Alfie Moon (Shane Richie) returns to EastEnders next week – but he’s still knee-deep in lies.

As viewers of the BBC One soap know, he left Albert Square on a mission to save his step-daughter Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan).

She had been staying with her cousin Stacey (Lacey Turner) and was clearly in a bad way, creating an elaborate lie so that her family would believe that Spanish loansharks were hunting her down.

Zoe then fled to Barcelona, asserting that she’d done something ‘so bad’ that her family would disown her.

Fearing the worst, Alfie decided to follow – telling his suspicious wife that he was actually going to stay with brother Spencer (Christopher Parker) in Australia.

Kat (Jessie Wallace) became infuriated when the lies began to unravel, and Stacey was forced to create yet another lie. She said that Alfie was in a bad headspace after another cancer scare.

Jean Slater (Gillian Wright) later assumed that he was actually helping out his estranged daughter Cherry, something which Kat is inclined to believe next week.

In upcoming scenes, he jets back into Walford and is in disbelief that Kat had used Stacey’s money – earned from her late husband Martin’s life insurance policy – to buy The Queen Vic.

He knew she’d come into some cash, and had hoped she’d use it to pay some dodgy fellas who claimed they had information on Zoe.

Alfie is desperate to reach his wife before she listens to an incriminating voice message he’s sent, and enlists Stacey to help.

Tensions begin to rise when Kat tears strips off him for lying, and he makes a sincere promise never to tell anymore marriage-threatening fibs again.

As he makes a final attempt to grab her phone, a mugger does the job for him. A scooter drives past, and the guy snatches it from her hands.