If there are two EastEnders characters you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of, Suki Panesar (Balvinder Sopal) and Nicola Mitchell (Laura Doddington) would definitely be up there.

But Penny Branning (Kitty Castledine) risks both lioness mothers ruining her life when she takes desperate action to cover up the truth about her unborn baby’s real paternity next week.

This week’s episodes saw Penny stunned to learn that her pregnancy is actually further along than she’d first thought, meaning her boyfriend Vinny Panesar (Shiv Jalota), could not be the father.

It turned out that Penny actually had a secret fling with her flatmate Gina Knight’s (Francesca Henry) boyfriend Harry Mitchell (Elijah Holloway) before Christmas, meaning he is the real dad.

Vinny isn’t the father of Penny’s baby

With her relationship with Vinny going well, she went into denial, but when Harry’s mum Nicola somehow managed to work out the truth, she issued Penny with an ultimatum – to do a DNA test, or she would tell everyone.

Next week, Penny is in a panic about her predicament, when a conversation with her cousin Lauren Branning (Jacqueline Jossa) gives her food for thought – and it’s then not long before she comes up with a plan to fake the DNA test!

She goes to see Nicola to share the faked results, but is worried that the killer club owner will see through her lies.

With this being EastEnders and all, it is obviously a matter of time until the truth is exposed, and things do not look good for Penny.

A recent episode saw Vinny’s mum Suki swear to her wife Eve Unwin (Heather Peace) that she’d kill Penny if she ever hurt her son, in what felt like a dark sense of foreboding.

Now, we say this because, if you cast your mind back to the New Year’s Day episode that flashed forward to 1st January 2027, a young baby called Ethan was in the care of Penny’s dad Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), and Penny was nowhere to be seen…

Could Penny’s lies end up costing her her life?