Following her divorce from Pete (Neil Morrissey), she whisked herself away to Cyprus, a place they\u2019d visited together on numerous occasions, to usher in a new chapter of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you think it\u2019s a bit weird, going on holiday right now?\u201d asked her daughter Susie (Imogen King).<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it might help me get used to being on my own,\u201d she responded, matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n
When Emma arrived, she wasn\u2019t quite sure what to do with herself, but after some thought she picked up her copy of Wuthering Heights, one of literature\u2019s great tales of love and revenge, and headed to the hotel bar, which is where she first noticed Niko (Gerald Kyd).<\/p>\n
The pair locked eyes, but it wasn\u2019t until that evening, at the hotel restaurant, when they spoke, and when Emma also learned that he\u2019s a hotelier who owns the very property in which she\u2019s staying, or so he told her.<\/p>\n
They spoke briefly but after bumping into one another again at breakfast, where they bonded over books, he offered to take her out on his boat and Emma, desperate to escape all thought of Pete and their divorce, accepted.<\/p>\n
They grew close over the course of the day, speaking candidly about their lives, warts and all, before dancing the night away at a local club, which culminated in them spending the night together.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n From that moment on, Emma was all in on Niko \u2013 so much so that he enticed her to stay in Cyprus with him, where they\u2019d live together in a luxury villa, and Emma would run her own beach bar. After her recent heartbreak, it was the perfect tonic.<\/p>\n But little did Emma know that she was the victim of a cruel scam.<\/p>\n She loaned him \u00a3190,000, her life-savings, to complete the purchase of their forever home \u2013 something she did of her own volition rather than Niko explicitly asking. But shortly after the payment had gone through, he disappeared without a trace and Emma was being led away in handcuffs following a meltdown at a bank.<\/p>\n But Niko was not the mastermind behind this plot, but one strand of a much-wider operation which was overseen by the nefarious George (Ramon Tikaram). He\u2019d already targeted another woman, Annika, who had been killed as a result, but who knows how many others had been duped, or had lost their lives.<\/p>\n Thankfully, Emma managed to escape unscathed, physically at least. Her mental health, however, had severely deteriorated. After she was threatened with a box containing a bullet while still in Cyprus, she lived in fear of one of George\u2019s associates seeking her out in the UK as revenge for his death at the hands of Pete, and for trying to scupper their criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t Cypriot gangsters that Emma needed to be wary of. In a staggering twist, it emerged that her ex-husband, of all people, was behind the con.<\/p>\n\n
![\"Emma](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2024\/03\/sally-lindsay-love-rat-3f99c9e-e1710165224341.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Love")
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