Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  But I hold my peace, because although I’m not familiar with how these things work, I realize that Rebecca might be a witness against you, and I don’t want you to know, to have a chance to prepare for that.

  Marian says you want to go to the funeral. Of course you do! It makes perfect sense, all part of the charade of wronged man, dutiful spouse.

  I almost choke on my rage. Over my dead body springs to mind but I say, ‘No way.’

  ‘He’s innocent. Even if you don’t believe it, he is innocent. Until proven guilty. Lizzie’s his wife. He’s every right—’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. Has he thought about Florence? How that will be for her?’

  ‘She’s not going, is she?’ Marian sounds disgusted.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, as firmly as I can. ‘It’s important for her to be able to say goodbye. And it would be catastrophic for her if Jack waltzes in, then disappears again.’

  But you don’t care about that, do you? There’s only one person that matters in your universe, and that’s you. The big I Am. If you had a shred of love for your daughter or anyone else, you wouldn’t be putting us all through the mockery of a trial. You’d have been honourable enough to confess, to spare her, to spare us everything that followed.

  I ring Kay, blurt out what Marian said, keen for her to reassure me.

  ‘He’s able to apply for compassionate leave, and if granted, he’ll be escorted to the service, but first they will have to consider a number of factors, carry out a risk assessment. Most importantly determine if there’s any risk either to Jack himself or to the public, or if there might be any issues affecting public order.’

  ‘And if I say I’ll kill him if he comes anywhere near?’

  ‘You’ve every right to be upset,’ Kay says. ‘I know it sucks, big-time.’ She doesn’t believe my threat.

  ‘What about Florence? It would be terrible for her.’ I think of the day they came for you, the way she flew to you. I don’t know what’s in her head, what she understands of all this. Whether she will instinctively cleave to you again, delighted to have you back only to see you escorted away like before. A ghastly rerun. Or whether she will fear you now. Understand that you killed Lizzie, think perhaps that she may be next. But either way your attending will only damage her. And she’s not well. She is not strong enough for further trauma.

  I try and tell Kay this, and she says that she is sure Florence’s well-being will be taken into account.

  How will they know? I think. These people who make the decision. They’ve not met Florence or talked to me. They don’t know what a good actor you are.

  You get your way. You pollute the day with your presence. I have explained to Florence until I’m blue in the face that Daddy is coming to say goodbye too but because no one has agreed if he hurt Mummy or not he will have to go back to prison afterwards. Her face is expressionless. I search it for excitement, the dance of anticipation or the shadow of anxiety in her, but find nothing.

  ‘Daddy won’t be allowed to talk to you, or pick you up or sit with you.’

  She holds up Matilda.

  ‘You’ll bring Matilda? Good plan, Batman.’ The toy cat is like a security blanket and has supplanted Bert in Florence’s affections. Lord knows what would happen if she lost the thing.

  The authorities have decided that you pose no risk to us nor we to you. There won’t be a baying mob eager to tear you limb from limb. No drive-by shooters. No gang of neighbours jockeying to land one on you, no vigilantes tooled up and blood-crazed.

  I haven’t seen you since your arrest. As we wait outside the crematorium in our dull black clothes and with the smell of frost in the air and the murmur of mourners all about, my energy is screwed to a point, waiting for your grand entrance.

  Tony and Denise and I greet people; some make an effort to talk to Florence. She doesn’t reply, not even to those she knows, like Rebecca or my friend Bea. Nor to the deaf friends who sign to us, ‘Hello’ and ‘Sorry’.

  We have hired an interpreter for the service, someone Lizzie worked with, so that everyone can appreciate what is said.

  I force myself to look directly at you. You look the same. How can you look exactly the same, now that I know what you have done? But then what did I expect? Horns, the mark of Cain, the decrepitude of Dorian Gray’s portrait? There is a prison guard either side of you, and you wear handcuffs.

