Bella is defective. You need to take her back. Nine-year-old Bella D’accourt has always known she was different; she was born into a controversial ‘designer baby’ eugenic programme, difference is in her DNA. Bella has been designed to be exceptionally beautiful, but when she uses her sadistic, manipulative charm to seriously injure another child her mother brings her back to her creators and demands they ‘fix her’. Thus begins Bella’s new life among scientists and other eugenic ‘Subjects’ at the mysterious Aspira Research Centre in Cumbria. But an enemy lurks in the shining laboratories set among idyllic mountains; an obsessive, murderous enemy who will, years later, drive Bella from all she has worked for and into a desperate, night-time flee across the country with her daughter, whom she will protect at all costs. But Ariana, 12, isn’t so sure she wants to be protected by Bella any more. Long-listed for The Bridport Prize 2020 Part one of TAKE HER BACK trilogy