Emmerdale fans have been left fearing for one villager as they fail to appear in recent scenes of the ITV soap.

Billy Fletcher (Jay Kontzle) has had a very turbulent year following his wife Dawn’s (Olivia Bromley) affair with Joe Tate (Ned Porteous), and appears to be taking a break from all the drama in the Dales.

Set on starting afresh with her new love, Dawn ended her marriage with a devastated Billy, who later learned of her infidelity through his daughter, Clemmie Reed (Mabel Addison).

After realising that Dawn still loved Joe, even after he blackmailed Clemmie, Billy threatened to take the children away. He has since moved out of Home Farm, and remains on frosty terms with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.Billy is also working at Caleb Miligan’s (William Ash) depot but hasn’t been seen in recent episodes at his workplace. But his absence has been felt by Emmerdale viewers, who are now wondering where the character is.

Taking to Reddit, one person asked: “Has Billy disappeared off the face of the earth… hasn’t been seen in months.”

A second replied: “I wouldn’t be surprised at an off-screen exit announcement soon.”

A third chimed in: “He’s probably just trying to get away from Dawn, don’t blame him, to be fair, lol, she’s a lot to deal with.”

“Not even mentioned anymore. You would think someone would say Where is Billy?”, added one viewer.

“Which is weird as we have seen a lot of the depot recently”, said another.

However, Billy is returned to the ITV soap on Wednesday (October 8), where viewers will see him busy working for Caleb at the depot, where Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle) is trying to carry out dodgy dealings under everyone’s noses.

When Jai Sharma (Chris Bisson) tells Dylan that Billy will be driving on the job to Hull and Dylan will be just accompanying him, Dylan worries how he’ll carry out Ray’s (Joe Abolom) delivery of drugs.Forthcoming scenes will also see Dawn grow even closer to current partner Joe after opening up to him about her traumatic past. But is Billy still waiting in the wings?