Good Bad Girl: A Novel

Clio takes the phone call in the hall. Someone from the home tells her that her mother has disappeared. Clio says that she’ll come right away. She returns to the office to tell her client, whose name she can’t remember, that she must leave. However, she finds that her client has disappeared through the window with the framed paper cutting.

Frankie returns to her houseboat, The Black Sheep, on the Thames. She reflects on how challenging it was to raise a child on a roving houseboat as a single mother, but she also thinks about all of the pleasant moments she had with her daughter before her daughter ran away. Frankie finds no signature on the paper cutting, but words on the back suggest the art is from Kennedy’s Gallery in Covent Garden. Frankie hears a sound from the piano in the room that used to be her daughter’s, so she goes to investigate.

Clio goes to the home, where she starts snooping through her mother’s empty room. She finds that Edith’s suitcase is gone and then finds letters from a lawyer informing Edith that they’ve changed her will and would be happy to help her reverse a power of attorney. On her way out of the room, Clio runs into a young woman who introduces herself as a detective. The detective isn’t investigating Edith’s disappearance but a murder recently committed in the home.

Patience heads to a church near Covent Garden, where Edith and Dickens are waiting for her. Edith thanks Patience for helping her escape the home.

Frankie finds that a black cat has made its way into her daughter’s old room. As she retrieves the cat, she reflects on one of the reasons her daughter left—because Frankie refused to tell her daughter who her father is despite having promised to do so once her daughter turned 18. Frankie also notes that she was upset when going to Clio’s because she had just visited the home to see someone, and things went badly.

The detective, Charlotte Chapman, informs Clio that Joy was found murdered in the elevator with a sign around her neck. She tells Clio that someone visited the home earlier pretending to be Clio. She also tells Clio that Clio’s conversation with Joy earlier that day was overheard by someone. This person heard Clio using threatening language toward Joy, making Clio the prime suspect in the murder.

Patience brings Edith back to her apartment in Covent Garden, which initially confuses Edith because Patience promised to bring Edith back to her own home. Patience insists that her apartment will be a safe place to stay for the night. Edith admires the paper cuttings that adorn Patience’s apartment. The women share wine and pizza.

After being questioned by Charlotte, Clio returns home and calls a man who doesn’t pick up. She reflects on her isolation and the many small events that led to her estrangement from her mother. She calls the man again, this time leaving a voicemail letting him know that things aren’t going according to plan.

Edith tells Patience about how she met Clio’s father while working as a flight attendant, got pregnant, was cut off from her family, and had to raise Clio alone. While Edith expounds on the difficulties of trying to love someone who changes into someone you can’t love, Patience dodges calls from Jude Kennedy. The women go to bed.

Frankie wakes up on her houseboat and, hearing a sound outside, goes to investigate. Charlotte Chapman is at the door, and she questions Frankie about her presence at the home. Frankie initially denies that she’s ever been to the home, but when Charlotte shows her footage of her car in the parking lot and a photo of Frankie inside the home, Frankie equivocates, admitting that she may sometimes park in that lot. Charlotte continues her questioning, and Frankie denies knowing Clio. She says she knows nothing about the murder in the home—a detail Charlotte notices because she hasn’t yet told Frankie that someone was murdered.

The unnamed woman speaks to a police officer shortly after her child’s disappearance. She doesn’t give the officer any useful information even though she suspects she knows who kidnapped her daughter.

Patience wakes to the sound of Jude entering her apartment. She remembers the circumstances that first led her to Jude: finding his address among her mother’s possessions and—incorrectly assuming that he was her father—going to find him after falling out with her mother. Jude gave her a place to stay as long as she gave him a piece of her art to sell once a month. He even got her a job at the home, but he soon began making increasingly strange demands of her.

Edith manages to hide in the bathroom while Jude questions Patience about what paper cutting she’s going to give him and whether she’s completed his request to kill Edith—his mother.

Edith is horrified to hear her estranged son talking to Patience about trying to murder her. After Jude leaves, Edith confronts Patience about why she lied to her this whole time, and Patience insists that she has Edith’s best interests at heart and that Edith has to trust her. Edith agrees to go along with Patience’s plans even though she doesn’t fully trust Patience. Privately, she reflects that she’s never really trusted Patience because she’s known the truth of Patience’s identity all along.

Frankie heads to Kennedy’s Gallery because the gallery’s name was printed on the back of the paper cutting she stole from Clio. Frankie encounters Jude Kennedy, whom she has met before but who doesn’t remember her. Frankie asks about the artist who made the paper cutting. Jude denies knowing the artist. Frankie tells him that her runaway daughter, Nellie Fletcher, made it, but Jude denies having heard this name. Just as she’s about to leave, Frankie spies another paper cutting on Jude’s desk.