The following article contains spoilers from the episode of Emmerdale dated October 20. It hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX and YouTube.
Nicola King (Nicola Wheeler) continued to struggle with her grief in Emmerdale today following Jimmy King’s (Nick Miles) sudden death.
Earlier this year, Jimmy was driving on a country road when he was forced to swerve his car to avoid hitting a distracted Vinny Dingle (Bradley Johnson).
Jimmy crashed his car into Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) and Dawn Taylor’s (Olivia Bromley) wedding marquee.
Once Nicola arrived at the scene, she realised that Jimmy wasn’t going to survive his injuries. She said a heartbreaking goodbye to her partner, with Joe forced to do the same when Dawn died in hospital.
Nicola attended Jimmy’s funeral a few weeks later, and is now focused on trying to live alongside her grief, but it’s an incredibly difficult and overwhelming journey.
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In today’s episode, Kev Barton (Chris Coghill) arrived in the café and found Nicola struggling. He threw everyone out and decided to make Nicola a special coffee with some *checks notes* sherbet mixed in.
It’s actual sherbet, before you ask.
Kev learnt that Nicola was finding it difficult to work out whether she should help Tom King (James Chase) once he gets out of prison.
Tom is being released early after being convicted for abusing Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper). Nicola knew there was a chance Tom could look to her for some support, but couldn’t decide whether Jimmy would give his nephew a second chance.
She became consumed by her grief. Nicola really wanted Jimmy to be here so he could tell her what to do, and got upset by the fact there was a chance she could make the wrong decision about Tom, and let Jimmy down in the aftermath.
While Jimmy isn’t here anymore, Nicola is surrounded by people who all want to help her. Kev was able to see that Nicola was only panicking about helping Tom because he is a blood relative of Jimmy’s. He reassured her and said that if she turned her back on Tom, it doesn’t mean she’s done the same with Jimmy.
Suddenly, Nicola began to feel a lot better. She recognised that her grief had caused her to spiral in this moment but, sometimes, having someone explain things in a slightly different way is all it takes for the fog to start clearing.
Kev made Nicola promise that if she felt like this again, she’d send him a text and he’d be there. Nicola has a long road ahead of her as she adjusts to life without Jimmy, but her chat with Kev today reminded her that she doesn’t have to face it alone.