Emmerdale’s Caleb Milligan (William Ash) will try and use a character’s impending death to his advantage in a shock new storyline.

Caleb and wife Ruby’s (Beth Cordingly) marriage is set to be rocked as her dying mother Helen (Sharon Moore) reaches out in an attempt to reconnect with her estranged daughter.

On Friday, fans saw a withheld number trying to call Ruby as she left hospital following the barn fire, before Caleb answered and told them not to call again.

When they do try again next week, it transpires it’s Ruby’s mum, who has not seen her in 30 years.

Actor William Ash explains to that Helen and her husband cut Ruby totally out of their lives as they did not approve of her relationship with Caleb.

‘He’d come out of a care home, he didn’t have any family and thought he was beneath their daughter,’ William tells us, who describes Helen’s call as ‘totally out of the blue’.

‘Because she’s been so manipulative and behaved terribly in the past, he just doesn’t trust anything that she’d ever say.

‘He decides to go just to see what she actually wants – because if she is on her deathbed, then maybe Ruby does need some kind of closure and there’s a potential for sorting it out.

‘As it turns out, that’s not what happens…’

While it becomes clear Helen hasn’t got long left, Caleb then seizes an opportunity to make some money from the situation, in his efforts to raise enough funds to secure Jimmy King’s share of the haulage firm. 

‘What he does is devious, but for the greater good is how he sees it,’ William explains. ‘He goes “right, if you want to see your daughter, I want some money off you,” so he can get these shares. 

‘The way Caleb rationalises it is he goes “Ruby’s never going to get any inheritance from this woman, this woman has been awful to her, so I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done”.

‘On the surface it’s a really sly and devious move, but in Caleb’s head it’s payback for all those years of what she did to her and it’s a chance to secure Ruby and Caleb’s future.’

He adds: ‘Caleb’s scared because Helen’s always hurt Ruby, Ruby always gets emotional when the family is brought up, it’s very, very hard for her. And so he’s just going to protect her as much as he can.’

However, William admits that is likely not how Ruby will see it when she finds out. 

He explains: ‘I think he knows that if she finds out he’s been to see Helen and he’s gone behind her back, she will be furious. There will be a real question of whether she can trust him ever again. 

‘The stakes are massive in that moment.’

William also reveals how meeting Helen will help viewers peel back the layers of Ruby’s character.

‘We have scratched the surface with her and she’s quite brittle beneath it all because of how she was treated by her family. That’s the thing with this backstory becoming a story, it fills in all those gaps and makes sense of why Ruby is the way she is.’

Will Ruby manage to reconcile with her mother before she dies?

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7.30pm on ITV1 and ITVX.