[Leopard]

Evie

Evie Crow stared vacantly out of the window as rows of neat little semi-detached houses and neat little gardens zipped by in a meaningless blur of green and brick. Sadly for Evie, it was a blur only of her lack of focus; unlike the first train of her journey, the super-fast cross-channel service from Paris, this second train seemed entirely content to meander its way through the English landscape at a much more leisurely pace. Which left Evie stuck within a very singular state: boredom.

Also unlike the first train, this one had individual compartments, each with two long seats to accommodate three abreast, and a sliding door with a window set in it separating her from the carriage corridor. Evie wasn't sure if she preferred the privacy or the mild entertainment of having other people to stare at. Staring outside certainly wasn't keeping her amused.

Eventually the suburbs gave way to countryside, the British green gaining ground and for the most part overtaking the bricks of humanity, but it didn't really make any difference to Evie. The train still moved at the same portly pace, and she was still just as bored.

Sighing and shifting away from the window her face had been pressed against, Evie turned and looked at her carry bag, willing there to be something interesting in it. Her mp3 player was in there, but she'd forgotten to charge it before leaving, and the battery had given out during the Channel Tunnel crossing. Her brand new phone was also in her bag, but the network provision wasn't set up yet, and she didn't know anyone in England anyway. She hadn't seen any point in bringing her phone from France; she was leaving everyone behind, intentionally leaving, so what was there to say to her old friends? Hey guys, sorry again that I'm ditching you all, but a school is more important to me than any of you are? No, that hadn't gone down well the first time she'd tried it; there was no point trying again or making up fake excuses to try and make happy people that she'd probably never see again anyway.

Still, France was all that Evie had ever known, even if she had been born in England. Her mother had left London for Paris to pursue her fashion design career when Evie was still a baby.

English. I'm English.

Evie snorted to herself. The view out the window was as foreign to her as she felt here. Oh, sure, she'd visited London a number of times, and had no real trace of an accent from anywhere - one of the benefits of attending a multi-national school for rich kids from around the globe whose parents had dumped them in Paris - but the fact was that she might as well be a French girl, for all she'd experienced of proper English life.

French. They'll all call me the French girl. Suddenly Evie was reminded of a line from a movie, and she mentally giggled to herself.

'Oh, Jack, paint me like one of your French girls,' Evie said in a heavily over-dramatized voice, collapsing to lie across the seat as Kate Winslet once had in Titanic.

However Evie had never been much of a drama student - she'd passed Introduction, but had been politely asked not to apply for the follow up course - and she soon found her mind wandering once again. She rolled onto her back, putting her feet up on the seat, her legs bent and apart.

A brief flicker of worry passed through Evie's mind that someone would walk past her compartment and look in the door’s window, see up her skirt, but boredom had put her in a rather impudent state of mind, and she found herself not caring whether anyone did look.

Let them stare, she thought defiantly. Let them peek and perve, and I'll jump up in shock and embarrassment, covering up like a proper girl, my cheeks flaming red, and it'll fill this trip with something other than endlessly rocking carriages and green fields wet with English drizzle.

Following through on the thought, Evie spread her legs wider, pressing her right knee up against the seat back and letting her left fall to point at the empty seat across from her.

But even the certainty that anyone who happened by her compartment and peeked in would get a full view of Evie's spread legs and somewhat innocent lilac underwear couldn't keep her amused for long. Her first impulse was to close her legs and sit up properly, but instead she decided to see just how far she dared to follow her little game through.

With a quick glance up at the door to be sure that there wasn't actually anyone staring in at her, Evie closed her legs, and reached down beneath her skirt, hooking her thumbs into the sides of her cotton panties. She then began to inch her underwear down, teasingly alternating between one hand then the other to tug the sides down over her hips.