  Florence sees you. She’s standing in front of me, I have my hands on her shoulders and I feel a jump travel through her. She moves to run to you. I squeeze gently and she remembers. And sinks back towards me. She waves. A tentative wave, not lifting her hand far, a quick, uncertain gesture. I see you blanch, a flash of pain across your face. You meet my eyes. You look sad, wretched, but my heart is hardened against you like a lump of clay in my chest, dense and cold. I don’t disguise my feelings, my bitterness, my anger, but once I know you have seen it naked, I turn away. I will not look at you again.

  Photographers take pictures, the cameras are weapons, firing snap after snap.

  The chapel is packed. Because she was murdered? If cancer or a heart attack had claimed her, would there be so many people? Some are strangers to me. Did they know her? Are they voyeurs? Do some of these strangers feel a genuine connection to someone they never met?

  We don’t sing hymns. No word of God or heaven in the speeches.

  We play a recording of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez; the haunting melody swells in the room, and tears prick my eyes. Rebecca talks about Lizzie, a lovely warm speech. Tony reads ‘Echo’, his hand trembling as he holds the paper, his voice steady. Denise wheezes as she weeps. Florence is restless, turning round and kneeling up on her seat, dropping Matilda and scrabbling on the floor to retrieve her.

  The woman conducting the service is a friend of Bea’s, a free-range minister for hire. She talks about the importance of celebrating life. Suddenly everything falls away from me. A swirl of cold oil in the pit of my stomach, my back tightens, panic climbs through me. Lizzie. Lizzie. Gone. I stare at the wooden coffin carpeted thick with flowers and know she’s in there. That she is going, that she’s lost to me. I fear I will faint. My grief rises like a flood. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out, to keep from screaming.

  I do not speak to your parents. I don’t have the wherewithal to be that generous. As long as they defend you, I cast them as the enemy.

  At the hotel afterwards, where we have the reception – you have been taken back by then; no buffet and booze for you – the kindness of people is overwhelming, and I long for the afternoon to be done. To escape.

  You make the late edition of the paper and the regional news. ACCUSED ATTENDS WIFE’S FUNERAL. Great shot. Sorrow writ large on your face, sharp suit, hands in irons.

  It’s like Lizzie is an afterthought. You’re top of the bill. The main attraction.

  Milky has found a mouse. He chases it around the living room. I’m so shattered I’m tempted to leave him to it, but who knows where the little creature would end up, or in what state. I wait until he’s caught it again, dangling from his mouth, then grab him, force open his jaws and scoop up the mouse by the skin on its back. It weighs nothing. I feel the bones slide under its loose skin. When I throw it into the garden, keeping Milky behind me with one foot, it freezes for a moment, then streaks away. In the dark comes a snatch of song, a blackbird.

  I wait, hoping it will sing again, but all I hear is the rattle of a train and the howl of a motorbike ridden too fast.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  17 Brinks Avenue

  Manchester

  M19 6FX

  No one seems to know what will happen to the house. Whether the life insurance for the mortgage will pay out in these circumstances and you’ll end up owning it outright, or whether it won’t and the property will be repossessed. Kay comes round to tell me that the police have finished their work there and gives me a set of keys. ‘Florence can finally get Bert,’ she says.

  Five mon
ths have passed. She warns me the place will be a mess. We may wish to contract a specialist cleaning company to sort it out.

  A mess doesn’t come anywhere close. It’s a foggy January morning and the air tastes dirty, a chemical tang in it. I have come in the car and brought large bags and bin liners to fetch things for Florence. The bare-leaved trees and naked bushes look desolate, dead.

  The house smells sour, I notice that as I push back the door, step over the scattering of junk mail and leaflets piled up behind it.

  Blood. Everywhere. Dried black splashes on the walls, across the glass front of the stove, spread over the floor. Is that the smell? My heart stumbles, kicks and beats unevenly and all the hairs on my skin rise.

  Oh Lizzie, oh my Lizzie.

  Some of the laminate flooring, where she lay, has been taken up. I put my hand out to steady myself and the door jamb is gritty, sticky to the touch, and leaves a glittery dark grey residue on my hands. Some sort of mould? More of it here and there on the walls in the living room and around the kitchen diner. Fingerprint powder. Smeared everywhere. And the blood, dried and cracked, flaking on the walls.

