Ed cries on Emma’s shoulder and Phil needs to tread carefully with Ruth.

Radio Times: Ed confides in an old friend.

Characters: Ed, Emma, Fallon, Heather, Jill, Phil, Ruth

• Phil and Jill have Ruth’s mum Heather to lunch. She has thought a lot about Christine since she heard the news and has a present for her – but would she be intruding?
• Ed is making his pint last a long time – almost as long as his face. Fallon’s advice is to forget Beth, move on and get back into the game.
• Strolling to work off their lunch, the seniors encounter Ruth and her plate meter. Phil preaches a doctrine of instinct and experience but is taken to task by Jill who reminds him that, in his day, he had just the same arguments with his own father about new ideas. Phil does at least insist that he never meant to imply that the farm was not being well managed.
• Ed decides to call on Emma, who is surprised but pleased to see him. He pours out his woes about the departed Beth; she was special and he should have known that it would not last. Emma seems less than sincere when agreeing that Beth was special and she cautions about ‘getting back into the game’ as he is feeling just now.
• Phil wonders if he has put his foot in it again with Ruth but Jill thinks not, especially with a weight off her mind now that Pip has found a friend, Izzy; curiously, Izzy has yet to put in an appearance. If only Kenton could get back together with Kathy; he really cares for her.
• Ed feels he has whinged enough but Emma was pleased to have the diversion. It has taken her mind off the baby, not just the birth but being a mum – it’s scary. Ed thinks she will make a great mum and Will is a lucky man; he had the sense to hang on to a good woman – unlike Ed … (Any more of this and we will all be crying into our beer!)