In shocking scenes tonight, Lydia Hart (Karen Blick) has been revealed as the mother of the baby whose body was found on the grounds of Jessie Dingle’s (Sandra Marvin) school.
The horrifying discovery of the newborn’s remains was revealed in scenes in last light’s episode, and ever since, speculation as to who the mother could be has been rife both in Emmerdale and in the real world.
The baby’s body had been on the school grounds for some time, and a DNA profile compiled by the police didn’t take long to identify the mother of the child as Jenny Finn – a name previously unheard on the soap.
While the name wasn’t familiar, a picture of the then-teenage mother was unearthed, and the girl in the photo bore a striking resemblance to Lydia Hart…
What happened to Lydia Hart’s baby?
Some fans had already suspected Lydia after her suspicious reaction to the hearing the news about the baby.
She also previously confessed that she’d lost a child of her own when she struggled to handle the funeral of Grace Dingle.
After the police found the picture of Jennifer Finn, who ran away from a children’s home which used to be where the school is now, it became clear to us viewers as they looked at it that Jennifer was really Lydia.
The police have vowed to track Jenny/Lydia down, and they will be circulating her picture at a press conference, so Lydia won’t be able to keep this secret for very much longer.
However why she ran away from the children’s home when she was a teen and why her baby died has yet to be revealed.
Lydia has been cagey about her past before, and the storyline so far doesn’t lend itself to the most optimistic of speculation – this is Emmerdale after all, so any number of tragic circumstances could be possible.
Could Lydia have run away from the children’s home because of some kind of abuse?
Could the child have been stillborn, or is it possible that something even more sinister came to pass and Lydia killed her own baby before she fled the home?
For that kind of information, you’ll just have to tune in like the rest of us…