“I’m really happy for you both,” Martha says unconvincingly to Sam, having prized herself away from her seat and removed, albeit temporarily, the frown from her face. But her fast getaway doesn’t escape notice; she soon finds herself subject to some pretty intense questioning from Jack. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Jack. You and I are still… We’re not divorced,” she eventually confesses, forcing her ex to contemplate what this means for his future with Sam. “How could I predict you were gonna ask her to marry you five seconds after she walks back to town?” Martha snaps, as the discussion grows increasingly heated. And things aren’t about to get any better, either. Jack’s hopes of a hasty cover-up – in other words, putting the papers straight in the post and getting proceedings underway before Sam gets wind of anything – are promptly dashed when Martha admits that she’s torn up the documents. Just to make matters worse, when he later returns home, it becomes immediately clear that Sam is ready to move things along at a rate of knots. “Why don’t we bribe Sally and Brad to postpone their wedding and we can get married in two days instead?” she jokes, as Jack forces a laugh. Still, if anything’s certain, it’s that there are still some things left unsaid between him and Martha, and he takes the opportunity to clear the air when he and the stags find themselves having invaded the hen party the following day. Despite her initial protest that there’s nothing to say, Martha is before long spilling all; forced to admit that she never wanted the divorce, she recounts to Jack her attempts at telling him she still loved him, only to have him admit that he too had his doubts about their split – which she pretty much sealed by handing him the divorce papers on the day that he’d planned their romantic meal. The question remains, though: is Jack about to drop everything for Martha? “You said it yourself: things are meant to be the way they are,” she says, clearly hoping to provoke him into a response to the contrary. "You’re right; it’s irrelevant. I'm with Sam now, and that’s not gonna change,” Jack concludes, after a momentary pause. Whether or not he’ll be able to keep to that promise, of course, remains to be seen.Party feverWhen the day of the stag and hen parties dawns, it’s clear that Sally is still deeply uneasy about the wedding; she can’t help but take just about everything happening around her as a bad omen. Mind you, you can’t really blame her; if her hen party proves anything, it’s that there are no bounds to the number of things that can plague a Home and Away wedding. You see, the girls having opted for a leisurely morning get-together so as to avoid any drunken antics, the boys have decided on something a little less civilised – and it’s not long before they’re back at Sally’s with Henk, who’s managed to dislocate his finger during a game of footie.

As Rachel unwillingly comes to his aid, the guys give up on the plan for separate parties – but sitting around gossiping, glass of bubbly in hand, is hardly Dan and Ric’s idea of a great time. If we tell you that the pair opt for bringing their game of footie inside, and that the girls’ gift to Sally, an ornate mirror, is propped up in the living room, you shouldn’t have too much of a hard time working out what happens next. Just as Sally’s saying how she can’t bear the thought of another thing going wrong before the wedding, her prized mirror ends up shattered. And good old Colleen’s only too quick to state the obvious. “Seven years’ bad luck,” she gasps. Is this just one mishap too many for poor Sally?

Highly sprung

There’s no denying that Henk is getting more than his fair share of bad luck, and superstition has nothing to do with it. Aside from his injury, he’s also finding that the ever eagle-eyed Rachel is getting closer to uncovering the truth about him and Cassie (even if they are supposedly nothing more than “just good friends”), and Cassie herself seems to be doing as much as she can to keep herself in the spotlight.

“Well, looks like you’ve got yourself a good nurse there, darl,” Irene points out, having clocked Cassie fussing over Henk. And when Rachel gives him some particularly powerful painkillers, Cassie only looks to take things further.

“He nearly fell on top of me,” she giggles (evidently looking to remove the “nearly” from the equation), as Rachel steps in and sees them alone together.

Against her better judgement, Rachel manages to convince herself that there’s nothing going on between them, and reluctantly agrees that Cassie driving a dazed and confused Henk home from the party may not be such a bad idea after all – a decision which soon comes back to bite her when, having decided to walk back to the diner apartment with Martha later on, they catch the pair in a rather compromising position. Is a shocked Rachel about to be forced into revealing the truth about Henk’s past?

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