April Windsor (Amelia Flanagan) is slowly distancing herself from her family in Emmerdale, as she becomes more involved with Ray Walters (Joe Absolom) and his drug dealing.
April only began dealing because she wanted to help Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle). She then started completing her own jobs, with Ray concluding she’d be very useful to him.
While walking by the canal, one of April’s drops went wrong due to a young man threatening her with a knife. She gave him the bag and ran home, later fearing what Ray would do when he discovered the drugs were missing.
Ray was never going to be angry at this development, because he had orchestrated it himself. When April and Dylan broke the news to him that the drugs went to the wrong person, Ray pretended to panic. He called his boss, and then confirmed to the teens that there was a way to rectify the mistake without landing in too much trouble.
Ray explained that April and Dylan would need to continue working for him to pay off their debt. They said yes and a smug Ray headed off, satisfied that his plan had worked again.
Yesterday, Dylan caught April dealing outside a university. Aware she was in too deep, Dylan tried to tell Ray that April should stop with the jobs.
Using his manipulative skills once more, Ray said that he’d have to ask the bosses – who could easily have him killed.
Ray’s phone call apparently ended badly, leaving Dylan terrified. He believes that he’s good mates with Ray, and couldn’t cope with the idea of him being in danger. He changed his mind about April, confirming to Ray that she could carry on dealing if it kept him safe.
In tonight’s episode, April was in the café with Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) and Mary (Louise Jameson).
Rhona commented on April returning home late last night, but she claimed she was hanging out with some girls from her netball club.
April’s phone pinged a message and she shot up, announcing that she needed to leave, despite sitting down for barely five minutes. She said that she has a meeting with a school teacher and dashed away.
Rhona is now growing tired of April’s behaviour. Amid this and the general chaos of her daily life, she’s not really considered that something else might be going on with her. For Mary, however, who views the youngster through a different lens, it was this moment that saw her sense something was up.
She told Rhona that something doesn’t feel right, but could Mary be the one to figure out what’s really going on with April?
Of course, April had no meeting with a teacher organised – she rushed away to complete another job for Ray.
In the car, April told Ray that Rhona was starting to get suspicious. She confirmed she has no plans to pull out of the dealing, but is wondering how much longer the lying can go on for.
Ray reassured April and said that he’d never let anything bad happen to her. He then handed her a few drugs, telling her that they’d help ‘take the edge’ off her nerves.
Despite reiterating that she doesn’t do drugs, Ray placed them in April’s hands. She then got out of the car and walked away, desperate for her nightmare to end.
Unfortunately, things are going to get a lot worse for April before any remote sign of things changing for the better.
When Rhona innocently asks her to be a big sister and look after Leo for a while, April’s focus is split when Ray demands she do a job for him.
She’s desperate to earn as much as quickly as she can and can’t turn the job down. Not that she has any choice.
She weighs it up and decides Leo will be fine for a few hours and rushes off. As she does so, she drops a packet of pills.
On her return she’s faced with her worst nightmare, Leo being put in an ambulance having found the pills.
Enough is enough for a petrified April, who hurriedly tells Dylan she wants to come clean and get out of the game for good.
She’s ready to stand up to Ray too – but is this the moment things end once and for all?