EastEnders’ Cindy and Max make a bold decision after a near-miss

Max Branning (Jake Wood) and Cindy Beale (Michelle Collins) are hardly good examples of honest, moral and decent EastEnders characters, are they?

They’ve both lied, cheated, schemed, manipulated and attempted to kill and are both held at arms length from their respective families.

To put it bluntly, they’re both complete nightmares.

Carnage had been avoided last year when Max briefly returned to cause aggro at his daughter, Lauren’s (Jacqueline Jossa) wedding to Cindy’s son, Peter’s (Thomas Law).

Cindy was determined to confront Max, with him being responsible for the death of her eldest son Steven (Aaron Sidwell), though he scarpered before she had the chance to tear any strips off of him.

When he returned for a second time, Cindy was uninvited to the Beale/Branning Christmas dinner to keep her away from Max and to avoid the inevitable showdown.

While Max was invited, he soon found himself booted out after a family blow up.

Confronting Lauren, son Oscar (Pierre Counihan-Moullier) and brother, Jack (Scott Maslen) over their decision to keep the fact that Linda Carter’s (Kellie Bright) daughter, Annie (Lois Hawkins) was actually his a secret, things got heated, and when he learned that Jack had also had an affair with Stacey Slater (Lacey Turner), fists started flying.

Alone, Max headed to Cindy’s bar, the Albert, where the two drowned their sorrows together, neither knowing the others true identity.

Soon, idle chat gave way to passion, and they saw out Christmas Day by going at it in the office.
With Cindy named as one of the four women that Max could be about to marry in the New Year’s Day flashforward episode, their relationship has continued to develop, and this weeks terrifying car crash broke new ground for them, when they agreed to go on a proper date.

Next week sees Cindy have zero intention on actually following through with the date, until she’s pricked by an emotion that spurs her into action: jealousy.

When she spies Max and Linda sharing a close moment, Cindy decides that she will attend the date after all.

When the date proves to be a success, the question of when to tell their loved ones rears its head.

As previously stated, the Beales and Brannings are intrinsically linked through Peter and Lauren’s marriage and their children, and neither Max nor Cindy are the most popular members of either faction.

When they narrowly avoid being caught in the throes of passion by Lauren, though, they decide that they will tell their families about their burgeoning relationship, but only when the time is right.

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But when will that time be?

If Cindy is the flashforward bride, it’ll have to come soon.

But if she’s not, maybe it’ll never come at all?