Page 72 of Good Bad Girl

“One more question,” Clio says, but Nellie reaches for the door handle. “Last one, I promise. Did you have a happy childhood?”

Nellie doesn’t think for very long before answering. “The happiest.”

Clio nods, smiles, wipes away a tear with the back of her hand.

“That’s good. Right, a promise is a promise. There is something I need to say to you and it isn’t easy, but I do think you have a right to know. My mum, Edith, she died today. It was peaceful. She wasn’t in any pain. But... she’s gone.”

Clio wasn’t sure what to expect but Nellie’s face is one of pure devastation.

“I trusted you when you said you wanted to help Edith,” Nellie says. “You said she would be safest out of the care home and I believed you. I did what I did because of you. Now she’s dead? Your mother was right, you are a terrible daughter.”

Clio feels as though she has been stabbed in the chest.

Nellie grabs her bag and runs from the van without looking back. Clio watches as she crosses the road before disappearing down some steps to the towpath.

And then she is gone.

Clio lost her baby girl, then she found her without knowing she had.

Now she wonders whether she’ll ever see her daughter again.

Frankie

Frankie has searched everywhere for her daughter. She called for a taxi to pick her up from the prison and went straight to the pink house in Notting Hill first, but Nellie wasn’t there. Neither was Clio, or Frankie’s camper van. She went to the attic in Covent Garden next, but that was a dead end too. So Frankie got a taxi home because she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

Frankie has lost everything. Everything that ever counted for anything. She wonders whether she will lose her job now too—having walked out today with no explanation and leaving prisoners unsupervised—then realizes that she doesn’t care. Things she thought were important to her, aren’t. Things she thought mattered, don’t. And the worst part about all of this, is that it feels as though everything bad that has happened is her own fault.

She walks along the towpath to whereThe Black Sheepis moored, then Frankie steps onto the deck, opens the door, and locks it behind her. She stares at the door to her daughter’s bedroom. She’s checked it every time she came home for over a year,but it seems pointless now. She is all out of hope but something makes her do it anyway. Perhaps just her need for routine, like her need to count things.

Four steps to her daughter’s bedroom door.

It is slightly open. Frankie thought she had closed it.

Three steps.

Frankie is sure that she must be seeing things.

Two.

Or dreaming.

One.

Because Nellie is sitting on the bed.

“Hi, Mum,” she says.

Frankie stares at her as though she might be a ghost. Nellie’s hair is longer than it was before, and she looks older, thinner, and tired. But it really is her little girl. Frankie rushes over, pulling her into a hug, needing to feel her to know that this isn’t a dream. But her daughter is real and she is safe and she is home.

“Are you okay?” Frankie asks, holding Nellie’s face in her hands, examining every inch of her for damage. They are both crying.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t know you were at the prison until it was too late. By the time I found out, they had already released you and you were gone.”

“I thought you were outside waiting for me. But a woman called Clio Kennedy was in your van. She drove me home, said that she knew you—”

Frankie feels sick. “What else did she say?”

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