When Arthur Thomas (Alfie Clarke) returned to Emmerdale from travelling in Australia recently, he found a lot had changed in his absence.

For one thing, his mum Laurel (Charlotte Bellamy) had split up with her husband, Arthur’s stepdad Jai Sharma (Chris Bisson). Jai and his son Archie (Kai Assi) had moved out of the family home.

The other big change was in Laurel’s health, as not that long ago she had a heart attack. This was partly brought on by the stress of discovering that Jai had lied about getting revenge on his biological father Amit (Anil Goutam) for killing his dad Rishi (Bhasker Patel). He’d pushed Amit down the stairs and held him captive with a broken leg until he signed over his business shares to Jai and agreed to leave the country.

These actions also cut Jai’s brother Suni (Brahmdeo Shannon Ramana) out of his inheritance, which was another thing that enraged Laurel. As she recovered from her heart attack she realised that she could no longer go on being married to Jai.

It was a lot of Arthur to deal with, especially knowing his mum was still having chest pains amid the stress of Jai threatening to sell her house and making the divorce as difficult for her as possible.

Arthur has previously had a good relationship with Jai, who was supportive of him when he came out as gay. So he headed off to have a word with him, expressing his anger at the way Jai was behaving.

In upcoming episodes Jai is upset that Arthur is still being frosty with him. Charles (Kevin Mathurin) advises Jai not to give up on him, but all of Jai’s efforts just end with Arthur ignoring him.

It seems that Arthur has more interesting things on his mind, though – and specifically a boy called Lewis. He invites Lewis to Mulberry Cottage and they have some cans of beer, nervous in each other’s company. 

Jai spots them both later disposing of their empty cans, before Lewis leaves. Arthur is worried that Jai will tell Laurel about his date. 

Will Jai keep his secret?