dealing with relationship drama.

Charity discovered that she was pregnant shortly after this one night stand, leaving Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill) to assume that she was carrying her new son or daughter as part of the surrogacy plan.

Ross knew there was a chance he was the father of Charity’s baby, but she spent weeks in denial, not willing to accept she had potentially ruined her granddaughter’s chance of becoming a mum.

A persistent Ross nagged Charity until she gave in and organised a paternity test. Yesterday, she received confirmation that Ross is the father, meaning her worst fear had come true.

Charity was found by Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter) in the aftermath of this, who immediately sensed that something was up. Charity confessed everything in this moment, and Chas told her that she needed to tell everyone.

But Charity had other plans. After seeing Sarah, Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb) and Jacob Gallagher (Joe-Warren Plant) work together to build a new pram, Charity couldn’t bring herself to break their hearts.

Instead, she booked an appointment for an abortion.

In the latest episode, we saw Charity in her car looking upset. It wasn’t until a while later that we discovered Charity barely got five minutes down the road before deciding that she didn’t want to go.

Chas supported her, and naturally wondered if Charity would now go back to her original plan, and tell her loved ones the truth.

Charity responded quickly – there was absolutely no way she would be telling Sarah and Mackenzie that she’s carrying Ross’s baby.

With Mackenzie vulnerable after his ordeal with John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth), and Sarah beyond excited to become a mum, it seemed completely ludicrous to Charity that she would tell them the truth and ruin everything.

Is this really the best option?

Or is it setting Charity up for a greater fall?

‘The idea of anybody finding this out could be the end of relationships with her granddaughter, her husband, and her family’, star Emma Atkins said.

‘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.‘

She added: ‘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.’

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.’