Good Bad Girl: A Novel

An unnamed woman encounters an elderly woman on the way to the supermarket. The elderly woman compliments the infant child with the woman. Inside the supermarket, the woman with the child has a conversation with an old acquaintance, and as she is speaking, the child goes missing. As the woman desperately searches for her child, she reflects that she knows who took the infant and why.

Frankie, a prison librarian who was once a mother, leaves the prison on her final day of work. She reflects on how she has done bad things and is about to do a “horrible thing” because she feels that she has no other choice.

Patience, an 18-year-old woman who works at the Windsor Care Home in London, visits an old woman who lives at the home, Edith Elliott. Edith, who resents the daughter who put her in the home but cares deeply for Patience, gives Patience a ladybug ring. Patience has smuggled in a dog, Dickens, to keep Edith company. Edith also has a teddy bear in the room. Edith gives Patience her bank card, telling her that she needs a few items for her plan to sue her daughter for renting out Edith’s house.