  The fear won’t leave me. It grows inside me, something heavy crawling up my back, hands around my throat, making me dizzy. I drop the bags and leave the house and flee for home.

  I am at your house again. Tony is with me. I did consider getting someone else in to clean up, but it’s another expense when money is really tight and this is something we can do ourselves, upsetting though it is. I’ve tried to prepare him for what we’ll find, described the blood, the scene of carnage, but he’s still shaken. He freezes by the couch, then swings round and I think he will leave like I did.

  ‘The bastard,’ he says. ‘That bastard.’ And he kicks out, smashing his foot into a side table, which splinters apart, the lamp on it crashing to the floor. ‘If he gets off, comes back . . .’ Tony says.

  ‘He won’t,’ I snap. It’s what I fear. You evading justice, taking up the reins, reclaiming Florence. They must not let you go.

  But Tony is steadfast. While he rips up the floor and loads the pieces into bags for the tip, I go upstairs and collect Florence’s clothes and toys, including Bert. The unease about being in the space clings to me as I’m busy sorting through Florence’s clothes. She’s not grown much, so most of her things will still fit. I hope the shoes will. It’s the shoes that make me cry. Why they set me off, I’ve no idea. But the row of them – red ankle boots, canvas sandals, blue T-bar shoes, wellies with fish painted on – just unseats me. I allow myself to weep for a few minutes, then wash my face.

  The same sparkly dark dust is all over the bathroom. There are your toiletries beside Lizzie’s. I feel like a voyeur.

  Looking in the mirror, I wonder about you, what you saw when you did the same. Did you check your expression here before you rang me? Distraught spouse, grief-stricken lover. Did you wash your hands? You must have done. Here or in the kitchen sink. Looking at the room downstairs, the way blood is sprayed about the walls over the sofa, you must have been covered in it. I don’t recall blood on your clothes; did you change before you rang me?

  What will I do with Lizzie’s things? I hadn’t thought of that. Bracing myself, in case there is more blood, more signs of your violence, I open the door to your bedroom. But it is bland, innocuous. Some of the surfaces glimmer with the powder. On her dressing table: earrings, make-up, perfume. I sniff the bottle. Jo Malone, the orange blossom. Downstairs I can hear the creak and snap as Tony tears at the laminate. My thoughts tangle. I go back into Florence’s room and carry on.

  ‘Ruth?’

  Tony comes up, ‘I’m off to the tip. You going to wait here?’

  ‘No.’ I don’t want to be alone in the house. ‘I’ll take these back.’ I lift the last pair of shoes into the top of a bin bag.

  ‘Can’t believe they’d just leave it like that,’ Tony says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll collect the new flooring on my way back here.’

  ‘D’you want a hand putting it down?’ I offer.

  ‘Okay. I’ll ring you when I’m back again.’

  ‘You take the keys, then,’ I say.

  We lay half the floor, snapping the tongue-and-groove boards into place, then it’s time to collect Florence from school. I can’t be late. Her anxiety soars if she thinks I’m late, if she can’t see me near the front of the line of parents. Tony and I have spent most of our time talking about Florence.

  My knees creak and my back is stiff when I straighten up.

  ‘I don’t trust Marian and Alan not to go for custody if Jack’s convicted,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ he scowls. ‘You are joking. Would they? They wouldn’t stand a chance, would they?’

  ‘They are a couple, and they’re better off.’

  ‘But she hardly knows them.’

  ‘Jack’s still her legal guardian,’ I say, ‘and if we apply for custody, he can fight it.’

  Tony grits his teeth and expels air through them. ‘Bloody cheek.’

  ‘We need some advice.’

  ‘Social services?’

