Page 44 of Good Bad Girl

“At eight o’clock?”

“Yep. Same time, every night. They’ll come back on at seven tomorrow morning. Try to get some sleep and try to be patient, Patience. Tomorrow will be a better day, you’ll see. You said you think someone set you up. Who?”

“Someone I met in a care home and was foolish enough to trust.”

Edith

Edith is lost. She got the number seventy-two bus and rang the bell when she passed the pub, but something is wrong. Her old house, herhome, should be right here. But it’s gone. So is her neighbor’s house, and the one two doors down. This is the correct road—she’s checked twice—but a fancy block of flats appears to have been built where her home used to be.

She’s cold and confused and a little frightened, gripping her pink suitcase in one hand, and the dog’s lead in her other, sitting at a bus stop but without anywhere left to go. What used to be a safe neighborhood doesn’t feel like one anymore. It’s dark now, and it’s getting late. But Edith is all out of options. She doesn’t know what to do.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers to Dickens. “I hoped if I knocked on the door, explained to whoever was living there now that it was reallymyhome, I suppose I thought maybe they’d do the right thing: leave immediately and let me have it back.” Herwords make her sound like a fool and she knows that is what she has been. “The lawyer said he was confident he could help get my home back, but it’s already gone. It’sallgone.”

Once upon a time, this street was just a handful of terraced houses opposite fields and a beautiful park where she and Dickens used to go for walks. Now everything that was here has been buried under concrete. The place is completely unrecognizable except for a single old-fashioned streetlight, dimly glowing in the dark. The world has moved on without her as though she was already dead. The light flickers and Edith wishes her coat was warmer. She feels the cold far more than she used to. Dickens shivers too. Edith hears footsteps approaching the bus stop and spins around.

“Who’s there?” she asks, but everything beyond the streetlight is cloaked in shadows.

“Hello, Mum,” says a voice in the darkness, then Clio appears like a ghoul.

“What doyouwant? What have you done to my house, my home?”

“I’m sorry you found out this way. I’m sorry you found out at all. We had to sell it,” says Clio. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Codswallop. Peoplealwayshave a choice. You just chose the easy option, the one that was best for you. Like always.” She stares up at the star-speckled sky. “What did I do to deserve such selfish children?”

“You raised us to be like you. I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m too damn tired to do this dance again. It’s late and it’s cold. Shall I take you home?”

“I’m not going back to that place.”

“I meanmyhome. For now.”

“I don’t want to go there either. I won’t go where I’m not welcome.”

“It’s never stopped you before,” Clio mutters.

“What did you say to me?”

“Nothing. Please can we get going? I have a taxi waiting and these things aren’t free.”

“Well, you should have some spare cash from selling my home behind my back.”

“You signed the paperwork.”

“If I did then I was tricked into doing it.”

“Not by me. We needed the money to pay for your care.”

“Who isweand whatcare? Those people didn’t care about me and you couldn’t care less.”

“How can you say that after everything I’ve done for you?” Clio asks.

“The only person who cares about me is Ladybug.”

“If you mean the girl in the care home, she only did the things she did for you because she was paid to.”

“Liar. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Paidto take care of you in the home.Paidto give Jude little updates.Paidto get you out of there, by me. And now you’ve changed your will to leave almost everything to her. Why would you do that? If you think she’s your long-lost granddaughter then you’re even more deluded than I thought. Nothing you think you know about her is real. She didn’t even tell you her real name.”

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