The grande dame of EastEnders, Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean), was back for what felt like five minutes before she disappeared again, but those five minutes were utterly packed with drama.

Arriving back in Walford, Sharon’s metaphorical jaw hit the floor when she spotted her former arch-nemesis, Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan)

across the square. Though they initially brokered peace, a knock-down, drag-out catfight between Zoe and Vicki Fowler (Alice Haig) had the two females squaring up once again.

 

 

Zoe, having learned that morning that Sharon is absolutely wadded, told her enemy that the father of her missing son and sadly stillborn daughter is, in fact, Dennis Rickman (Nigel Harmon), Sharon’s late ex-husband.

Putting their animosity aside, Sharon vowed to help Zoe find her son, seeing him as a piece of Dennis that she could still access, and agreed to fund the search.

 

 

Before the investigation could get too far underway, though, Sharon whisked Vicky away away from the square following the brutal attack she suffered at the hands of Joel Marshall (Max Murray).

While they were away, Zoe’s mum, Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace) learned the vile truth, that Zoe had lied about the true parentage of her son and he wasn’t Dennis’. Upon Vicki’s return, Kat’s conscience was pricked when she learned just how deeply Sharon had thrown herself into the search and, despite Zoe’s pleading, revealed the truth.

Vicki phoned her sister and told her the truth about Zoe’s son. She was understandably devastated and had decided not to return to Walford. Informing Sharon’s half brother, Zack Hudson (James Farrar), that she had chosen to fly back to Florida to stay with Michelle Fowler (Jenna Russell).

In tonights episode, Zoe was summoned to the café for a meeting with the private investigator that Sharon was funding. Though the P.I. informed Zoe that she had managed to make progress in the case, she couldn’t reveal anything as Sharon’s name is on the case file, and she’d demanded that it be closed, while withdrawing all funds.

Though Zoe begged for the new information while batting back barbs from Vicki, the P.I told Zoe that it would come at a cost. When Zoe enquired as to how much, she balked to learn it would be £3,000.

Though she turned to Kat for the cash, an earlier conversation between her and Alfie Moon (Shane Richie) meant that she was reluctant to hand any over, with Alfie proposing that Zoe save up for a few months and then reopen the investigation. A panicked, Zoe, though, worried that at that point the trail will have gone cold.

As things continued to spiral for Zoe, Freddie Slater (Bobby Brazier) came downstairs with even further bad news: Zoe’s recently adopted cat, Mini Mo had gone missing again. With Zoe already deep in paranoia that somebody is out to get her, following the defacing of a picture of herself and Kat, smeared with fake blood, her anxiety rose once more.

Her terror only rose on Halloween when she discovered the picture on her bed after previously throwing it out, before discovering a VHS tape containing footage of her dad, Harry, who’d raped his niece, Kat as a child. She later found herself shoved and locked into the barrel store, convinced that somebody was waging a campaign of terror against her.