Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) wonders how things can really get any worse for him in Emmerdale soon… and then Ruby Miligan (Beth Cordingly) arrives.

At the start of 2026, Cain and Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) were involved in the Corriedale crash. Cain was rushed to hospital as a result of being shot, but received some seriously worrying news at the same time.

A doctor told Cain that they had found a lump, and they needed to test it to see if it was cancer. In the weeks that followed, Cain and Moira tried to remain optimistic, but their world then started to slowly fall apart.

As a result of Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) forcing Robert Sugden (Ryan Hawley) to plant ID cards from Celia Daniels’ (Jaye Griffiths) farm house at Moira’s, she was arrested for human trafficking. DS Walsh was working on the assumption that Moira had a part to play in Celia’s operation because the two women were business partners.

Moira struggled to prove her innocence and then more information came to light, which just made everything worse.

After receiving information from Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards) about refugee Anya, Ruby realised that the young woman she desperately tried to help last year had been killed. She managed to find the burial spot and called the police.

Ruby and Caleb Miligan (William Ash) watched the police pulled Anya’s body from the shallow grave, but neither of them expected another body to be removed from the ground as well.

As Ruby reeled in the shock of Anya’s murder, Caleb began to wonder how on earth Moira could convince Walsh that she played no part in two bodies getting buried on her land.

While all of this was unfolding, Cain was waiting for the results of his test. He attended the hospital appointment a couple of days ago all alone, due to Moira being behind bars. He was told that he does have prostate cancer and in true Cain style, he wanted to keep his diagnosis a secret.

He ended up telling Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill) though, who sensed something was wrong with her Granddad. She’s been a pillar of support for him in the aftermath, but cannot help but feel Cain’s life would be made easier if he told more people his health news.

Things are about to get even worse for Cain, as this new video shows the moment Ruby breaks some news to him.

At Butler’s, Ruby’s guilt starts to increase when Cain talks about how stressed he is right now. As he wonders why the police are focusing more on who killed Ray Walters (Joe Absolom) rather than who put Celia and a ‘random woman’ on Moira’s land, Ruby cannot keep quiet anymore.

She tells Cain that she was the person who phoned the police about Anya. The knife is stuck in even further for Cain in this moment, as he realises Moira wouldn’t be facing a double murder charge if Ruby never made that call.

It really is a hellish ordeal – when will the light at the end of the tunnel start to appear?

The prostate cancer storyline was, Jeff told us, conceived as ‘The story of a man who doesn’t normally talk about his feelings. It’s bad enough having cancer but the possible side effects of this particular illness are really damaging to males and their egos. Having to talk about that and confront it is, I think, where we want to go down.’

He insisted that, alongside this, the entire situation is ‘a big love story’ between Moira and Cain.