Emmerdale spoilers: More red flags confirm d𝕒nger for Belle Dingle as Tom controls her

After a fairytale proposal at Christmas in Emmerdale, things looked good for Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper)’s romance with Tom King (James Chase). But now Belle has an engagement ring on her finger, Tom is again showing signs of the disturbing behaviour we’ve seen from him previously.

When Tom returned to the village and rekindled his romance with childhood sweetheart Belle, there were a few occasions when his behaviour towards her was a bit ‘off.’ He was jealous of her friendship with Vinny Dingle (Bradley Johnson) and he took a while to get his head around Belle’s revelation that she’d had issues with her mental health.

These things could be explained away by the fact that Tom was new to the village and new to being in a grown-up relationship with Belle. But then he began to display some tendencies towards violence and we began to get somewhat uneasy on Belle’s behalf. He reacted aggressively when his car was stolen, for example.

This all culminated in Tom lashing out at Belle physically after she rejected his marriage proposal. She ended up falling and hurting her head in a scene that was shown during the flashback week as Lydia (Karen Blick) questioned her family about Craig Reed (Ben Addis)’s death.

Tom was desperately sorry for what had happened, and Belle quickly forgave him and put the incident behind her. Eventually she changed her mind about marrying Tom and decided to propose to him herself.

With Leyla (Roxy Shahidi)’s help Belle organised a dream-come-true backdrop to ask Tom to marry her. She took him to an ice rink – and who should be there but his all-time heroes, skating legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean dancing their iconic Bolero routine.

Belle got down on one knee on the ice and proposed with a Christmas cracker ring, and of course a delighted Tom said yes. There was much joy and celebration among their friends and families as it looks like the couple are the perfect match.

But are they, though? On Monday (January 15)’s episode, Tom was keen to set a date for the wedding. Belle seemed to be in no hurry, but Tom was insistent. As he did when he wanted them to move in together, he pushes ahead with an idea even though she’s obviously not that keen – and he was doing it again.

He also dropped on her at the last minute that they would be attending the Vets’ Ball the very next day. With the dress code ‘dress to impress,’ Belle panicked that she had noting to wear and needed to get her hair and nails done. She wished she’d had more notice – but Tom insisted she was perfect as she was.

While on the surface this sounds like a compliment, it’s back to his odd and controlling behaviour with him always taking control away from her and keeping her on the back foot.

Frankly it’s making us worry for Belle, and with a wedding date looming fast we just hope we’re wrong.