Yahoo News Keeping Faith explained: What happened at the end of series one?
Note: Contains MAJOR spoilers for Keeping Faith series one.
Supremely popular Welsh drama Keeping Faith returns to the BBC tomorrow (Tuesday, 23 July) for series two, and fans are champing at the bit to know what twists and turns await them now that Evan has returned home.
The drama followed lawyer Faith Howells (Eve Myles), whose husband Evan (Bradley Freegard), also a lawyer, left for work one morning and mysteriously disappeared. But when she started piecing together what had happened to the father of their three children, it quickly became apparent that this wasn't a typical missing persons case.
Gangsters and police corruption sat at the heart of the story.
Faith was on maternity leave, which meant that she hadn't had any dealings with their family-run business in months and had totally missed the fact that it had gone bust, and her husband was suffocating under the intense pressure.
The only solution, in Evan's eyes, was to use his skills to help the Glynns, a local crime family who had offered him work after he managed to get Erin Glynn (Lowri Palfrey), daughter of the crime lord, found not guilty for murdering Paddy Reardon, an Irish gangster.
But a life of crime wasn't something that Evan relished and eventually he began to distance himself from the Glynns. By that point, however, it was too late. Not only was he embroiled in their illegal activities (drugs, money laundering, fictitious business contracts), he also owed them £80,000.
Evan then decided that the only way to avoid further trouble was to work with the police. He approached Swansea CID's Huw Parry (Richard Elfyn), a friend of Tom's (his dad, but probably not his real dad), and offered to be an informant. But Huw knew that Evan had no other options and decided, with the help of his colleague Helen Morgan (Shelley Rees), to take advantage of him and force the lawyer to give all of his crime money to them.
As part of their arrangement, Evan had fooled Paddy's widow Gael Reardon (Angeline Ball) into thinking that he wanted to work with her, and was tasked with shifting a large quantity of cocaine in return for £120,000. But Evan refused to take part, saying he wanted out, leaving Gael severely out of pocket.
Steve Baldini (Mark Lewis Jones), a client of the Howells, who was helping Faith to find out what had happened to her husband and ended up developing strong romantic feelings towards her, had also duped Gael. He offered to shift the cocaine that Evan hadn't in order to pay off the Howells' debts and get Gael off Faith's back. But he double-crossed her, giving the money to the Glynns as payment for them bumping her off.
All of the cash had been moved to a secret bank account by Evan. In his will, he confessed what he had done, and relayed the details of that account. He asked Faith to take the letter to an outside police force to avoid further corruption.
The situation in the show's finale was particularly precarious for Faith as Huw and Helen had taken her daughter Alys (Demi Letherby), who had temporarily been taken into care with her sister Megan (Lacey Jones) and brother Rhodri (Oscar and Harry Unsworth).
But Faith had one final card up her sleeve. She contacted Gael and the crime boss ordered the corrupt officials to do whatever Faith asked. Her terms were: let Alys go, forget about the money and get the Glynns off her back. In return, there would be no involvement from the Met, no prosecutions, and Faith wouldn't breathe a word about Huw and Helen.
DI Susan Williams (Eiry Thomas), who had long held a grudge against Faith and relentlessly tried to get her sent down for Evan's murder, despite no sign of a body or concrete evidence to suggest that he was dead, was also seemingly off the hook at this point.
Faith had allowed her to get rid of the phone recording which put Susan directly at the scene of the car crash in which the dentist, who had information about Evan and had lied in court to get Erin Glynn off the hook, had died.
Susan had accidentally caused her to swerve off the road and die and the DI had planted Faith's earring at the scene to frame her for the dentist's murder.
But while Huw accepted the terms, Helen did not and pointed a gun in Faith's face, demanding that she give them the money. Fortunately, Arthur Davies (Alex Harries), another of Faith's clients, who had been doing dirty work for the corrupt officers, stepped in and managed to wrestle the firearm out of Helen's hands, before ordering the the pair to handcuff themselves together.
The duo were abandoned in the dark car park, Arthur driving off in their car while Faith drove home with Alys.
While Faith was on her way back to the house, she rang Cerys Jones (Hannah Daniel), who works at the Howells' firm, to tell her that Alys was safe and not to do anything else. She was keeping the crime money to write off the business debts. But it was too late.
Cerys, with good intentions, had sent an email to the Met detailing everything that she knew about Evans' disappearance, as well as naming Morgan and Parry as key suspects, which means Faith is potentially facing further issues.
And then, at the very end of the series when Faith and Steve were sharing a moment after all of the drama, Evan emerged from the house with their three children after being missing for seven days.
With six brand new episodes about to air, we can safely assume Faith's troubles are not over yet.
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