EastEnders aired a twist in the Louise Mitchell rape plot last night when it was revealed that young Denny Rickman was the one who told Keegan Baker about her birth mark.
Keegan lied last week that he’d slept with Louise when she was too drunk to remember at her house party. He said it to split her and Travis up because he fancied Lou.
What Keegan didn’t bank on was Louise going to the police to report him for sexually assaulting her.
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As Keegan and his mum, Karen Taylor, protested Keegan’s innocence, the police and the CPS decided there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges and the case was dropped.
But one thing continued to nag at a traumatised Louise: just how did Keegan know about her intimate birth mark?
The only way he could have known about it was if he’d seen it, surely?
As Sharon Mitchell went round to the Taylors’ to get answers for her stepdaughter, Karen and Keegan fronted her out and she eventually left, but told them she’d call the police again until she got to the bottom of it.
Later, Keegan and Karen turned up at the Mitchells’ with Keegan ready to explain.
And that’s when he revealed Denny was the one who told him about the mark.
Sharon was shell-shocked and called Denny downstairs to reprimand him.
As Karen called into question Sharon’s parenting skills, the two women began a war of words again, only for Louise to demand more answers from Keegan.
Explaining how he’d made her feel, she begged him to tell her why he’d done it.
“I’m sorry,” Keegan managed, in a rare moment of compassion from the school bully.
As Sharon later sat her son down and told him to stay away from boys like Keegan, she didn’t exactly give him the punishment he deserved.
Fans were outraged at the role Denny had to play and vented their fury on Twitter.
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This isn’t the first time Denny’s bad behaviour has gone seemingly unpunished.
Sharon seems to reward him every time he’s naughty with a toy or computer game to make him feel better.
The question is, is this the start of a downward spiral for the boy? We’ve seen it before with Bobby Beale – if he’s so wrapped up in cotton wool he thinks he can do no wrong, will Denny become the Square’s next bad boy?