Page 4 of Good Bad Girl

The girl in the mirror is wearing thick-rimmed nonprescription glasses. She doesn’t need them, but she thinks they make her look less pretty. According to others, her green eyes are her best feature. That’s why she tries to hide them. She wishes it were easier to disguise her worst feature: the distinctive freckles on her nose. Her long, wild, curly hair has been tamed into a plait, which rests on one shoulder of her black-and-white uniform like an unloved pet.A uniform that still looks too big for her, even though it was the smallest size they had.

The girl I used to be is gone.

The girl in the mirror is all that is left of me.

It isn’t because I wanted to fit in, I just didn’t want to stand out.

The old elevator chimes to signal my arrival on the top floor. I adjust my star-covered backpack—it’s heavy but I daren’t put it down—and heave the metal gate to one side before pushing the cleaning trolley out into the dimly lit corridor. I push some of the elevator buttons with the door held open—which is normally all it takes for it to stop working—buying myself a little time. The floorboards creak and the trolley wheels squeak as though conspiring to give me away, but there is nobody up here to see me. Everyone else is busy elsewhere, distracted. I still check twice in both directions before letting myself into room thirteen. Doing something wrong is sometimes the right thing to do. Everyone knows that, even if they pretend not to.

The bedroom is dark, but I know my way around. Room thirteen is a large double room with an en suite bathroom. Recently redecorated, because they had to do something to hide what the last occupant left on the walls. The first thing I do—once I’ve locked the door behind me and parked the trolley—is unfasten the shuttered doors on the far side of the room. I fling them open, letting in the light the space has been starved of and revealing a small balcony. The white curtains billow out like ghosts and the sounds of the city let themselves inside before the air gets a chance. A chaotic symphony of traffic and life rises up to greet me in a glorious crescendo, drowning out all the unpleasant thoughts inside my head.

I step out onto the tiny tiled balcony and peer down at the busy London street below. People rush by in both directions, talking on their phones or staring at their screens, hurrying past each other. They behave as though they are important people going toimportant places to talk about important things. But from up here they all look so small. So insignificant. If someone were to fall, or jump, or be pushed over this balcony, I’m almost certain they would die. I wonder if other people think about death as often as I do. It’s an occupational hazard for me.

I close my eyes, just for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face. With my eyes closed, I can pretend to be anywhere. And I do, pretend. There is no better place to hide than inside your own dreams. For a few seconds, the city seems strangely still and quiet, as though waiting for what is about to happen. The perfect moment of solitude lasts less than a minute, and it is the closest I’ll get to a break during my twelve-hour shift.

I step back inside the bedroom, catch an unwelcome glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dressing table, and see that girl again. The one masquerading as me.

I look like a maid but that is not what I am.

The building looks like a hotel but that is not what it is.

This is where people come to die.

It still surprises me that people pay good money to stay in bad places like this.

I have been working at the Windsor Care Home in London for almost a year. Its name makes the place sound royal, but it isn’t fit for a queen. It’s barely fit for purpose. There aren’t enough staff, and the care home manager is a monster disguised as a well-dressed, fiftysomething woman. Her name is Joy. Which is ironic really, because I have never met anyone more miserable.

The fees for the elderly residents who live in this beautifully restored Victorian building are astronomical, but I get paid significantly less than the minimum wage to work here. Which I do twelve hours a day, six days a week, in exchange for cash. The former “palace,” as it is described in the brochure, is a four-story town house with eighteen rooms. Residents—or their relatives—need to be well-off to get a room here. But the money can’t maskthe stench of loneliness, death, and despair. God’s waiting room might look luxurious but it feels like a prison with wallpaper and patterned carpets. I freeze when I spot the shape of someone hiding beneath the bedsheets in room thirteen.

“It’sme,” I say, carefully lowering my heavy backpack to the floor.

An elderly woman sits up in the bed. She is wearing pajamas covered in pink flamingos. “Why didn’t you say so?” she says, clapping her hands together. “Oh, Ladybug, I amsohappy to see you!”

Her hair is a mess of white curls with a few purple heated rollers left in, and her heavily lined face is a picture of glee. Her Scottish accent always makes me smile, and her words trip over themselves in their hurry to leave her mouth, the way people speak when they don’t often have someone to talk to.

“Where have you been?” she asks. “When you didn’t come yesterday, I was worried you might have quit!Joycame to see me instead. She said I’d have to eat in the dining room withthe othersbecause of staff shortages. The woman is an ignoramus and only fluent in bunkum. She tried to starve me out of my room but I survived on custard creams and Werther’s Originals. I thought it might beheragain, so I was pretending to be dead. Did you think I was?”

“No and sorry, I had a day off yesterday. Has nobody been in to check on you today?”

She shakes her head and I shake my own as though headshaking is contagious. Sadly it doesn’t surprise me that none of my colleagues have come to check on someone who would have probably just told them to go away.

“You might have to start going downstairs again sometimes,” I say. “You used to at least have your meals down there, even if you refused to eat with the others.”

“Would you want to eat in a dining room with the walkingdead? It’s like feeding time at the zoo. Besides, I had May for company back then so it wasn’t all bad.”

May was Edith’s neighbor in room twelve. They ate their meals together and played Cluedo in the conservatory, away fromthe others. They were like two peas in a pod and could often be found giggling like schoolgirls. But then—quite out of the blue—I came to work one day and May’s room was empty. The bed had been stripped, her things were gone, and so was she. “I know how sad you still are about May dying—”

“That’s a bucket full of hooey. I’m angry, not sad. May didn’t die, she was murdered. She knew something was rotten about this place, so they got rid of her.”

“We’ve talked about this before—”

“That’s all anyone wants to do these days: talk. Nobody remembers how to listen.”

“I hear you, promise. It was lovely that you found a friend here and that you two had so much in common.” May and Edith were both former detectives and would spend hours in each other’s rooms watching old episodes ofMurder, She Wrote. “And it’s very sad that May is gone,” I say.

“Was murdered,” Edith mumbles, but I choose to ignore her.

“You could try getting to know some of the other residents? Make some new friends?”

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