When Martha fails to turn up for her shift at the Surf Club, Alf becomes concerned for her welfare and, with a pointer from Irene that she was last seen leaving the aborted meeting with ‘a head of steam up’, begins to suspect that she may have gone to confront Jonah out at the farm. With Jack still frustrated by the fact of Martha breaking her word by leaving the affidavit unsigned, it falls to Alf, Irene, Geoff and Annie to pay a visit to Bruce’s to investigate – and things don’t look good. They immediately fear the worst when they discover that Jonah has violated parole by missing his scheduled check-in with the police; worse still, a search of the land leads Geoff to discover Martha’s hat out past the boundaries. With the police wanting to give it time before mounting an investigation, the search continues – a task made all the more difficult by Bruce’s attempts at driving them off his land. Will they make it to Martha in time?No way outMeanwhile, Martha and Jonah have had time to dust themselves off and, more importantly, to realise that their escape route has been completely blocked off. Knowing that the mine is off the beaten track and that it will take some time for people to even realise that they’re missing, they try freeing themselves by digging their way out – only to have to abort their plan when it causes further rock falls. Jonah uses the time to try to put Martha at ease, urging her to save her energy by giving herself a break from her incessant screaming and taking the opportunity to apologise for everything that’s happened between them. As he talks his way through his being adopted by Mamma Rose and explains how she kept him drugged throughout his time with her, Martha almost finds herself convinced of his remorse – especially when he goes on to explain that, a childhood having left him sterile, he isn’t the father of Tasha's baby.

But when forced to face the fact of their being stuck in the mine overnight, the day’s revelations don’t look set to win Martha over to his suggestion that that they need to huddle together to share body heat – until, that is, the cold becomes too much to bear…

Tagged in