Page 30 of Good Bad Girl

“This isn’t a Banksy and I’m not an idiot. I’ve been working with criminals for years, and I know when someone is lying. You’re not very good at it. Where did you get this papercut?”

He frowns at her then. “Do I know you?”

She hesitates, but only for a second. “My daughter made this piece of work,” Frankie says, holding it up again until he can’t avoid looking at it or her. “I’m sure of that. Certain. She’s a teenager, practically still a child. Sowhereandhowdid you get it?”

Jude’s right eye starts to twitch: a nervous tic. A tell. “My memory is starting to refresh itself. While I can’t remember the artist, I do think I remember who this piece of art belongs to now. The papercut you are holding isn’tyours, is it? So where didyouget it from?”

“Do you know where my daughter is?”

“I don’t even knowwhoyour daughter is. Look, you are clearly very upset. It sounds as though you are looking for your child and if I can help you I will. What’s her name?”

“Nellie Fletcher.”

He shakes his head, looking almost relieved. “Then I’m sorry, but I can honestly say that I’ve never heard that name before.”

Frankie searches his face and feels nothing but devastation as she concludes he is telling the truth. But then, just as she is about to leave, she sees another papercut on the desk behind him with a ladybug drawn in the corner.

Clio

Clio pays the taxi driver, then steps out into Covent Garden before watching the black cab drive away, wondering if she should have stayed in it. The shops and cafés are just starting to open, the sound of shutters and doors echoing around the street, but Kennedy’s Gallery still has aClosedsign in the door window. No wonder the place hasn’t made a profit for years. It bothers her that she has to knock, that he’ll see who it is and will be able to decide whether or not to let her in. Clio used to have her own key.

She can see the shape of him inside the gallery, a shadowy smudge of a man sitting alone behind the desk at the back. Her hand makes a fist before it needs to because she doesn’t have to knock after all. As if he can sense her presence, he looks up and sees her at almost exactly the same moment as she sees him. Time seems to stretch as they both stare at each other, their eyes saying what their lips will not. When words are left unsaid for too long their meaning can expire. He stands, slowly crosses the parquet floor, and lets her in. Jude Kennedy locks the door behind her, theClosedsign still in place. They both know that this is a conversation best had in private.

It’s the first time Clio has seen her younger brother for almost a year, but there is no hug. Not even a handshake. Even though he literally wouldn’t exist were it not for her.

“I’ve been calling you,” she says.

“I’m aware,” he replies. “I thought we agreed to stop doing that.”

Forty years fall away and she sees him as the child he used to be. Difficult. Stubborn. Selfish to his core. Seeing family can feel like time travel—and she’d rather not remember that out-of-date version of herself. As young children Clio and her brother were constantly competing for scraps of love and attention in a home that offered little of either. As teenagers they learned not to waste time looking for something that was not there. This place, the gallery, makes Clio think about her father. Not that she knew the man. She met him twice: the first time when she was ten years old, and once more when she was in her thirties. She figured she must have done something very wrong for him not to want anything to do with her, but she wasn’t the problem. It was her mother their father wanted to stay away from. Unfortunately—for everyone concerned—he got her pregnant twice before figuring that out.

Clio felt so confident marching in here, but now she feels small and stupid and scared. But she won’t let him bully her anymore. Not now. Not ever again.

“I take it you know?” Clio asks, looking him in the eye and waiting for him to extend her the same courtesy.

Jude looks at his expensive watch instead. “Know what?”

“About our mother?”

“Is she dead?”

“No! Missing.”

“Is that all?”

Clio tries to resist the urge to punch him in his stupid smugface. “Don’t you ever check your phone or listen to messages?” she asks.

“Not if I can help it and not if they’re from you.”

“This is serious. Someone has been murdered.”

“Unless it’s Mother I really don’t care.”

“What is wrong with you? I can’t keep dealing with all of this on my own. She’s your mother too.”

His face seems to darken. “I know who and what she is.I’mthe one who dealt with things when you were too busy, or too sad, or decided that you didn’t want her to live with you after all. I’m the one who had to visit her and check up on her on all of the many occasions over the years when you turned your back. I’m the one who took care of—”

“You took care of yourself,” Clio says.

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