Page 74 of Good Bad Girl

She knocked on the door again. When I didn’t answershe started yelling through the letter box, said she needed to know who you were in order to know who she was. I told her to go away, but she kept knocking and this time she woke the baby. I answered the door a second time, holding baby Eleanor in my arms. I needed the girl to know she wasn’t welcome. I was trying to protect you.

“This is my granddaughter,” I said. “Clio has a new baby now and they are a proper family. You should be grateful that she went through with an unwanted pregnancy. Surely you’re old enough to understand that mistakes happen. That’s all you were to her, a mistake. There’s nothing for you here.” The girl looked as though I had struck her. “Come now, you must have known you were adopted for a reason? My daughter didn’t give you away by accident. Why are you really here? What do you want, money?”

The girl shook her head but I took out my purse anyway, balancing the baby on my hip. Eleanor started to howl again and I was terrified you would wake up and come downstairs.

“Sorry, I only have this.” I gave her an old ten-pound note, made her take it.

“The baby is crying,” she said, frowning at the screaming child.

“I know, I’m not deaf. She does that a lot. So did you when you were born.”

“Is that why?” she asked, still hovering on the doorstep like an unwelcome salesman.

“Why what?” I snapped.

She looked like she was going to start crying too. “Why my mother gave me away?”

“If it’s more money you want, I don’t have any. My daughter isn’t well. I have to protect her and my grandchild. Why don’t you leave some contact details, and maybe, ifthere is a better time in the future, we will get in touch with you then.”

“The baby is still crying,” she said, as though it was my fault when really it was hers.

“Yes, she is. How much will it cost to make you disappear and take her with you?”

I didn’t mean it. Of course I didn’t. I was tired too.

She walked away without another word. But I know she followed me to the supermarket the next day, Mother’s Day. Your daughter stole your baby. I knew that she had taken the child, but I didn’t know how to find her. I didn’t even know the girl’s name.

She came to see me at the care home a few months ago. She found me again, all these years later. But this time she was looking for her daughter, not her mother. I could have helped her but I didn’t—why should I after all the pain she caused you—but now I think I might have been wrong again. Which is why I have to make things right.

I’m going to the police station now. It’s the only thing I can think of to protect you all. I’ve been a bad mum all my life, let me be good just this once. I didn’t kill Joy Bonetta—I wish I had—but the detective seems to think it was one of you. I can’t let Ladybug take the blame so I will say I did it. Confess to a sin I’m not guilty of to atone for all the ones I did commit. Besides, I doubt I have long left anyway. People presume that there will always be a tomorrow. The existence of cemeteries and common sense should dictate that one day they will be wrong about that. I would give almost anything to rewrite the story of you and me and us. There is still time for you to change the ending of your story. Do whatever you have to do to love and be loved and don’t let history repeat itself.

Your mum.

X

Clio is crying by the time she finishes reading the letter. She remembers the day her first baby was taken away from her to be adopted. She put her Mickey Mouse watch in the crib at the last minute, wanting to give the childsomething, even though at sixteen she had very little to give. The same watch she saw Frankie wearing a few hours ago.

Clio goes to her room and empties her bag. The black-and-white teddy bear that the detective gave her falls onto the bed. She doesn’t know whether she wants to see the footage it recorded, but forces herself to watch it anyway. It’s all there on the tape: Joy coming into her mother’s room, holding a pillow over Edith’s face. Shortly afterward the camera gets knocked over, so that the angle of the shot is of the floor. It does show someone else rushing into the room, but it only reveals what they were wearing on their feet: a pair of red trainers.

There is a noise on the stairs and Clio freezes. But they are not heavy footsteps. A face appears in the doorway, one she had forgotten about until now.

“I said you are not allowed upstairs.”

Dickens lies down, his head between his front paws, his big eyes staring up at her.

Clio wonders if he somehow knows that Edith has died.

“Fine, come on then,” she says, patting the bed.

He jumps up beside her and makes himself comfortable on her lap.

“You need a bath. You stink of dog,” Clio says, stroking his fur. “Then what am I going to do with you?” Dickens looks up at her then licks her face. Clio is strangely glad of the company. The dog stares at her as though he understands everything that has gone on. “You’re right,” she says. “I should be kinder to you. After all, you’re one of the only witnesses to what really happened that day at the care home. You and this bear.”

Patience

Mother’s Day, two days earlier

“You’re fired, obviously, and don’t bother asking me for a reference,” says Joy, standing with her arms folded, and glaring at me from the doorway of Mr. Henderson’s room.

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