Emmerdale spoilers - when will Mackenzie be caught out?

Emmerdale spoilers follow.

It has been a long time coming, but Emmerdale may have just confirmed when Mackenzie Boyd's betrayal will finally be exposed.

Mack is currently harbouring one of the village's biggest secrets – desperate to make sure that his fiancée Charity Dingle doesn't find out that he's the father of Chloe Harris' unborn child.

Mack had a one-night stand with Chloe at the start of September and it was later revealed that she's pregnant with his baby.

Emmerdale bosses have previously offered strong hints that we'll have to wait for Mack and Charity's wedding episodes before the truth comes out, but the couple hadn't set a date for the ceremony… until now.

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In Friday's episode, Mack and Charity happily shared the news that their wedding was booked in.

In a chat at The Woolpack, Charity told Chas: "So, 20th of April. Little date for your diary. Wedding of the year, obviously! We've set a date. Spoke to Charles this morning."

Chas replied: "Do you not think it's a bit soon? Are you sure you're not rushing it? Especially after everything that's happened with Bails."

Although Charity confirmed that the news of Bails' death had taken some time to process, she insisted that it was time to start looking towards the future.

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Charity joked: "I'm just going to focus on what makes me happy, and that idiot over there [Mack] makes me happy."

At this point, it's probably worth a reminder that Emmerdale's producers have warned this wedding is almost certainly doomed.

Speaking to Digital Spy and other press in December, executive producer Jane Hudson teased: "We know that Mackenzie is the father of Chloe's baby and again, that's another secret in the village that's probably not going to be kept secret for long.

"We have got Charity and Mackenzie's wedding on the cards. I think we all know weddings don't always go very smoothly and Chloe's baby will be due around the time of the wedding, so you can put the pieces together yourselves and figure out what might happen somewhere around the wedding date and the birth date.

"It will be explosive for Charity and Mackenzie."

mack boyd, charity dingle, chloe, emmerdale

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Hudson went further in a more recent interview, confirming that the fallout from the big revelation will continue into next year.

She said: "We are a soap – it's not a question of 'will Charity find out that Mack's the baby daddy?' It's 'when will she find out?'

"And she is going to find out and it's going to be explosive. There will be massive repercussions for all those characters, which will carry us right into 2024."

While we don't know how Charity will react to the truth, the Emmerdale cast have predicted that she won't forgive Mack.

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Emma Atkins, who plays Charity, said last month: "I shouldn't imagine they'll be able to stay together if and when it does come out. That's a shame in a way, as I love working with Lawrence [Robb]. Who knows, maybe she would find it in her to forgive him.

"But at this point in time I can't see that happening because Charity has put all of her trust in him. So when it does come out, I think it will be such a shock. And the word shock is probably going to be the understatement of the year."

Lawrence Robb, who plays Mackenzie, also suggested that it would undermine Charity's character if she stuck with her cheating partner.

He recently commented: "Emma is great to work with. But in soap, I think a ship has its course and if it's time to end it...

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"I wouldn't want it to be detrimental to Emma’s character, just for the sake of keeping us together because that's what soap and drama is. So if it's come to an end, it's come to an end."

Looking ahead to that wedding date, a quick check of a calendar reveals that April 20 is a Thursday. That's always a dramatic day of the week for the village, since Emmerdale airs for an hour on Thursdays.

Lawrence said recently: "[The wedding] will be as dramatic as I imagine everyone is envisioning it to be, you know with all the plot twists involved."

Sounds like there'll be no shortage of drama to fit into that particular hour-long Thursday slot…

Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 7.30pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX.