Page 14 of Good Bad Girl

Which she will.

But not before thinking about the thirty-four steps it would take to return to the van. Maybe it isn’t too late to turn around, walk away, and never come back.

Frankie looks down at her Mickey Mouse watch and sees that it has stopped. If she needed another sign—there have been plenty—then this is it. Even time has run away from her. She silently counts to three—the best number there is—before following the woman inside the pink house.

Patience

“Don’t get too attached to anyone in God’s waiting room.”

Joy told me that on my first day at the Windsor Care Home and I should have listened.

Nothing that has happened since she fired me feels real. I have done things I didn’t think I was capable of, bad things, things I can’t change. The journey back to Covent Garden is a blur at best. I tripped over a homeless girl outside the tube station. I didn’t see her sitting there, and I worry that I’ve become so exposed to wrongdoing and injustice I don’t even notice it anymore. The homeless girl is somebody’s daughter too. We looked the same age. I gave her a ten-pound note from my pocket—knowing that she needed it more than I do—and she was so grateful I wished I had given her more. Bad things happen to teenagers who run away to London. I’m one of the lucky ones. Life in the big city tends to be a lot smaller than the dreams people have of it. People forget that nightmares are dreams too.

I turn the corner and it starts to rain, a fine mist coating myskin. The road is soon wet with a pretty pattern of blurred reflections from the streetlights and brightly lit shops. Covent Garden is filled with tourists—it always is—and it feels as though they are all staring at me. Whenever I look up, none of them are. I shiver, partly from the cold, partly because of something else—guilt probably—and walk a little faster across the cobbled piazza. Things are too noisy inside my head for me to get my thoughts straight. When doing something wrong is the right thing to do, does that make it okay?

My world was so quiet before moving to central London, sometimes the city still feels too loud. The attic flat where I have been staying for almost a year is hidden away high above a small art gallery. You wouldn’t even know it was there unless you knew to look, and most people are too busy looking down at their phones to look up these days. Desperately scrolling for opinions that mirror their own. The attic window is small and round, like a porthole in the sky, peeking out from the roof of the building like a secret eye. The attic itself is barely big enough for a single bed, but someone like me could still never earn enough to live in it. Even flats the size of a shoebox cost more than I could afford. I don’t pay rent, but I do pay for the privilege of living here in other ways.

Kennedy’s Gallery has been in Covent Garden for over a hundred years, and looks more like an architect’s afterthought than part of any original plan. It’s a slim brick-built Victorian town house, four stories high, and sandwiched between two much grander, bigger buildings. It almost looks as though the space it occupies used to be an alleyway. Perhaps it was. Places can become more than they were, given the opportunity, just like people. The gallery has been handed down from one generation of middle-class, art-loving men to the next. Until now. The latest, Jude Kennedy—my landlord—has failed to produce an heir to the gallery throne, and the future of the business keeps him awake at night. I know, because that’s often when he comes to visit me.

Jude is a well-polished individual in his forties, with tanned skin and floppy hair. He’s always smartly dressed in clothes designed to be worn by a younger man. Like so many seemingly successful people he has more charm than talent, but life has been kind to him. And in return, he has been kind to me. Or at least kind enough to let me live in the attic above his gallery.

There are only three formal conditions to our arrangement:

1. I cannot make any noise during the day.

2. I am not allowed to have visitors.

3. Once a month I have to give him something I don’t want to.

I’m quite certain that everyone who meets Jude thinks of him as a confident and charismatic success story, a man who inherited a business which has provided him with happiness and wealth. But we all wear masks, and I know Mr. Kennedy well enough to have seen the man behind his. If he were a book, his cover would be far more clever and beautiful than the words written inside. Like so many people who appear to be living the dream, it isn’thisdream that he is living.

I feel physically lighter when I see that the gallery lights have been dimmed; it normally means he has gone home for the day. I turn down the small alley that leads to the rear of the gallery, where the bins are kept, and unlock the back door. It reveals the familiar dark narrow staircase, which twists and turns and creaks all the way to the attic at the very top of the building. I know which steps groan the loudest—the ones to avoid treading on when I don’t want to be heard down below—and I know that there are one hundred and twenty-three steps in total. It irritates me that my brain insists on counting them. Bad habits can be contagious. I open the attic door as quietly as possible—just in case anyoneisstill in the gallery downstairs—then creep inside, locking the world out behind me.

