Since Nicola King (Nicola Wheeler) was brutally attacked in Emmerdale, her mental health has been badly affected. Suffering from panic attacks and agoraphobia, at times she barely coped. She’s been slowly recovering to the point where she feels able to return to work, but it’s there that she has a moment of pure terror when the events of the attack come flooding back.
Nicola Wheeler has been talking us through what happens when Charles (Kevin Mathurin)’s daughter Naomi (Karene Peter) starts work at the cafe alongside Nicola.
‘Initially Nicola says hello to Naomi and thinks she’s lovely,’ she says. ‘As she comes round from the counter Nicola spots [Naomi’s] trainers. She doesn’t put two and two together immediately but she’s a little bit spooked by these trainers.’
Nicola was attacked in a car park after a night out, by a gang of girls. They taunted and verbally abused her and then when she tried to get back to her car they assaulted her, pushing her to the ground and brutally kicking her. Just before she slid into unconsciousness she saw one of the girls return – a girl wearing trainers, who told her she was sorry.
Nicola describes her character’s response to realising that Naomi may have been one of the attackers. ‘Naomi’s chatting away about her life and Nicola’s distracted because she senses something’s wrong,’ she explains. ‘It’s more of a physical response, which is interesting because obviously her anxiety is a physical response to the attack.
‘Then she hears the words, “I’m sorry” and this again is a trigger. Although she doesn’t remember Naomi saying, “I’m sorry,” the voice is a trigger. So she then goes into panic. She realises, “I know you, and I know why I know this feeling, which is the same feeling I have about the attack and you were part of the attack.”’
This shocking realisation puts Nicola back to where she was just after the attack, Nicola says. ‘She’s petrified. It begins her agoraphobia again. She’s started to get better and thinks she can see a future again, then she starts to get worse.’
Nicola makes the decision to go to the police. ‘She just has to go with what she feels, which is that [Naomi] was there,’ Nicola says. ‘She doesn’t know she was there but she feels 100% she was there and that’s what she goes with.
‘She can’t not do anything.’
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