Emmerdale boss Laura Shaw has confirmed that Tom King’s (James Chase) abuse of wife Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper) will continue for quite some time.
The long-running story, which began prior to their engagement last year, has seen Tom emotionally manipulate Belle and physically abuse her.
Emmerdale fans are divided over the storyline, with some branding it ‘horrible’ and ‘awful’, while others have praised the soap for its realistic portrayal of domestic abuse.
He’s also tracked her every movement and in recent weeks, we saw him lock her in the house whilst a fire broke out in the kitchen. Luckily, she woke up in time to notice the blaze and extinguish it, but alarm bells started ringing in her head when she noticed both of the doors were locked.
To make matters worse, she then found out she’s pregnant with his baby and has sought help from an abortion clinic, but told Tom that she had actually experienced a miscarriage.
Tom eventually found out the truth but because he was in a wheelchair at the time, he wasn’t able to get revenge by physically hurting Belle.
‘We said right from the beginning that we wanted to tell this story as authentically and truthfully as we can’, producer Laura Shaw told us when discussing the length of this storyline.
‘Let’s face it, for people who are subjected to domestic abuse this isn’t something that’s over in a couple of weeks, it’s something that goes on for a long length of time and we wanted to be truthful to that.
‘I think you can expect that this storyline is going to run until the end of this year.’
On the planned ending for the storyline, she added: ‘I think we’ve always had a good idea in our heads exactly where we wanted it to end, if I’m honest.
‘Obviously we’ve found new twists and turns as we’ve gone through but we’ve always had a pretty clear picture in our heads of where it would end.’
Well aware that his time in the show could soon come to an end, actor James Chase said: ‘He can’t get away with it. I don’t know to what extent that would be, or how the storyline would end but I would think it would have to be something like that because she needs justice for what’s happened to her.
