Page 16 of Good Bad Girl

She isn’t going to look for something she’ll never find anymore.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Frankie whispers, trying to blink her tears away.

Clio offers her a tissue from a pretty silver box, but she doesn’t take one. Can’t. Won’t. The only things she came here for are answers and an ending. A tiny frown forms on Clio’s face, ruining its perfection.

“Are you all right?” Clio asks, leaning forward a little, as if genuinely wanting to know.

As though she cares.

“No,” says Frankie with a little shake of her head, still avoiding eye contact. It is an honest answer and she starts to count one last time.

Four walls, three windows, two chairs, one woman in the pink house.

Frankie glances at the clock again. Her appointment is nearly over, her hour is almost up. It is now or maybe never.

“My name is Frankie Fletcher. You don’t know me, but I’m here because—”

The sound of a mobile phone rudely interrupts the speech that Frankie has spent weeks rehearsing. The ringtone is ridiculous, as though mocking her.

“I’msosorry,” Clio says. She reaches inside an invisible pocket in her dress, takes out the phone, frowns but then taps the screen. “I thought it was on silent. It’s very unprofessional of me and I apologize. Do go on.”

Frankie stares open-mouthed. Things are not going according to plan.

Four walls, three windows, two chairs, one woman in the pink house.

The awkwardness of the scenario feels infinite and obscene. Frankie begins her preprepared speech again, as though she can only remember her lines if she starts from the beginning.

“My name is Frankie Fletcher. You don’t know me, but I’m here because—”

The mobile phone starts to ring in the woman’s hand, but silently this time.

Clio squints at the vibrating phone and stabs the screen with one of her red nails. “Sorry, again. Please continue.”

Frankie can feel herself starting to sweat, even though the temperature in the perfect room, in the perfect pink house is, of course, perfect. She shakes her head in disbelief, takes a deep breath, then tries once more.

“My name is Frankie—”

The old rotary phone on Clio’s desk starts to ring then. The landline is high-pitched and relentless.

“I’m so sorry, I really am. I can only imagine there must be some kind of family emergency,” Clio says, rolling her chair over to the desk and picking up the phone.

Family.

The word feels like a slap.

Clio’s face drains of color as she listens to whoever is speaking. “I understand. I’m going to call you from a different number in less than a minute,” she says, putting the phone down and turning to Frankie. “I just need a moment. It is an emergency and I have to take the call, but I’ll be right back, so stay there.” She leaves the room without another word, closing the door behind her.

Frankie looks around in disbelief, wondering what she is supposed to do now. Then she stands and starts pacing as though sheis locked in a cell. In some ways she is: we all build our own prisons, constructed from bricks of fear and invisible bars. She counts her steps from one side of the room to the other, but stops when she hears a police siren in the distance. It suddenly occurs to her that she does not know who the woman was speaking to on the phone. What if the woman in the pink house already knows who Frankie is? What if she has secretly called the police? The siren outside is getting louder. The alarm bells ringing in her head are joined by the alarm on her phone going off, informing her that her appointment is over. The clock on the wall chimes in agreement.

Frankie starts to panic, but then she spots something and time slows down until it feels as though it has stopped. She didn’t notice the piece of art on the wall next to the window when she first walked in—why would she with so many other distractions and things on her mind—and she couldn’t see it from where she was sitting before, it wasn’t directly in her eyeline. But now that she does finally see it, Frankie stands perfectly still and stares at the small, framed papercut. The intricate design has layers of black paper trees over a turquoise background, and the trees have eyes. Lots of them. In the corner she sees a hand-drawn ladybug. Frankie recognizes the style of the artwork immediately, and the familiar delicate shape of the cuts in the card. It is beautiful and unique and she knows who made it. What she doesn’t understand, is how a piece of art by her missing daughter ended up on a wall belonging to the woman in the pink house.

Clio

Clio stands in the hallway of her beautiful Notting Hill town house. She listens to a voice on the other end of her phone, but feels unable to process the words she hears. The first few were easy enough to comprehend:

“Hello, I’m calling from the Windsor Care Home. It’s about your mother...”

After that, it is as though the woman is speaking a foreign language. Her words sound familiar, but Clio struggles to translate them. They are too hard, too heavy, too final. Too frightening. Clio needs to sit down. She perches on the bottom step of the staircase, just like she did as a child. She feels like one now.

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