Marlon Dingle’s (Mark Charnock) young daughter April Windsor (Amelia Flanagan) has been missing since Christmas Day in Emmerdale. In upcoming episodes though, she is finally found.
April vanished after multiple arguments with her family. Since then, Marlon has barely slept due to the constant worrying and feeling of limbo, not knowing where his daughter is, let alone whether she is safe.
In a recent episode, Marlon, Mary (Louise Jameson) and Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) learnt from family liaison officer Anna that April had been spotted on CCTV. It was a huge moment for the trio – a glimmer of hope at last.
With that, Marlon went into the centre of Leeds – where April was spotted – and continued handing out posters of her. However, as the day drew to a close, he failed to make any progress – a reminder that the young girl is missing in a sea of thousands people.
In the coming episodes, Ross Barton (Michael Parr) encourages Marlon to open up as to why he’s sporting a black eye. He ends up revealing that he got tricked into giving away his money and then got attacked afterwards.
Worried about Marlon’s physical and mental state, Ross tells him that it’s important to keep an eye on his family at home too, and take plenty of rest.
A burnt out Marlon refuses to stop though and announces to Rhona that he’s off out searching once more with Ross. Rhona tries to ask Marlon to consider taking a little more time with Leo and Ivy to unite them as a family, but it just makes him angry.
Following a chat with Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt), Marlon eventually decides to open up to Rhona. As they talk though, things suddenly change when PC Swirling arrives.
They’re left fearing the worst, but Swirling then announces April has been found.
In a special episode that follows after, viewers of the ITV soap will learn of April’s tragic story and what happened to her while she was gone.
How will Marlon and Rhona cope with supporting her?
‘I had a similar reaction to when I was told I was getting the stroke storyline’, actor Mark Charnock said, discussing his reaction to this story.
‘I just thought “this is going to be a really challenging, difficult thing.” My main thought was with Amelia – she’s not had anything this extreme before and I wanted to be a person she was reliant to on set. I think we’ve got that anyway, but I really wanted to be on it for her. It’s big. She’s brilliant but you forget how young she is.
‘She’s extraordinary in this, there’s some stuff coming up that kills you. My initial reaction was “how do we get this right as actors?” and I saw the structure of the story, and thought they’d done it really properly.
‘People are often found in the first 48 hours so it’s relatively rare for somebody to go missing for a prolonged period of time, but it does happen with this age group. I knew it was going to be really tough but we owe it to the people to get it as close as we can [to the truth].’
