The fragile peace between Mackenzie Boyd and Charity Dingle explodes into a chasm next week in Emmerdale as secrets, grief and suspicion collide to tear their marriage apart; what began as a small, aching fissure — Charity’s distracted mood, Mackenzie’s longing for connection and the raw wound of their lost baby’s anniversary — quickly becomes a yawning gulf that neither honesty nor silence can bridge, and when Charity’s hidden turmoil over the surrogacy and her night with Ross Barton comes to light, the couple’s tenuous bond unravels with devastating speed. Charity’s quiet decision to act as a surrogate for Sarah and Jacob was meant to be an act of generosity that might heal old scars, but instead it opens old ones: Mac is haunted by the anniversary of the child he and Charity lost three years ago, and when he discovers she has not even acknowledged the date he believed would be sacred to them both, anger and betrayal poison his attempts at reconciliation; a drunken confrontation, an explosive row and Charity’s furious decision to throw him out of the house crystallise a truth neither of them can ignore — their marriage is bleeding from secrets, and each small lie widens the wound.

The emotional tectonics of the village shift when Ross’s shadow falls over the pregnancy, turning private remorse into a public bombshell; after Charity’s traumatic fall and the fear that the embryo transfer had failed, the revelation that she is pregnant should have been a salve, a shared joy to lift them both. Instead, Ross’s return and his probing questions — born from a drunken night when he and Charity sought comfort in each other — seed doubt and suspicion so poisonous they begin to corrode the foundations of trust. Charity insists the baby is the result of the embryo transfer for Sarah and Jacob, but Ross, whose life is a mess of instability and unmet responsibility, sees something in her eyes at the pub and refuses to be placated; his determination to uncover the truth threatens to turn what should be a private family matter into a scandal that will fracture alliances and set neighbour against neighbour. Mackenzie, already bruised by grief and the ghost of the child he once hoped to raise with Charity, watches helplessly as his worst fears take the shape of a living secret, and the thought that the child he imagined might not be his becomes an unbearable knife.

Mackenzie’s discovery of a damning clue in Jon’s van propels the drama into darker territory and suggests the fallout will not be confined to a failed marriage; suspicion over Nate’s disappearance and the arrival of a mysterious removal man point to a web of lies that could engulf more than just Charity and Mac. When Mac climbs into Jon’s van and unearths evidence that proves his suspicions about Jon were justified, the stakes ratchet up from heartbreak to mortal danger — the man he has long mistrusted may be more monstrous than he imagined, and Mac’s confrontation with that truth could cost him everything. The flash-forward glimpses of Mac running through the woods in the same clothes suggest that the story will not merely end in divorce but may culminate in violence; tabloid leaks hint at a chilling possibility that Jon could turn from manipulator to murderer, and that Mac’s search for answers could make him a target. What started as domestic sorrow thus morphs into a tense thriller, where love, betrayal and the threat of death braid together in a terrifying dance.

Amid the chaos, other lives tremble on the brink: Moira faces financial ruin and the gut-wrenching possibility of selling Butler’s Farm, while Robert and Aaron’s simmering temptation threatens to ignite into something more, and Jon and Aaron’s future in the village hangs in the balance; Moira’s attempt to salvage her farm with a big contract collapses when Celia pulls out, leaving Moira with half the expected funds and the agonising choice of whether to sell the family land she has fought so hard to protect, while elsewhere the horrified intimacy between Robert and Aaron — born of years of friendship, pain and unresolved longing — could redraw loyalties and make rivalries explode. Emmerdale’s village, already a pressure cooker of secrets, becomes an arena where every small decision reverberates, where civilities are thin veneers over deeper resentments, and where the choices characters make to protect themselves often inflict the most damage on those they love.

At the heart of this storm is Charity, whose attempt to do something selfless — to help Sarah and Jacob build a family — becomes the crucible in which everything she has tried to fix is melted down; guilt, desire and desperation war inside her as she faces the reality that her night with Ross, a moment of weakness when she sought solace from pain, may have doomed the life she hoped to redeem. Mackenzie’s