'Ridley' Recap: Season 2 Episode 8

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The missing Tara Dunning kept secrets from her husband Rob, as the detectives find out when they tell him about Tara’s schizophrenic mother, who was institutionalized after burning down her house with her husband in it. Rob didn’t know this history, or that Tara regularly visited her mother. He also didn’t know she was pregnant; he refuses to believe it. They had not been intimate for some time, because they had agreed not to risk having another child after Tara suffered extreme psychosis following the birth of their son. Rob kicks Ridley and Farman out of his house when they suggest Tara could have had an affair.

This seems confirmed when Darren finds a document on the murdered Celia Machin’s laptop that threatens to expose an affair to someone’s wife. Perhaps it was the Dr. Assi who oversees Tara’s mother – Tara’s phone records show she called him the morning she disappeared. He tells the police that she told him about her pregnancy and asked for advice; he offered to organize an abortion for her, knowing her psychological background. He didn’t tell the detectives this at first because he promised Tara discretion.

And then suddenly Tara reappears on a canal path some five miles from the moor where her car was found abandoned. She tells the detectives that she had driven there to meet with Dr. Assi: they were indeed having an affair. She had called him about her pregnancy and he refused to meet her at his hospital.

The affair had ended badly, and she thought the pregnancy might change things. So she insisted that he meet her on the moor, threatening to expose the affair otherwise. He refused to reconsider and choked her when they fought. She fought him off and got into her car to speed away but he followed. She lost control and went off the road and blacked out. She thinks he sedated her; when she woke up, she was on his houseboat. They had had assignations there before. Eventually she escaped.

Tara had told Celia about the affair, and Celia wrote the letter to Dr. Assi threatening to expose him against Tara’s wishes. Tara later told Dr. Assi that Celia wrote the anonymous letter. And Tara explains that the call she made to Celia the day she met Dr. Assi and then disappeared was to make sure that Celia didn’t need her to work at the cafe. Celia probably didn’t mention it to the police because she’s forgetful in her old age.

Tara’s cardigan and some clothes are found on Dr. Assi’s boat, along with lipstick on a glass and some zip ties. But there are no marks of zip ties on Tara’s wrists, nor does she have marks on her neck from the choking she says Dr. Assi did to her.

But there is a recent complaint against Dr. Assi from a female patient that he had abused his position with her. He denied it, given that he deals with delusional patients, and the complaint went away.

Dr. Assi admits to an “ill-advised” fling with Tara. He claims not to know Celia; the letter he received from her was anonymous. And he’s surprised to hear of the evidence on his boat. Tara is a fantasist, he says.

Ridley is starting to believe him. If Dr. Assi killed Celia to cover up her ties to Tara, why wouldn’t he take the laptop on which she had written the letter threatening him? Ridley returns to Celia’s home and finds zip ties and medicine for her Parkinson’s that could make a person extremely drowsy.

Ridley also realizes that the phone call Tara made to Celia was in the afternoon, after her meeting with Dr. Assi on the moors. Tara is lying about the call.

She tells Ridley that Celia wanted to mother her – a bit too much. Tara did in fact meet Dr. Assi on the moors, but he refused to budge on ending the affair and drove away without a fight. Tara, distraught, drove her car off the road. She called Celia for help – the tire tracks found by Tara’s car on the moor match Celia’s car, and the palm print on Tara’s window is Celia’s. And the fibers found on Celia’s body at her home match Tara’s cardigan.

Celia brought Tara home with her and offered to let her stay the night and recover. Tara was going to text Rob, but realized she had left her phone in the car and didn’t want to call him. That’s around the time when he reported her missing.

Celia gave Tara pills to help her sleep. When she finally awoke the next day, she heard Celia talking to Jason Dover at the door and realized that Celia was trying to hide that Tara was at her house. Tara wanted to return home, but Celia wanted her to stay with her; she lived alone, and thought Tara needed help. They argued on the landing, and Tara pushed Celia. Tara didn’t want to be locked up like her mother so she didn’t call for medical attention when Celia fell down the stairs. Instead, Tara sat and watched as Celia slowly died.

She then decided to try to frame Dr. Assi as vengeance for him ending their affair. She disinfected the kitchen, broke the door into the house from the outside, and took zip ties she found in Celia’s kitchen. She then went to Dr. Assi’s boat and made it seem as if she had been held there before finally reappearing.

With the case wrapped, Ridley tends to some personal things. He gives Darren money as requested, telling him to pay off his debts if he has any. And he returns to the jazz club he opened with Annie Marling as she’s breaking up with Harry; she has realized Harry was a mistake. Ridley threatens to reveal Harry’s insurance fraud if he doesn’t sell his stake in the club, and Annie returns the jewelry Harry gave her. After a period of Ridley avoiding the club, he and Annie are good old friends again.