New Year tragedy as Emmerdale teen is killed

Emmerdale has tonight aired the shock death of a teen character, following a horror car smash as the village rang in the New Year.

16-year-old twins Heath (Sebastian Dowling) and Cathy (Gabrielle Dowling) has hoped to spend the evening alongside their friend Angelica (Rebecca Bakes) at a party in Hotten, but were unable to find a lift in order to get there.

With the twins’ dad Bob (Tony Audenshaw) occupied with an event at the B&B, and his having refused to pay New Years Eve fares for a taxi, the kids were asked to stick around to help with the event.

But hanging out in a room full of middle aged councillors wasn’t the fun evening they’d had planned, and so Cathy dared Angelica to steal a bottle of prosecco for them all to share (later revealed to be non-alcoholic), before then deciding to swipe Wendy’s car keys.

April (Amelia Flanagan) voiced her disapproval of the plan and refused to get in the car, watching helplessly as the three teens drove off with Cathy at the wheel.

Unbeknownst to Bob, Cathy had been taught to drive whilst staying with brother Scott in the Lake District, taking lessons from him on his private land. But driving on the back roads to Hotten at nighttime is a different story…

When Wendy was called in for a shift at the hospital, she was confused that she wasn’t able to find her car keys. It wasn’t until she retrieved her spare set and went outside however that she realised the car had disappeared.

Realising that the twins and Angelica had disappeared, after asking them to stick around in order to help at the B&B event, it didn’t Bob and Wendy long to put two and two together, later getting confirmation of their suspicions from April.

“He sees April in the street and asks if she’s seen the twins, and of course she’s a really honest person so she says nothing at first,” Tony Audenshaw previously told EverySoap and other media at a press event covering the storyline. “So he goes ‘Come on it’s really important’ and she says they went off in Wendy’s car. Cathy was driving and Angelica was with them. So Bob gets the address of the party from April and they go off to look for them.”

“Bob is concerned because of the nature of what’s happened in the last few months,” Tony continues. “A lot of Cathy’s behaviour has been tied in with her PMDD and she’s been acting very erratically.”

Angelica’s parents Nicola (Nicola Wheeler) and Jimmy (Nick Miles) were horrified when they were told by Brenda that she’d gone joyriding with the twins, and desperately tried to get in touch with her.

Meanwhile, as Cathy negotiated the roads to Hotten, Heath was chiding her from the back seat urging her to speed up, not wanting to miss anything. Angelica soon joined in with the criticising, and Cathy was made all the more nervous when she nearly veered into the path of an oncoming car.

“Hurry up and put your foot down, or one of us will drive,” Heath told his sister.

Exactly what happened next is not yet clear, but Bob and Wendy were horrified when they came across the wrecked car shortly afterwards, the teens having left the road and crashed through a dry stone wall.

The pair rushed over where they found Cathy in tears, and Angelica sat next to the wall in shock. With no sign of his son, Bob rushed to the car and found Heath trapped in the back seat, unconscious with a serious head injury.

Eventually managing to prise the door open, Wendy and Bob were forced to remove Heath from the car in order to administer CPR after calling an ambulance.

A tearful Wendy did all she could as she alternated between CPR and checking for a pulse, but eventually realised that their efforts were in vain. Heath was dead.

“Oh please no, not my son” Bob exclaimed, breaking down just as the ambulance arrived on the scene.

As the Emmerdale residents rang in the New Year back in The Woolpack, little did they realise the horror that had occurred only a short distance away.

With a melancholy chorus of Auld Lang Syne playing out, viewers saw the paramedics reach Heath as Wendy and Bob consoled each other, knowing that it was already too late.

Heath has been on the show since birth, when late mum Viv (Deena Payne) gave birth to the twins out on the moors in February 2007, with actors and real-life twins Sebastian and Gabrielle Dowling having portrayed them from only a few weeks old.

Emmerdale producer Laura Shaw had previously teased the storyline…

“There’s going to be a tragedy in the village in January that’s going to affect two of our most loved families,” she told us during the press event. “It’s ultimately going to tear friendships apart and change the dynamics of one of those families forever.”

With the families mentioned undoubtedly being the Hopes and the Kings, we’re now left with the question as to whether Cathy was indeed driving the car and responsible for the death of her twin brother, or whether Angelica had taken over the wheel…

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Updated 2nd January:

During a press event in November, Tony Audenshaw (Bob) spoke to EverySoap and other media about the storyline…

What was your reaction when you heard about the storyline?

Well I’d just had all the heavy stuff with the heart attack and the affair and all that, and I thought ‘Thank god all that’s gone, I’m going to get a bit of comedy now’, which is what I naturally like doing! But it was quite a shock to learn that’s what they were doing.

Obviously it’s a really important storyline and I hope it’s one that they do justice to. And it does happen. You know, young people often it’s the mates or the girlfriend or the boyfriend, and they’re not only dealing with the fact that they’ve killed somebody, it’s somebody they actually love.

And then the whole network of friends and family around, angry and grieving. I’m sure that that’s what’s going to unfold.

How did you prepare for filming the scenes?

We’re only about 2/7 of the way through at the moment. But with emotional stuff you can either sort of go inside out where dredge up feelings that you’ve had yourself and amplify those. Or you can go outside in when you get upset and it affects your body, affects the way you feel the back of your mouth, your eyes. What you can do is you can rub your eyes, pat your stomach, touch your palette, and that sort of gets the emotion going. And then you can use a combination of both of them things to build upset.

It’s not that different to the process of doing comedy. You’ve got all the learning, the the intensity of the day and the pressure of being on set. The difference with a story like this is that you’re miserable all day instead of having a laugh all day. The impact of that over a few weeks is more tiring I think.

Is it strange saying goodbye to Sebastian after all his years on the show?

Yeah, it really is because he’s always been there. I mean there were great stretches of time when they [the twins] weren’t used at all, and they’d be in like twice a year. I think it’s always difficult for any actor when we have a few months off. You always come back a bit rusty, you always feel a bit awkward, and I think it’s probably more difficult for kids when they’re not used much. We all get on dead well so I think it’s going to be quite an emotional time over the next couple of weeks.

It’s the second child Bob has lost, after 21-year-old daughter Dawn died back in 2006. Does this bring it all back?

It’s something which is actually referenced quite a few times as the storyline develops, the loss of Dawn and also the fact that Wendy has lost a son as well. They’ve both experienced things that other people wouldn’t have, and Wendy is a great support. She can say ‘remember this may happen’ and ‘this is why you’re feeling like this at the moment’. It’s reflective both in the story and the way he reacts.

Will Bob blame Cathy for Heath’s death?

Well April told Bob that Cathy was driving the car, and now her brother’s dead. The relationship Bob and Cathy have had, he tries to understand, but when you’re grieving you’re angry. So it’s certainly going to test an already fractured relationship.