ITV soap Emmerdale recently confirmed that three standalone episodes will air soon that focus on Robert Sugden (Ryan Hawley), Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards) and April Windsor (Amelia Flanagan).

Teenager April was drawn into the world of drug dealing earlier this year. It began because she wanted to help her boyfriend Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle) out, but April was then added to the list of runners after losing a bag of drugs to a man who threatened her with a knife.

 

 

April and Dylan are now completing jobs for Ray Walters (Joe Absolom) under the impression they are slowly clearing their debt. In reality, losing the drugs was all part of Ray’s plan. There is no debt, but Ray uses this as a way to convince April and Dylan to keep dealing for him.

 

 

In a recent episode, April was taken to a hotel room with instruction from Ray to deal cocaine directly to a man called Tim.

Tim and April were alone in the room and she was deeply uncomfortable when he started pouring some vodka. Tim encouraged her to drink it, and then asked her to take the cocaine with him. April was reluctant to do both, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of not having a choice but to join in.

 

 

As Tim started to make things clear he was sexually attracted to April, she panicked and bolted out of the room. Leader of the drugs ring Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) found her when she was back in the village, and held her hand as they went back to the B&B.

After Celia’s approach that ultimately helped calm April down, her true side was exposed again. She explained to April that she doesn’t really care that Tim made her uncomfortable, because the only thing that’s important to her is getting the job done.

 

 

Celia reminded April of her debt and how she will not have a choice but to do as requested next time.

As April remains trapped, dad Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) is completely unaware of what his little girl is going through.

‘She grew up, obviously as a parent you anticipate them growing up and changing, but she has changed in a way that he doesn’t have a dictionary for’, star Mark Charnock explained to us.

‘He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t have the words in his soul, to understand or even begin to contemplate what she has been through and what it might have done to her. So her return [from living on the streets], whilst being the most monumental relief, is fraught with obstacles because I don’t think anyone can really understand what they’ve been through when they’ve been through something like that.’

Their relationship dynamic and how the dealing has impacted April’s home life will be the focus of this special instalment of the soap.

Ahead of it, Mark has confirmed there will be a twist in the episode that will ‘stagger the audience.’

Reflecting on receiving the script and the filming of the scenes, he said: ‘I was absolutely buzzing. It’s thrilling, it’s flattering to be trusted with an episode, and to work with Amelia in that way. It’s an absolutely outstanding script, it’s an absolute gift for an actor.

‘In a normal episode there’s about 15/16/17 scenes and we did nearly all of them over a two day period so it was essentially in one location. It was really rewarding, really intense given the nature of the story. There comes a point in it where you just kind of think “I hope this turns out as well as the script deserves”. It was an incredible experience.’

Explaining the set up of the episode, Mark added: ‘April was going to come to a Halloween party with the rest of the family, she doesn’t turn up and he’s really sad about it. So she turns up at the house and he’s on his own and the episode begins, it’s lovely actually, with them rediscovering the younger version of her and how that was for them when she was really little.

‘The first act, if you like, is about him rediscovering his daughter, the daughter he knew before everything tragic that happened to her, and her rediscovering not only her dad but that part of herself too, so it’s really something.’

Full of praise for Amelia Flanagan, Mark smiled: ‘I’ve said it so many times now, she is a remarkable actress and she can summon emotion on the spot, she’s got older and she does this thing now where you can see so much going on in her eyes as well as her voice and her physicality, she’s got all the tools to carry on being a really quite brilliant actress.’