Relationships left right and centre were falling
apart in Episode 6. As her snarling, sneering husband Tom Weston (Ben Daniels) stepped
up a gear or six on the sort of treatment we commonly refer to these days as
gaslighting, his wife Katherine (Elaine Cassidy) became, to nobody’s surprise,
increasingly unhappy with her marriage.
In her hour of fear and need, due in part to the amount of time they’d spent
together lately as part of the plot to drive a wedge between the business
partnership of the Westons, she turns to none other than Moray (Emun Elliott).
Naturally, the sympathy she’s met with, in the form of a hug (wild!), is
witnessed by, you guessed it, her husband. His further abuse serves only to
push her back towards Moray, who eventually rejects her, loving Denise (Joanna
Vanderham) as he does.
Meanwhile, Weston agrees to sell The Paradise, and
Denise and her team meet Lucille Ballentine (Liz White) a newlywed former nurse
who, having married Campbell Ballentine (John Duttine), an older and,
crucially, much richer man, feels insecure about her role in society, and
confides in the girls. Said husband, inspired by Denise, proposes a game
changing investment in the store, providing Denise with a much needed solution
to give to Moray. Unfortunately, a combination of his pride and troubled
state of mind prevent him from seeing it as the boon it clearly is. After
Edmund Lovett (Peter Wight) suffers a near fatal heart attack, Moray’s distinct
absence from both Denise and her uncle’s side drives the two even further
apart.
Episode 7 saw Tom Weston take a turn for the even
nastier, resolving that Katherine should take a long and non-consensual holiday to the Alps, keeping
her housebound whenever possible and generally undermining her at every turn. Weston
then employs a successful photographer, Christian Cartwright (Nathan
Stewart-Jarrett) to take photographs of The Paradise staff. Attempting to
distract herself from the distress of her personal life, Denise works with him to concoct a clever postcard scheme, whereby customers can purchase souvenir
photographs of themselves visiting The Paradise. The photographer, however, has
eyes only for Clara (Sonya Cassidy). Weston resolves not to sell the store
after all, instead taunting the already tortured Moray with his worst fear –
the idea that Denise will run the store one day instead of him. Desperate to
win back Denise after Katherine’s meddling makes everything much worse, Moray
enlists her to help him turn The Paradise into a haunted house, again using the
allure of photography to draw customers in. This works temporarily, but Moray’s
obvious feelings of possession towards Denise soon undo all his good work.
These were an interesting set of episodes.
Katherine continues to prove a formidable figure over all she surveys, so her
treatment by her husband, and the woman it is turning her into, proves especially
effective. The maze in the Weston’s grounds served as a classy and appropriate backdrop
to all the emotional twists and turns of the plot, and we’re left wondering,
with some unease, just how far Tom Weston will go to get his own way,
particularly as his advances on Clara heat up. We wonder, too, what will become
of Moray and Denise? Every inch the golden couple towards the beginning of the
series, they’re now little more than fraught work colleagues.
Their relationship seems dependent on the store
itself, the fate of which is still unknown as we hurtle towards the close of
the series.
Jen
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