Aaron Dingle (Danny Miller) has been keeping a secret from his mum, Chas (Lucy Pargeter), in Emmerdale.
In the wake of her discovering that her breast cancer had a genetic link, she urged her son and her two brothers to get tested for the BRCA2 gene.
Cain (Jeff Hordley) and Caleb (William Ash)’s results came back negative – but Aaron’s was positive. Not wanting to pile any more worry on to Chas and not wanting to face questions and sympathy from the rest of the family, he chose to keep this information to himself.
Instead he told Chas that he’d had the all-clear and she was hugely relieved.
Of course Aaron’s GP knows that Aaron tested positive – and because Liam (Jonny McPherson) is a close friend of Chas, it’s putting a huge strain on him to know that Aaron is deceiving his mum.
We’ve already seen tensions simmer between the two men as Liam tried to persuade Aaron to come clean about his test results.
In upcoming episodes Liam’s finding it increasingly hard to keep the secret from Chas, especially as she keeps questioning him about Aaron. Eventually he says something that makes her think Aaron has been lying to her.
She questions her son, and knows him well enough that she realises he’s lying even though he continues to stick to his story.
Realising that he can’t continue to pretend to Chas that his test came back negative, Aaron is furious with Liam for putting him in that position.
We know that when Aaron is angry or cornered, he can quickly become violent and it’s not long before he turns this on Liam.
Chas is horrified to see Liam has injuries that look like he was attacked and she asks if Aaron was the person who hurt him. Liam admits that it was Aaron, but as Chas reacts furiously Liam tries to calm her down.
He says that a better approach will be to treat the issue sensitively with Aaron rather than going in all guns blazing.
Chas agrees, and the approach works. Aaron opens up about how frightened the gene result has made him feel , saying it’s like he has a death sentence hanging over him.
As Chas and Paddy (Dominic Brunt) promise to support him no matter what happens, it’s a big step forward for Aaron.
