Sarah Sugden (Katie Hill) received some news about her mum Debbie (Charley Webb) in tonight’s episode of Emmerdale, and she was completely devastated.

Sarah went to the hospital recently for a scan ahead of her IVF journey. Sadly, she was told that she has some inflammation on her cervix that needed to be investigated.

She returned home and failed to tell Vanessa (Michelle Hardwick) about the development. In tonight’s episode, she attempted to get Cain (Jeff Hordley) and Charity (Emma Atkins) together to tell them about her possible cancer diagnosis, but both of them were very busy with work.

Completely alone, Sarah rang her mum to try and find some sort of comfort. Unfortunately, Debbie revealed to Sarah that she had something to say, and it knocked her for six.

At the pub, Sarah emotionally told Charity that Debbie has moved to Australia and is now married to her partner Chris. Charity noted that her daughter never did anything by halves, but simply upping sticks and leaving without warning left her stunned.

Once Cain arrived, focus solely turned to Debbie’s decision to leave the country which meant Sarah’s plan to tell her grandparents about her cancer went out of the window. She claimed she needed the toilet and then slipped away completely, with her family realising she wasn’t actually in the pub hours later.

Debbie departing for Australia – surprisingly – upset Cain a great deal. It was only a few weeks ago that he learnt Nate had seemingly organised for his things to be moved from the village and to Shetland, so another one of his children leaving him hit pretty hard.

A while later, Charity returned home and found Sarah. She claimed that she just needed some time to herself to process Debbie’s news, but failed to tell her Gran that she had actually been to hospital for her appointment.

With Sarah keeping this huge secret all to herself, she will eventually be able to offload to Jacob (Joe-Warren Plant), who only finds out what’s been going on when he spots her at the hospital.