Page 25 of Good Bad Girl

Frankie’s alarm goes off before sunrise, but as usual she is already awake. She normally likes Mondays—the start of a new week has always felt like a clean slate—but she has a bad feeling about today. It’s as dark in her room as it is outside and she can still see the moon from her bedroom window. It’s cold on the boat in the mornings, so she puts on two pairs of socks and wraps her robe around her. Then she shuffles toward the kitchen, hoping that a hot drink will warm and wake her up.

It’s impossible not to be aware of the weather on a narrow boat, you can sometimes experience every season in a day. When it rains—like it is doing now—the sound on the roof is deafening. The boat feels at one with the river and the sky and it is good to feel connected to something. It reminds her of how small she is, how vulnerable, how insignificant. Just one storm could be the end of herorit might just pass her by. Sometimes trouble finds us no matter how hard we try to hide.

The kettle is also noisy and very old, but Frankie has neverseen the point of replacing things that are not broken. She thinks she hears something on the deck but it’s pitch-black outside the kitchen window, and all she can see is her own reflection. Old boats sometimes groan and creak just like old houses. Frankie finds her Mum mug and sees that there is a still a dribble of wine in it, she forgot to wash it before going to bed. She rinses it under the tap now, rolling up her sleeves to avoid getting them wet, and notices the tiny tattoo on her wrist. Frankie never wears short sleeves, even in summer, because she likes to keep it hidden.

The tattoo saysShhin an italic font.

She had it done years ago, to remind herself of the importance of secrets and the importance of keeping them. Everyone wants to excavate their problems these days. They all want to talk about what is bothering them rather than doing something to fix it. Talk talk talk. Share share share. Other people like to collect gossip. They feed on it, gobbling it down, too greedy to know when to stop, so that they get fat on the stale sugar of other people’s lives. Frankie finds other people and the things they talk about exhausting. She’s glad she lives alone. The thought is accompanied by a rush of guilt about her daughter. Then she thinks about yesterday—what she saw, what she did—and she knows she needs to keep busy, take her mind off everything that has happened and what might happen next.

She drops a tea bag in her mug.

Then she hears an unfamiliar sound out on the deck, again.

She didn’t imagine it.

The rain has stopped. The sun has started to rise, enough to light the river outside and reveal a cloud of mist rising from it. Frankie wonders if the black cat has returned but then there is a knock on the door. Cats don’t do that. It’s five a.m. Nobody should be knocking on her door at this time in the morning. Nobody should be knocking on her door at all, because nobody knows where she lives.

Unless her daughter has come home.

Frankie runs to the door, frantically slides the bolt, removes the chain, and yanks the door open. It’s a young woman, but it isn’t her daughter. The stranger has shoulder-length blond hair with a single pink highlight on one side, and she is wearing a gray trouser suit with a T-shirt underneath. Frankie stares at her, then at the T-shirt which has an image of an old movie poster:The NeverEnding Story.

“Can I help you?” Frankie asks, with an edge to her voice she meant to hide.

“I do hope so,” the woman replies. Her enthusiastic tone and lopsided smile both seem out of place. “The Black Sheep, what a great name for a boat. I’ve always wanted to see inside a narrow boat, can’t imagine living on one, any chance I could come in?”

Frankie wonders if the woman is crazy. “No.”

“Sorry, silly me. I always forget to introduce myself.” She produces some ID from her pocket and Frankie stares at the wordpolice. “My name is Charlotte Chapman. I’m a detective and I wondered if we could have a chat? I apologize for the early hour, but I saw that your light was on and that you were up. I confess it wasn’t easy to find you—”

“Is this about my daughter?” Frankie has been dreading this moment. She’s had recurring nightmares about the police coming to tell her something unimaginable has happened to her little girl.

DCI Chapman shakes her head. “It’s about an incident at the Windsor Care Home. Do you know it?”

“No.” Frankie starts to shut the door.

“You were there yesterday.”

“You’ve made a mistake.”

“I don’t think so. There are no cameras in the care home—or I’d have put this case and myself to bed by now—but there is one in the car park at the back.” She takes out her phone, taps it a few times, and shows Frankie an image. “This blue and white camper van, parked outside the care home yesterday, has the sameregistration as the one parked over there on the street. The van is registered here and belongs to someone named Frankie Fletcher. That is you, isn’t it? It certainly looks like you, getting out of the van and walking toward the care home on this footage.”

Frankie wishes she didn’t live in a time where there were cameras everywhere. She hides her panic well. “That is my van but I wasn’t visiting the care home. I just used the car park to pop to the shops—it’s sometimes impossible to find a space big enough.”

“Shh,” says the detective and Frankie frowns. “The tattoo on your wrist, haven’t seen one like that before.” Frankie rolls down the sleeve of her robe to cover it. “What shops did you visit?”

“Sorry?”

“You said you parked there to visit the shops.”

“The supermarket just down the road from the home. I was out of milk.”

The detective smiles, taps her phone again. “Speaking of milk, old people drink a lot of tea don’t they? I can’t stand the stuff myself, tastes like pond water, but this is teatime at the care home a few months ago. As you can see from the decorations, it was Christmas. There were lots of visitors—more than usual because of the holidays—and this is a picture of one of the residents. The staff called her Aunty May. Sweet old thing but easily confused—convinced she used to be the queen of England, kept askingeveryoneif they had seen her corgis—but here she is smiling for the camera when her granddaughter visited.” She zooms in on the picture. “And that’s you in the background. Do you see yourself? Very muchinsidethe care home. Where you were seen again yesterday, around the time of the incident. You were the one person in this photo that none of the care home staff could identify. Maybe you got lost on your way to the shops on both occasions?” Frankie doesn’t answer. “Not to worry. I have one final question: Do you know Clio Kennedy?”

Frankie stares at her for a long time without speaking, then shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s a shame. She said she was with you at her home in Notting Hill around the time the incident took place. She would have been a good alibi for you, if only you knew her.” The detective smiles again. “I know I look young—good genes—but I’ve been doing this a long time now. Too long. The reason why a person lies is almost always more interesting than the lie itself. So why are you lying to me?”

Frankie makes herself stand a little taller. “I haven’t lied to you. I visited the care home a few months ago to visit an old friend. I’d lost something precious and thought she might know where I could find it. There’s nothing illegal about visiting someone last time I checked. That’s how I knew about the car park and how handy it was for the shops. I don’t know anything about who died.”

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