Will Donna-Marie be OK? And could Romeo have prevented it from happening?
After a night of going over final arrangements for Juliet’s funeral, Peri and Romeo fell asleep together on the sofa resulting in a morning full of awkward comments from an unimpressed Rayne.
Wanting to help her friend, Lacey warns Rayne that her continuous posts paying tribute to Juliet that all contain pictures of herself may come across tasteless. However, Rayne tells her best friend she’s struggling with feeling triggered watching Peri having to bury her partner after the pain she went through with Brent.
After receiving a text from his dad, Romeo goes around to see him where he discovers that instead of following Juliet’s wishes of how she wanted her own funeral, James wants to do a traditional one with everyone wearing black.
As they both argue over how the day should look like, it gets too much for Donna-Marie. Not wanting to cause his mum more pain, Romeo agrees to his dads’ ideas.
But when Romeo tells Peri the change of plan, she’s left hurt and refuses to cave to James’ orders, instead sticking to wearing colours just how Juliet would have wanted. After Romeo’s family discover Rayne’s posts, he goes to confront her, but she doesn’t listen.
When Juliet's family meet up with her at the hearse, Peri decides not to attend Juliet's funeral after words are exchanged between her and James. Going after her, Romeo tells Peri that she needs to let go of the rage in her heart for Juliet leaving her and go with him to the funeral, so she doesn’t live with any regrets.
In Wednesday's heartbreaking episode, villagers mourn Juliet Nightingale at her funeral, but one important guest is nowhere to be seen. As Donna-Marie, Peri and James prepare to leave, they can’t seem to get in touch with Romeo.
At the church, attendees accept the fact that Romeo isn’t coming as they start the ceremony without him. Hearing bagpipes, Peri fears this isn’t what Juliet would have wanted, but a perfect accident leads to a brief moment of happiness.
Soon, Romeo and Rayne rush to make Peri's eulogy, and she's relieved to hear the door open. The speech ends in the family dancing in Juliet’s honour, expect for grieving mum, Donna-Marie.
Afterwards, Peri reveals that Juliet made video messages for her loved ones before she passed. And later, Juliet’s loved ones share one last moment with her as they watch the personal video messages as she offers them words of advice and encouragement.
Later, Lacey questions Rayne at The Dog as to why they missed the funeral. What reason will she give?
The following day, when Rayne and Nadira bring over a planter as a memorial for Juliet, Donna-Marie, unable to keep it together anymore, lashes out and smashes it.
When Leela hears that Donna-Marie is back working at the gym, she rushes over to find her struggling friend smashing a planter. Luckily, Felix passes by and once he hears what’s happened tells the two women he’ll mend the gift
Wanting to take her family up on their offer of support, Donna-Marie goes round to Romeo’s with the video her late daughter left her. But when she realises how much Romeo has been going through, she decides not to burden him.
Meanwhile, a message from Donna-Marie, telling her she won’t be joining her for tea, has Leela worried. But Joel convinces her maybe she needs time alone.
With no sign of Donna-Marie, Leela, Joel and Romeo try to force their way into the gym, when they get in there, they discover Donna-Marie after overdosing. Outside the hospital, James is mad that Donna-Marie didn’t speak to anyone if she was feeling low, but Romeo admits she went round last night but he was preoccupied.
Hollyoaks continues Mondays to Fridays at 6.30pm first look episodes available weekday mornings on Channel 4 and weekday evenings at 7pm on E4