Emmerdale star confirms Mack and Charity future and if they split | Soaps

Mackenzie Boyd’s (Lawrence Robb) whole entire world fell apart in Emmerdale when Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins) revealed a number of life-changing secrets.

For almost a year, Charity had been hiding the fact that she was pregnant with Ross Barton’s (Michael Parr) child. She gave birth to the baby, and handed her over to Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill) and Jacob (Joe-Warren Plant), allowing them – and everyone else – to believe that it was their daughter via surrogacy.

After baby Leyla’s birth, Doctor Caitlin Todd (Caroline Harker), who had spent months bullying Jacob, discovered that the child was Charity and Ross’. She proceeded to blackmail Charity over the secret, demanding £100,000 in exchange for her silence.

Charity completely fell apart during this storyline. At the end of her tether, she got drunk and told Caitlin to go right ahead and tell Sarah the truth about baby Leyla.

Doctor Todd then waited for Charity to pass out as a result of the alcohol and raped her. The aftermath of this attack saw Charity go to the police to report Todd, but she was eventually told that Caitlin had been let go due to lack of physical evidence, and the surgeon claiming that the sex they had was consensual.

The conversation that she had with Serena Sugden (Casey Al-Shaqsy) helped Charity see that she needed to be honest with Mackenzie about everything that’s been going on. She told him all of her secrets and now, Mack is struggling to know what exactly to do next.

‘It’s a lot to get his head around’, actor Lawrence Robb told us.

‘Yes, there’s the betrayal with Ross, but also the awful reality of what she’s been through at the hands of Dr. Todd. Ultimately, he’s heartbroken. He’s absolutely beside himself with grief, both from the betrayal about Leyla’s parentage and because his heart hurts for Charity and the fact that she’s gone through all of this trauma and had to keep a secret for so long. He feels so much anger towards Todd.’

Mack has chosen to stay with Charity and support her while she fights for justice following the assault. They’ve both made it clear that they don’t want their relationship to end, but how can things ever be the same again?

While the couple are trying to work through things now, whether the marriage survives in the future remains to be seen. For Lawrence, he cannot help but wonder what might unfold when Sarah and Jacob inevitably learn about baby Leyla.

‘I think there’s maybe an element of them sticking a band-aid over it’, he said, reflecting on the current state of Mack and Charity’s relationship.

‘Mack doesn’t really get much time to deal with it because he immediately enters protection mode.’

‘So, whether that rears its head further on down the line, I don’t know. But he doesn’t have a lot of time to process it. Also, Sarah and Jacob don’t know the truth yet. Inevitably that has to come to fruition somehow, somewhere. I guess that’s up to the writers and producers to decide on how and when that happens and what the consequences will be.’

Another layer of this plot is the fact that Charity slept with Mack’s best mate Ross. When the one-night stand happened, the two men weren’t pals, but the fact the friendship developed on a foundation of secrets and lies has hurt Mack a great deal.

Noting that his character feels ‘deeply betrayed by Ross’, Lawrence said that Mackenzie feels a lot of anger towards his former mate.

‘They were becoming close friends, so learning that Ross knew about Leyla feels like a big betrayal. While he might understand Charity’s motivations better due to his love for her, the betrayal from Ross is harder to reconcile.

‘I think there’s a lot of anger directed towards Ross – not so much because of the infidelity but because of the reality of Leyla’s biological parentage.’

In future episodes of the ITV soap, Mack cannot keep his emotions in check any longer and gets revenge on Ross.

Lawrence revealed what happens: ‘Mack asks Ross to come up to the farm. Mack can’t keep his anger in check while he’s with Ross, Ross realises almost immediately that something is wrong.

‘Tensions flare, they trade heated words, and the confrontation escalates into a scuffle on the barn mezzanine. Mack pushes Ross over the side. In that moment, Mack isn’t trying to kill him – he just wants to hurt him. He achieves that and walks away…’

But how bad are Ross’ injuries?

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