“Chelsea Thought The Nightmare Was Over…” — Gray’s Grandma Changes Everything As A Disturbing New Twist Leaves Her Shaken
To say that Chelsea Fox (Zaraah Abrahams) is having a rough time in EastEnders would be an understatement of epic proportions, somewhat akin to saying this week has been ‘a bit warm’.
No, our Chels is really going through the wars at the moment. First of all, Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) hit her son Jordan (Izaiah Hagan-Brown) with his car, the accident coming after she’d just bitten his head off, amplifying her guilt ten-fold.
As she watched over her boy in hospital, she leaned heavily on her mum, Denise (Diane Parish), who was hiding her own secret: she’d just been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), a fast-growing and aggressive type of blood cancer.
Though she tried to delay treatment, reasoning that her daughter and grandson needed her, when the truth was revealed, she ultimately decided to fight the disease with all she had and admitted herself into hospital for the month-long procedure.
Struggling without her mum, Chelsea was lifted by the return of Libby Fox (Belinda Owusu) – who’ll always be Squiggle to us – who she began to open up to about the emotional and financial challenges she was facing in the aftermath of Jordan’s accident.
She also let slip that the grandma of Jordan’s serial killer dad, Gray Atkins’ (Toby-Alexander Smith), had been attempting to send money for a while, but that she’d always rejected it.
Libby wasn’t having that, though. Why not accept the support that Sheila was so readily offering?
It’s not as though she‘s a serial killer too, is it? Libby reached out to her, causing some friction between the sisters, but Chelsea eventually accepted that Libby was doing what she thought was best for the family, and agreed to meet her…
…which was incredibly awkward, at first.
Sheila waxed lyrical about her estrangement from Gray, and how his habit of murdering people effectively ended her law career, because people don’t want to take legal advice from the grandma of a serial killer, unfortunately.
Sheila presented as a great-grandmother who desperately wanted to support her great-grandchildren, though one who accepted that her grandson’s actions made that difficult, with her confirming that Karen Taylor (Lorraine Stanley) was keeping her other great-grandchildren, Mackenzie (Isaac Lemonius) and Mia (Mahalia Malcolm) far away from her.
Though she initially dismissed Sheila when she became uncomfortable with her pressing to see Jordan, a later conversation with the boy himself and aunty Kim Fox (Tameka Empson) implored her to reach out to Sheila again.
They met at the tube station, where Sheila gave her a cheque, and Chelsea returned the favour with a picture of Jordan…which the devious grandma then slid into her purse beside a picture of Gray.
You know, the serial-killer grandson she never sees? Yeah, that one.
Chelsea eventually acquiesced, emotionally fraught in the aftermath of learning that none of the family were stem-cell matches for Denise. Turning to Sheila, she found the insidious grandma ready to comfort her and, in return, allowed her to meet Jordan.
She attempted to do her due diligence, though. She reached out to Karen, but missed her return call, and the message that Sheila is an epic wrong’un, to whom Gray could ‘do no wrong’. Gulp.
Next week, Chelsea, Libby and Jordan come across Sheila, but a sequence of events lead Chelsea to cut the visit short, leaving Sheila fearful that she won’t see Jordan again. Undeterred, though, Sheila turns up the next day with the wheelchair Jordan needs and drops heavy hints that she’ll continue to financially support him.
Falling deeper and deeper in with the granny of your mad, murdering ex probably isn’t the key to all of Chelsea’s problems, but we’re sure it’s going to make a fascinating watch!
