Page 26 of Good Bad Girl

“Nowthat’sinteresting. I said there had been an incident at the care home. I didn’t say someone had died. This is a crime with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. And you, Frankie Fletcher, are suspect number two.”

The End

Mother’s Day, twenty years earlier

“I know this is difficult, but when did you lastseethe baby? Was she definitely in the buggy in the supermarket?” the police officer asks, looking down on me in more ways than one. His crooked teeth are too big for his mouth, he has a bulbous nose and excessive facial hair. The man resembles an overfed walrus.

“Yes, she was in the buggy. My friend saw her too. I’ve told you this already.”

He scribbles something in his notebook and I so badly want to read it. I’m convinced he isn’t really writing anything at all, just making marks on the page. Killing time.Wastingtime. He is using a fountain pen, the kind I was taught to write with in school, and I wonder if it sometimes leaks inside his pocket. I hope that it does.

“And how long were you talking to your friend?” he asks.

“I can’t remember.”

“Can you try?”

“No more than five minutes.”

“She said it might have been ten.”

I stare at him. I’m sure it wasn’t that long but everything is a blur. “Maybe.”

“So she was missingmaybeten minutes before you noticed?” he asks, every one of his words thick with judgment. His eyes say what his mouth doesn’t:Bad mother.It’s what everyone will think if they don’t already. The weight of his unblinking stare is too heavy, so I look away. “The timing could be crucial to us finding the baby,” he says slowly, as though I am stupid. I think some men are born patronizing.

“Ten minutes. At most,” I say, and his face contorts into something even more unpleasant than before.

“You didn’t look at her or check on her for ten minutes?” His tone and my shame gang up on me and gag my mouth so I cannot speak. I nod instead. Lost for words, for hope. Ten minutes is a blink of time when you are looking after someone all day every day forever and ever, amen. I blinked and the baby was gone. Why doesn’t this man understand? Why doesn’t he believe me? Why doesn’t hedosomething?

“Do you remember what the baby was wearing?” he asks.

She has a name. Can you remember that?

“Of course I do,” I say, finding my voice again, and wishing the small crowd of people that have gathered around us in the supermarket would go away. They don’tmean well, they’re notconcerned citizens, they’re just nosybusybodieswith nothing better to do, enjoying the free show of someone else’s heartbreak. People love a good tragedy so long as it is not their own. “It was a pink cotton sleepsuit.”

“You’re sure about the color?” he asks.

Maybe it was white?

“Of course I am. I’m also sure that you should be out there looking for her, not wasting time talking to me. Someone has taken her, why aren’t you doing something?”

“You seem very certain that the baby has been abducted—”

“Well she didn’t vanish into thin air!”

I wished my daughter would disappear and now someone has taken the baby.

“You need to stay calm. Getting hysterical won’t help us, or the child.”

Hysterical?I want to take the fountain pen from his fat fingers and stab him in both eyes with it.Thatwould be hysterical, but also deeply satisfying.

“Is there someone you suspect? Someone you have had a grievance with? Someone who had a motive to take the baby?”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I shake my head. “No.”

Patience

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