She's Out: Episode 3

The diamonds turn out to be fakes. Dolly takes them to an old friend and gets the news straight: he made them for someone. Then she visits Audrey, who admits she sold the real ones and pocketed £500,000, most of it gone on a villa in Spain. Dolly is not in the mood for pleasantries. She wants the money back.

The day keeps going wrong from there. Social services arrive at the manor while Dolly is out and find the rest of the women in the sauna and showers, which is not the look of a respectable establishment. Dolly tells the girls the stones are worthless and that everything now rests on the children's home application. The application is turned down. Ester, who only ever believed in the money, packs and leaves. She gets attacked in a parking lot on the way out, which sends her back to the manor with her tail between her legs.

Connie's ex-boyfriend turns up looking for her, and no one is glad to see him. Dolly wanders into the woods and finds him dead. That is when the penny drops, or rather the train timetable: a robbery on the mail train. Desperation has a way of sharpening the imagination.

Lynda La Plante wrote it, Ian Toynton directed. Ann Mitchell's Dolly and Kate Williams's Audrey carry the argument, with Linda Marlowe's Ester, Zoe Heyes's Connie, Maureen Sweeney, Anna Patrick, Indra Ové and Maggie McCarthy in support, and Adrian Rawlins's DS Mike Withey and Hugh Quarshie's DCI Ron Craigh watching from the sidelines.

The lifelines go one by one. The diamonds are fakes. The money went on a villa. The house application is dead. What is left is a dead man in the woods and a mail train with a fortune on board. Dolly has never needed less of an excuse.