Jai Sharma (Chris Bisson) is not having the best time in Emmerdale at the moment, but many would say it serves him right.
Caleb Miligan (William Ash) has scammed Jai out of thousands of pounds, but it’s money that Jai wanted to secretly invest in Caleb’s business as a way of keeping it out of the divorce settlement so that Laurel Thomas (Charlotte Bellamy) would never see a penny of it.
He expected to be a partner in the business, but at the launch even for the new company it became perfectly clear that Jai has no real place in it. The company is called Caleb Miligan International, for one thing – quite a hefty clue that it’s very much a one-man operation.
Jai was horrified to learn that he has no legal role in the company at all and Jai’s money was put into a smaller shell company.
He was fuming and made a scene in front of the people assembled for the launch. It all culminated in him trashing the warehouse with a forklift before turning the vehicle on Caleb and pinning him against a pallet.
Who knows what would have happened next if Caleb’s long-lost daughter Steph (Georgia Jay) hadn’t arrived at that moment and Jai was forced to give up his sad attempt to hold Caleb to account.
To try to mollify Jai, Caleb offered him a manager’s job, but proud Caleb refused to accept an offer he considered to be beneath him.
On Monday (November 18)’s episode, Jai was at rock bottom. In the Woolpack he explained to Laurel that he told Caleb where to stuff the manager’s job because Caleb had try to ‘rob him blind.’
Bear (Joshua Richards), drying glasses being the bar, pointed out that Jai didn’t have that many options. He said he could ask Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter) if there was a bar job going but he didn’t think Jai would bring the right vibe to the Woolpack with his ‘insurance salesman wide-boy’ image.
Laurel agreed, adding ‘Slimy, aggressive, dishonest’ to the list of Jai’s charms. In a moment of rare sincerity Jai apologised to Laurel about the money and for the way he treated her.
She told him he had no option but to take Caleb’s job offer and he had to accept that Caleb had beaten him and count himself lucky he had any job at all.
It seems that Jai is going to go cap-in-hand back to Caleb and take the job after all. But Caleb might live to regret humiliating Jai and then allowing him back into the company, as we’ve seen how ruthless Jai can be when he feels that someone has tried to get the better of him.
