Amba Metcalfe is the daughter of Priya Sharma and David Metcalfe. She was born six weeks premature and delivered by step mother Alicia and Alicia's sister Leyla Harding on a country road.
Storylines
2014-2015: Birth and early years
Priya discovered she was pregnant after she and David split up and David's got back with his ex-wife Alicia. In March 2014 Priya collapsed whilst in the café and was rushed to hospital. She was told she was suffering from anorexia which caused David to seek medical advice on behalf of their unborn child. Priya eventually attended an eating disorder clinic after a bleed. The week after Priya left the eating disorder clinic she went into labour in David's shop. Alicia and Leyla took her to hospital in the car but Leyla had accidentally put petrol instead of diesel in the car earlier in the day. They broke down on a country road without any phone signal where Priya delivered a baby girl on the back seat. The baby was initially fine and cried,
David and Priya worry for their daughter.
but as the paramedics arrived she began to have difficulty breathing arrived and the was rushed into the intensive care baby unit when they got to the hospital. The doctors told David and Priya that their daughter had sepsis but she eventually pulled through and they decided to name their daughter Amba.
In February 2015 Nicola King took Amba out for a walk while Priya got her nails done. She was forced to shelter from the weather in a barn on Butler's Farm but James Barton locked the barn without realising that Nicola and Amba were inside. Priya began to worry when Nicola didn't return and her husband and sister couldn't get hold of her. She and David called the police. The next morning James let Amba and a furious Nicola out of the barn and Nicola took Amba back to David and Priya. Nicola was arrested for kidnap but was later released. A few days later Priya worried that there was something wrong with Amba so she and David took her to hospital, where she was diagnosed with a chest infection but was fine.
Priya and Amba moved in with Priya's boyfriend Rakesh Kotecha at Victoria Cottage. In June 2015, David and Alicia moved to Portugal, although David made frequent trips back to visit Amba. In August 2015, David returned from Portugal after his dad Eric Pollard lost his wife Val Pollard in the Village hall helicopter crash. The following month Rakesh, Priya and Amba moved into Mill Cottage
2018
In March 2018, Amba inadvertently became the catalyst for suspicions of child abuse by Priya when, on the day before the 2nd birthday of her cousin, Eliza Macey, she aggravated the already stressed Priya when she refused to eat her food, precipitating a failed attempt to convince her to eat by feeding Eliza which caused Priya to snap, much to the distress of her younger cousin, in an outburst overheard by grandfather Rishi Sharma. Amba awas among those present at Eliza's birthday party on the the following day.