Page 73 of Good Bad Girl

Nellie stares at her. “Howdoyou know her, Mum?”

Hearing Nellie call her that makes her heart ache.

Frankie holds her daughter’s hand, scared to let her go. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“That’s what she said.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Nellie asks.

“There’s no easy way to say this—”

“Then say it the hard way. I don’t want us to have secrets from each other anymore. And I don’t care whether you’re my birth mum, I love you. I just want to know the truth.”

“I might not have given birth to you, but you are my daughter. That’s the truth.”

“I’ll always be your daughter.”

Frankie’s eyes fill with tears again. “And I’ll always be your mum. I’ve looked after you and loved you since you were a baby. But you’re right, I’m not your birth mother, and you do deserve to know the truth. Even though you might not like it, or me, when you do.”

They sit down next to each other on the bed, just like they did when Nellie was little and Frankie used to read her bedtime stories. Frankie tells her another story now. One about a supermarket, and a store detective, and a woman in a pink house. A story about a stolen baby called Eleanor. A baby who grew up to be a girl called Nellie, living on a narrow boat with a woman who was not her real mother.

It’s a lot to take in.

Nellie turns and pulls away, hugging her knees to her chest.

Frankie knows it must be impossibly difficult to process the enormity of what she has just been told. She watches her daughter, waiting for a reaction, checking to see if she has understood. When Nellie finally opens her mouth to speak, Frankie is terrified of what she will say. She can’t bear to lose her little girl all over again. Her daughter’s words sound strange and distorted, but Nellie is looking at her for confirmation.

“That’s right,” Frankie says. “I’m your sister.”

Clio

Clio parks the van at the end of the mews outside the pink house. Inside her home nothing feels the same as before. Her little girl isn’t dead but isn’t her little girl anymore either. The child she once loved more than anything else in the world is a complete stranger. Clio is exhausted, too tired to do anything but sleep. So she heads upstairs and walks along the landing toward her bedroom. She stops outside the room where her mother was sleeping last night and the memory comes as a shock. Her daughter is alive but her mother is dead.

Clio feels as though she is trespassing in her own home when she steps inside the spare bedroom. The shape she saw earlier of someone sleeping is just the pillows made to look that way beneath the sheets. Her mother’s things—her clothes, her custard creams, her pots of moisturizer—are all still there, and the room smells of Edith’s perfume. Clio finds a letter addressed to her on the dresser. She doesn’t want to read it, but can’t seem to stop herself.

Dear Clio,

I fear we might not get to have this conversation face-to-face. That’s my fault—like so many other things—I’ve been putting it off for years. There is something I need to tell you, something I should have told you a long time ago. I only hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

I was wrong when I told you not to keep the baby when you got pregnant at sixteen. And when you decided to ignore me and have it anyway, I was wrong not to support you. When you struggled with being a mum at such a young age, just like I did with you, I should have done more to help. I thought you giving up the baby for adoption was the right thing to do, because I wanted you to have a better life than I did. I wanted you to be free. Children are such a heavy burden, you must know that is true, but I see now that it was a burden you wanted to carry.

When you got pregnant again all those years later, this time married with a home and a husband, it felt like a second chance. Not just for you, but for me too. I thought it might bring us closer together. But, like the first time, you struggled. I hope you don’t mind me saying that. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing when I turned her away.

It was when I was staying with you for a few days to help with baby Eleanor. It was the first—and sadly only—time you trusted me to help. You were upstairs, finally sleeping, so was she. I was cross when I heard the knock on the door, I didn’t want anyone to wake you or the baby. When I opened it and saw the girl standing there, I presumed she was selling something. I still remember everything she said.

“I’m looking for Clio Kennedy.”

“I’m her mother, how can I help?”

She stared at me for a few seconds before she spoke. “I’m her daughter.”

I don’t know what my face did, but I knew instantly that she was telling the truth. My mind did the math and confirmed she was the right age, that she could have been a baby when I persuaded you to give yours away. She looked like you did at that age, such a pretty, sweet young girl, with big green eyes full of hope. I didn’t invite her in, didn’t even fully open the door, so she babbled away on the doorstep about how her mum had revealed she was adopted on her eighteenth birthday. It had clearly come as a shock to her and—wanting to know who her real mother was—she had tracked you down. She had struggled to find you—I was surprised to learn you had ticked the “no contact” box on the adoption paperwork two decades earlier. All she knew was that your name was Clio. But then she saw a picture of you at Kennedy’s Gallery in theEvening Standard—one of Jude’s exhibitions with warm white wine—and was so sure that you were her mother, she visited the gallery the next day. She met your brother and tried to find out more about you. She asked him if you’d had a baby who would be eighteen years old now, and Jude did what has always come naturally to him—he lied—but, as you know, he’s never been very good at it. She used him to find you, but then found me instead when I opened your front door.

I told her it wasn’t a good time and closed the door in her face.

I can imagine the pain you might be feeling while reading this, but put yourself in my shoes in that moment if you can. You weredepressed. I don’t remember the fancy terms for the baby blues these days, but you had them in a big way. I was worried you were going to harm yourself or the baby. I didn’t think you could cope with any more stress or emotional upset.

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