Page 89 of The World Outside My Window

‘Don’t you dare come any closer,’ she says, her voice high and strong. She can’t be more than late teens, with dark hair and pale skin, her lips painted a furious red and thick black eyeliner circling her eyes. She’s taller than Laura and just as slight, but with her arms drawn across her chest she looks formidable.

‘Wh—?’ Laura stutters.

‘Who are you?’ Debbie moves protectively forward but the girl doesn’t take a step back, doesn’t cower away.

‘I’m Evie,’ she says, as if they should know her name. ‘Jim’s daughter.’

The world sways and Laura feels as though she might fall over. She feels someone holding her arm, and she takes a few deep breaths before she allows herself to speak again.

‘Jim?’ she says, her voice a rasp. ‘My Jim?’

Evie gives a sort of nod, an angry jerk of her head, and lets out a bark of laughter. ‘I guess you would call him that. Although he’s notyourJim. He’s mine. And my brother’s. And my mum’s.’

Laura’s world explodes then; an earthquake splitting open the ground beneath her feet, the sky rupturing in a flash of devastating lightning.

‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think you need to stop this right now,’ Ben says, stepping forward to form a barrier between Laura and Evie.

Evie stands defiant.

‘I can’t let you go in there,’ Laura hears Evie say. ‘My mum will kill her. It’ll finish her off.’ Her words are challenging, but some of the venom has dropped from them now, and when Laura looks up again she can see that Evie has deflated, crumpled into herself, and it takes a moment for her to realise the girl is crying, great heaving sobs that wrack her whole body. Without thinking she steps round Ben, scoops Evie into her arms and holds her. Miraculously, Evie lets her. Time seems to stand still as Ben and Debbie stand by, unsure what to do.

Then the moment is broken by a loud shout, a door banging, and footsteps pounding towards them.

‘Get off her!’ the voice screeches, then hands pull them apart roughly, and Laura stumbles into Ben, her hands pressing into his shoulders, her face brushing against his as she rights herself. Ben realises his hands are round Laura’s waist and once he’s sure she’s safely upright he pulls them away self-consciously.

‘Get away from my daughter, get away from my house and get away from my husband,’ the woman screeches. Despite her manic appearance, Laura can see the similarity between this woman and Evie – the same straight nose, the same slight build, the same fierce, flashing eyes, and there’s no doubt that this woman is Evie’s mother. Laura takes a step back.

‘I’m not… I haven’t,’ she says, unsure which accusation to start with.

‘I don’t know who you think this is, but Laura is married to Jim,’ Debbie says calmly, trying to wrest back some control of the situation. ‘So, if that’s who you’re hiding inside this house, then she has every right to be here.’

‘Married to Jim? I don’t think so,’ the woman spits. ‘Because I am.’

A stunned silence falls across the group and for a moment no one moves. Laura’s mind is in freefall, her synapses struggling to make the connections. But before she has the chance to say anything, the front door of the house swings open again and a figure appears.

It’s Jim.

The look on his face is hard to read as he strides towards them, his gaze fixed on Laura. If he’s surprised to see her here, he doesn’t show it. Laura takes in the familiar contours of his face, the darkness of his eyes, the breadth of his shoulders, and remembers the first time she set eyes on him, the day he came into her kitchen and swept her off her feet, and wonders when she stopped feeling that same lurch of love for him as she had that day. Was it gradual, or had it only been since he’d left that she’d stopped feeling attracted to him in that primal, passionate way?

He reaches out and touches the woman’s shoulder. She shakes it off angrily.

‘Cherry, take Evie inside. I’ll deal with this.’

Cherry.A penny drops in Laura’s mind as she thinks about the name Jim accidentally called her to Ben.Kerry, or Cheryl, or something like that.

Laura feels the rage building up inside her, bubbling up like lava.

‘What the fuck is going on here, Jim?’ she says, her words erupting from her, scorching across the pavement.

‘Yes, Jim, I’d like to know too,’ Cherry says. Her voice is icy, calm.

Jim looks from one woman to the other and back again. But before he has a chance to speak, Evie does.

‘Dad’s been cheating on you, Mum. For years.’

Cherry looks bewildered for a moment, like a lost little girl. Then she takes in Laura, who’s still huddled next to Ben. ‘Withher?’

‘Cherry, it’s not—’

---