Although I am a mere five foot three, there is only one corner of the attic where I can stand up straight. Thanks to the proximity of the sloping ceiling, I’ve got used to ducking down at all times to avoid hitting my head. Sometimes we all have to become smaller versions of ourselves to fit the story life writes for us. There is a single bed pushed up against the back wall, a bookcase made from two old wine crates, a tiny desk, and a small shelf which serves as a kitchen. (It holds a microwave and kettle.) There is a cupboard-sized “bathroom” with a toilet and miniature sink—the only source of water—and a night-light in the corner of the room, which projects a galaxy of stars on the ceiling from sunset to sunrise. I am afraid of the dark, always have been.

The walls are covered in papercuts.

I have been making them for five years or so. I started when I was thirteen by creating and cutting my own greeting cards. But the designs grew in size, as did my imagination. I have always felt shy about my work; sometimes I think I only create things for myself. But I do dream of being a real artist one day. Life without dreams is just a slow kind of death according to Edith.

There is an old drawer beneath the bed. I used to have one like it when I was a child—a secret place for storing secret things. I use this one to store my paper, pens, glue, and knives. They are only of use to me when the blades are perfectly sharp so I have a lot of them. The drawer is also where I keep my Japanese tea tin. It is a thing of beauty—black and gold with pretty and intricate scenes of people and trees and birds—and it once belonged to my mother. But I do not use it for storing tea. Neither did she. I keep my dreams hidden inside the tea tin instead. I open the lid and try to squeeze all the cash from my pockets inside it. Technically I stole the money from Joy’s office. But I was owed a week’s wages, plus compensation for all the emotional distress the woman caused me, so I didn’t feel any guilt. At least not about that. I need the money to get out of here and I almost have enough.

I realize that I haven’t eaten again all day, so grab my only bowl and fill it with chocolate cereal. Then I crouch down to avoid the low beams in the ceiling and sit in my favorite place: the attic window. From the street it looks like a tiny round porthole, the kind you might find on a ship. But up here, up close, it’s much larger than people might guess, it is almost as big as me. The design reminds me of a clock and whenever I sit here, on my makeshift window seat made from wooden crates and secondhand cushions, I feel as though my time is my own again. During the day, the window bathes the entire attic in the most beautiful light. At night it’s my window on the world, where I can sit hidden in the darkness, looking out over the rooftops watching the theater of life on the streets down below.

The circular window frame pivots open. I could climb right out onto the roof if I wanted to—it’s one of the many safety issues which prevents Mr. Kennedy renting the space to a paying tenant. But it’s a useful feature when I need to store things that are best kept cold. I do not own a fridge. I open the window and reach for the carton of milk I’ve been keeping on the ledge. As I pour what is left of it over my cereal, I can hear Big Ben chiming in the distance. I notice Edith’s silver ladybug ring when I pick up my spoon. I feel so guilty about what has happened to her.

I almost choke on my cereal when someone knocks on the attic door. I know it’shim. He must have avoided all of the creakiest steps so that I wouldn’t hear him coming up the stairs. I stay perfectly still so that he won’t hear me. I can’t deal with this now.

He knocks again. “Patience, are you there?” I don’t answer. Don’t move. “If you ignore me tonight, I’ll just come back tomorrow.”

A minute passes and feels more like an hour.

I don’t make a sound until I hear Mr. Kennedy go back down the stairs, all one hundred and twenty-three of them. Then I peer out of the attic window and watch him walk away down the street toward Soho. The rain is falling hard now, washing everythingoutside clean. Angry droplets of water splash against the window before crying down the glass like tears. I cry too. I sit and I cry and I stare out of the clock-shaped window, wishing I could turn back time. He can come back tomorrow if he likes—I’ll be gone by then—I just need him to stay away tonight. Now that the coast is clear beyond doubt, I grab my coat and prepare to head back out. It is frightening to know what I am capable of when pushed too far, but I still need to finish what I started.

Frankie

Frankie follows the woman into the pink house. All of the doors in the hallway are closed except for one. She feels disappointed that she won’t get to see more of the place, having waited so long to be inside. Clio Kennedy appears to have a good life and a beautiful home.

“Thank you for seeing me on a Sunday,” Frankie says.

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