In her absence, Kat found Sam Mitchell (Kim Medcalf) lurking in the boozer’s hallway, and wondered whether she could be the one who had made her daughter’s life a misery.

Sam had a perfectly reasonable explanation, however. She revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was seeking out Zack Hudson (James Farrar) for a heart-to-heart.

When Zoe returned home, she placed her presents under the tree and discovered a card from her estranged son, whom she had desperately been trying to track down for months. Inside was an Ibiza keyring that she had left in the hospital in 2006, and he explained that he was going to arrive tomorrow to meet her.

Meanwhile, Anthony Trueman (Nicholas Bailey), the father of Zoe’s twins, drowned his sorrows and crumpled up a picture of them both from the early ’00s.

Rain poured down over Yolande Trueman’s (Angela Wynter) carol singing concert, as Jasmine made a phone call to tell someone that she needed to talk. She walked up towards a car parked on Edward Road, and a series of flashbacks showed that she was the one responsible for all of the vicious things happening to Zoe.

As she climbed into the vehicle, she told the driver that she had completed everything they’d asked of her but was having regrets.

But it was too late – the driver was revealed to be Chrissie, and she promised that Zoe was going to have a Christmas she would never forget.