A bitter new battle between EastEnders exes Nicola and Teddy Mitchell (Laura Doddington and Roland Manookian) breaks out next week amid the current Mitchell family war.

The feuding family have faced their fair share of drama in recent weeks, with Teddy not reacting well to discovering Nicola had known about Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean) cheating on him with Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp).

Little does he know, however, that Nicola is keeping a huge secret of her own – that Zack Hudson (James Farrar) is their son Barney Mitchell’s (Lewis Bridgeman) real father.

Anyway, things manage to get even more complicated between the former couple next week.

It all starts when the brother of Harry Mitchell’s (Elijah Holloway) missing ex-girlfriend Shireen turns up and accuses Teddy of murdering her.

It’s pretty inconvenient timing for Teddy, who is busy making business plans with Junior Knight (Micah Balfour).

While he denies Shireen’s brother’s claims, Nicola’s interest is spiked. After she starts digging, it’s not long before she has a reason to want Teddy to pull the plug on his plans with Junior.

However, he gets the upper hand when he catches Nicola out over her drug dealings at the club.

Later, Teddy covertly calls Junior to confirm their business deal, having decided to keep it a secret from his ex…

But the question remains – why had Nicola been so keen to have the deal called off?

With several storylines coming to a head for the character in the coming weeks, actress Laura Doddington says fans will see Nicola ‘pushed to the edge’.

‘She’s tested on how far love, manipulation, and lying can get her,’ she teases.

‘One thing I’ve discovered playing the character recently is that carrying these secrets around and watching her son suffer as a consequence has been harder on her than she ever thought.’