Page 53 of Good Bad Girl

I felt my legs giving way. “Who am I?” I whispered.

“You’re my daughter,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

“But I’m not, am I? Who am I?”

But Mum didn’t answer. She just cried and then she went to her room.

So I went to mine and packed a few things in a backpack. Then I took the black and gold Japanese tea tin and the money inside it from the place where she had hidden it in the kitchen. If Mum heard me taking the tin she didn’t say anything, didn’t come out of her room. If she heard me leave the boat, she didn’t try to stop me. I cried as I walked to the train station, secretly hoping that she would come after me, but she didn’t do that either.

I haven’t seen or spoken to her since.

She called and texted at least once a week but I never replied.

Until she was willing to tell me the truth about my real parents I didn’t want anything to do with her. I’ve never stopped missing her, but now I need her. I need her to be my mum again, even if she isn’t. I don’t have anyone else.

I blink into the darkness, looking around the gloomy prison cell and seeing nothing but shadows. I close my eyes again, desperate for sleep to find me but it doesn’t. Tears come instead. I think about Mum, then I think about Edith, then I think about Edith’s daughter. Clio Kennedy acted as though we had never met in the attic above the art gallery, but she knows who I am. Then she sent a text telling me to keep quiet, so I have. I didn’t tell the police about Clio because it’s my word against hers and they’ll never believe me. Why would they? They already know I’m a liar, and the detective was furious when I refused to tell her my real name.

She didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t, because I don’t know what it is.

Edith

Edith is crying as she prepares to leave her daughter’s house in Notting Hill for the last time. Not because of what she has to do, but because of what she must leave behind. She made herself a cup of tea and some toast before leaving—her daughter’s vegan bread and “plant-based” butteralmosttasted like the real thing—and nobody should confess to anything on an empty stomach. She tries to close the front door as quietly as she can so as not to wake anyone. Edith continues to cry on the night bus and only stops when she walks up to the entrance of the police station at Covent Garden. Partly to concentrate on the steps in the dark, but mostly because it is best to compose yourself before speaking to officers of the law; she learned that lesson a long time ago. When she looks down at the steps she sees that she is still wearing her slippers. Now they will definitely think she is a crazy old lady. Perhaps she is. Maybe that’s what life turned her into.

“I want to see Detective Chapman,” she says to the man slouching behind the desk.

“Blimey, she’s popular this evening,” he says, checking his watch. “Are you aware it’s almost midnight?”

“There is always time for truth,” Edith replies. “It’s rather an urgent matter.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, I think so. And I would hope, given your profession, that you would agree. There has been a serious miscarriage of justice.”

He nods at the pink leather suitcase in her hand. “You off somewhere, are you?”

Edith shrugs. “Prison, I suspect.”

He peers over the desk and stares down at her slippers. “Are you sure you should be out at this time of night on your own?”

“Are you sure you’re in the right job? Did you hear what I said, young man?”

“Why do all the nutters pay a visit onmyshifts?” he mumbles.

“What did you say?”

He turns to the computer on his desk. “I said why don’t we start with your name?”

“Edith Elliot. And the dead woman is called Joy, despite being rather miserable.”

“Death can have that effect on a person. A bit like working here.”

“The innocent girl is called Patience.”

“I need that myself tonight.”

Edith notices that the police officer has stopped typing. He stares at her with a look of pity she has become accustomed to. As though being old and being helpless are the same thing. But she won’t be silent this time. She will do the right thing. People have always underestimated and overestimated her. Sometimes to her advantage, but more often than not to her detriment. The only person who knows what she is really capable of is her.

And a frightened young girl from all those years ago.

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