  I feel a lurch at the thought of an outsider judging me, judging my capacity to be Florence’s carer. But I know it’s better to get some professional advice and hopefully support. Surely they’ll see that the best place for her is with me.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Monday 4 January 2010

  It’s good to be back at work, even though I feel light-headed and tense. Probably three-quarters of the library users know me, know about Lizzie. Some were at the funeral. Most of them now offer condolences. These range from ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘It’s good to see you’ to ‘They want to bring back hanging, bloody disgrace’. Which doesn’t really help me much.

  I’ve come back part-time on earlies as agreed in my meeting with the area manager. Saturdays are difficult because Florence is at home. I plan to use my leave for the school holidays. Hopefully by summer things will be easier and she will be looked after by Tony and Denise or with her friends Ben or Paige. Ben’s mother has offered several times.

  ‘Ruth? I’m Stella.’ My new supervisor, a senior library assistant come from North area. She smiles and shakes my hand. ‘Sorry for your loss. I don’t know how you can . . . It must be so very difficult.’ She gives me a sympathetic smile, then carries on, ‘My cousin’s brother-in-law, his grandma was one of Harold Shipman’s victims. Awful.’

  I am poleaxed by her clumsy attempt at – what? Empathy, solidarity?

  ‘If you need more time, if it all gets too much, you just say.’ She nods eagerly. ‘You can’t rush something like this.’ Flashing me another smile, her teeth whitened, almost neon. I must be twenty years older, but feel like a child, as if she’ll pat me on the head any moment.

  ‘We’re thinking of shaking things up a bit,’ Stella says.

  I look at the display for New Year in the corner – charting the different ways it is celebrated around the world – and the books in translation in front of it for people who’d like to read about another place. Then there’s the frieze we did last summer to brighten up the children’s library, and the mobiles made by the Sure Start group. The new notices for the pensioners’ Young At Heart group. I scan the room, see the people busy on the computers, the group of Asian men gathered around the tables, talking over the news, and it all looks good to me.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. I’ll bide my time, see what she does.

  ‘What d’you think?’ Tracey says when Stella has disappeared. Tracey and I have worked together for nine years. She’s great, a bit lazy perhaps, reluctant to do the shelving, which some people would get brassed off about but it doesn’t really bother me. She has a tough time at home: her mother has dementia and sometimes goes walkabout but so far has been returned unscathed.

  ‘Seems friendly enough,’ I say.

  Tracey arches an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ve only just met her,’ I add. ‘Bit patronizing maybe.’


  Unfortunately Stella is in work when I get an urgent call from school. Florence is distressed and they think I should come and settle her or take her home.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I’ll have to go.’ My heart pattering too fast as I pull my coat on. Small upsets mushroom these days. I’ve lost perspective.

  ‘Of course,’ she croons. ‘Perhaps you came back too early. The little girl, she must be so—’

  I cut her off. ‘The block loans, can you ask Tracey?’

  ‘I will, don’t you worry about a thing.’ Which would be reassuring if I didn’t already know that she is taking every opportunity to question my fitness for work with Tracey, under the guise of concern. Always on about how awful I must be feeling and how it’s bound to affect my competence.

  I can hear Florence as soon as I get close to the building, howling sobs, her throat sounding raw. She is in the Wendy house, which is now decorated like a tropical beach hut. Pictures of palm trees and surf fixed to the walls, a table with a raffia cover. Lei garlands of flowers and whole coconuts and large shells strewn about. She is curled over on her front, hands, knees and face on the floor.

  ‘She got upset at snack time,’ Lisa says. ‘I think Paige was a bit too enthusiastic about handing round the drinks and something set Florence off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I crawl into the Wendy house and begin talking to her. ‘It’s all right, Nana’s here now. What a sad girl, come on, it’s all right now.’ Stroking down her back, easing her. Gradually her crying slows and peters out. The other children have gone outside to play. There’s just Lisa tidying round.

  I manage to cajole Florence out of the house and we sit on a chair.

  ‘Coffee?’ says Lisa.

  I’m so grateful. I know she’s got thirty kids to cater to and lesson plans and God knows what else, but she’s one of those people who just makes time, makes connections. Caring, I guess.