Coming up next week at Home and Away in the UK, Bella’s world starts to crumble as Nikau’s boyfriend is forced to leave for New Zealand without her…
The Parata brothers had hoped that their dealings with local criminal overlord Paul (Jack Finsterer) would have ended in the last few weeks, but it turns out that Paul has a nasty card concealed in his pocket.
When Tane (Ethan Browne) wanted to get involved in Paul’s suspicious dealings, he wasn’t planning on being caught in a van full of stolen goods when the expected pickup went wrong. After initially attempting to stash the truck at Summer Bay Auto before Ziggy found out, he left the van on her farm while he went to town to try to find a way out to offload it.
Returning to find that Ziggy and Willow (Sarah Roberts) had already disposed of the car, it was then that he told Ziggy that he had since discovered the true meaning of the van – the drugs were concealed in the panelling. With the van long gone, handed over to the River Boys, Tane was faced with trying to collect $25,000 in a matter of days to pay Paul back.
With threats to the family, Tane and Ari (Rob Kipa-Williams) proposed that the nephew Nikau (Kawakawa Fox-Reo) move back to New Zealand to be with his mother Gemma. Nik had already debated what to do when Gemma offered him to come and live with her, and the current situation hastened the decision.
He was delighted when Bella (Courtney Miller) decided to go with him. She had known that she could no longer be around Colby’s brother (Tim Franklin) when he spiralled into self-destruction during Ross’s murder investigation, so moving to New Zealand was a great escape.
Their farewell gathering ended up being broken, however, when Tane failed to get Paul’s money. Paul and his gang members turned up at the Parata House with the intention of teaching Tane and Ari a lesson or two. But the brawl ended early when Ryder Jackson (Lukas Radovich) called the cops.
With that hurdle resolved, the couple were just leaving for the airport when Angelo (Luke Jacobz) stormed into the dining room and arrested Colby for murder.
Needless to say, New Zealand has been the last thing on their minds in the last few weeks. If Colby’s confession of the crime and his sentence of 25 years in prison were not enough, Bella still had to contend with the fact that it was Willow (Sarah Roberts) who testified against Colby that forced him to do so.
Having lost two of her family members in one fell swoop – Willow left town the same night – Bella had only Dean (Patrick O’Connor) and Nik to rely on.
But this week, Dean is in a downward spiral of his own, and when Mac (Emily Weir) is forced to cut off her brother from the Salt bar so he can take another bender, he skips the town to go back to the Mangrove River dive bar.
Meanwhile, since then, Ari and Tane have done another job for Paul, and with Mac also giving her Porsche to him, they’ve all considered the matter closed.
When Paul asks to meet his brothers, they are incensed when he demands that they do one last job for him—the armed robbery of the Reefton Lakes League.
Ari and Tane deny, but they are surprised that evening when Paul reveals his trump card, the pictures of them handing the stolen goods to their last job. The message is simple, they are being blackmailed into carrying out armed robbery, otherwise the photos end up with the police.
Realizing the danger they’re in right now, they know they’re going to have to be honest with Nik and tell him he needs to go back to New Zealand urgently for his own protection.
Nik refuses—Bella needs him, and he’s not going to give them up, but Ari tells him that part of becoming a man is knowing when to go down.
Nik breaks the news to Bella, who tells him he has to do whatever it takes to be safe, and she can’t risk losing him.
Ari and Tane are arranging for Nik to be sent out on the first flight and, as Nik packs his luggage, Ari asks Bella if she wants to come with them to the airport. But Bella explains that she would have found it too difficult.
Nik says he’ll be back with her as soon as he can, hopefully in a matter of short weeks.
Bella returns home to a lonely apartment after saying her final farewell. Realizing Dean hasn’t come back yet, and she’s just on her own now, she’s curling up on the couch and crying.
How much more headache will Bella cope with?
