Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘He killed her.’

  ‘You lost her. We all grieve differently; there are recognized stages but we may go through them in different ways, revisit some. You are angry, and if this anger is all-consuming, you may find it hard to reach the other stages. In particular, acceptance.’

  How can anyone ever accept this? ‘I just want him to pay for what he did, to suffer like I have.’

  ‘There’s a saying: “He who would seek revenge should first dig two graves.” ’

  I nod, I’ve heard it before. ‘It is killing me,’ I agree.

  ‘Have you heard the term “complicated grief”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Grief is a natural process, it’s the way we work through and eventually accept the death of a loved one. With complicated bereavement, the process stalls, the bereaved person is stuck, they find it impossible to come to terms with their loss. Unable to move forward.’

  I recognize the picture he paints.

  ‘It’s more common with unexpected and sudden death. From my contact with Florence, I’d say she may be experiencing complicated grief, and it may be the case for you as well. She will sense your anger and regress further. And the involvement of Florence’s father, her other caregiver, in the death is a complicating factor. She is at risk of various negative psychological responses. Guilt for failing to protect her mother, guilt at imagining that her own behaviour led to the attack, that if she had only been really good everything would have been all right. Most disturbingly, an understanding that she is half her mother and half her father. And if he is bad, then half of her is just like him, bad like him.’ To save her from such a view, I need to explain that it was Jack’s behaviour that was wrong, that was bad, not Jack per se. There are no evil people, only evil deeds.

  ‘For yourself, do you recognize any of these indicators? Do you feel that any apply to you?’ He shows me a list headed Symptoms of Complicated Grief. I read them. Several resound: excessive bitterness related to the death, excessive and prolonged agitation, the prolonged feeling that life is meaningless.

  ‘I suggest you both need help,’ the therapist says.

  Florence carries on with him. We have several more excursions to London.

  As for me, I have a handful of visits to a bereavement counsellor. Time and again it’s the anger I end up talking about, that and the desire for retribution.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Saturday 13 August 2011

  I fantasize about escape. A different life. Perhaps a move away from Manchester. As the months slide by, trapped in the slog of work, the demands of looking after Florence, who is still wetting the bed, still almost mute, and often mutinous, I wonder if we are not paralysed by the impact of Lizzie’s murder. Perhaps we are too close to it here, too aware of the gap left by Lizzie. Everything is overshadowed by our loss, everything made piquant, poignant by her absence. Every place, every street, each shop or park or gallery soaked in her memory.

  Where would I go? What would I do? How would I make a living? I’m not sure what else I’m equipped to do, and a fifty-nine-year-old woman isn’t going to do great in the job market. It would mean finding a way of making money to support us both. A business. Or perhaps some sort of childcare or work as a teaching assistant.

  It’s Bea who comes up with the idea. She’s still in touch with Frank and Jan who had the allotment; they live down in Cornwall and are going travelling over the summer. ‘You could stay,’ Bea says. ‘Jan said it would help to have someone keep an eye on the place.’ They have often asked me to visit before but I’ve never made it. ‘You and Florence could have a holiday,’ Bea says. ‘And it would give you an idea of what it would be like to be somewhere else.’

  I get in touch with Jan before I have time to hesitate and we agree that Florence and I will spend four weeks of the summer holidays in their cottage.

  I work extra hours and swap shifts to accrue the leave.

  The journey is exhausting. We leave at six in the morning and arrive at one. The cottage is a mix of old seaside charm and modern conveniences. Whitewashed stone walls and wooden beams, tiny windows everywhere apart from the large patio doors at the front with a small garden and a view of the sea beyond. Equipped with the Internet and a power shower.

  After reading the instructions from Jan and Frank, we walk down the lane to the beach. The air smells so fresh, brine on the breeze, and the water is a dense slate blue, capped with curls of white. The fine shingle scrunches underfoot.

  With the instincts of a small child, Florence begins to dig a hole, and I sit down beside her. I feel unsteady, as though I might be blown away. I’m glad the beach is big enough not to feel crowded. The space itself is already overwhelming without hordes of people. When did Florence last get to paddle in the sea? Can she recollect her last trip to the beach with Lizzie and Jack? I’ve no idea. She was so very young when Lizzie died and I imagine she must have very few concrete memories to cherish. Tony and I have put together a scrapbook for her, photos off Lizzie’s computer when we got it back from the police, some of our own snaps, cards and notes.

  We wander back when Florence gets thirsty, and after drinks and the last of our sandwiches I make an inventory of supplies. Because Jan and Frank live in the cottage it hasn’t got the usual inconveniences of a holiday let. No need to head out for cooking oil or salt or washing-up liquid.

  Florence takes Matilda out to the garden while I unpack. The mattress protector is a priority. The village is quite big, spreading up into the farmland behind, but we are near the centre, with its small high street and parade of shops. Half of them are aimed at the holiday set: lilos and buckets and spades hung at the doorways, racks of postcards cluttering the pavement.

  We fall into a routine. Woken early by the raucous clamour of seagulls, we have a lazy breakfast then go down to the beach in the morning. Florence plays and I . . . what do I do? I obsess, I suppose. The books I’ve brought remain unread. I’ve tried countless times but I still cannot read. No concentration. It’s something else Jack has robbed me of. Close to lunchtime, we have a splash-about. The water is freezing, and when we emerge we go home for lunch and to warm up.

  It’s a lovely place and the sun shines, but it feels unreal. As the week goes on and the second brings rain, I feel more and more uneasy. It takes me a while to realize that I’m homesick. Fish out of water. This place feels clean and full of space and simple natural things, but it is not me. I miss Manchester, its grime and hustle and cheer, the hubbub of it all. The connections that bind me to the people and places, the buildings, the fond familiarity of its skyline. I feel I have abandoned Lizzie. Maybe it is too soon, is all; the time will come when I can leave the place without a sense of leaving her, of not keeping vigil.

  Florence plays with another girl one day. And I wonder if she is healing.

  We go home a week early.

  Friday 23 September 2011

  A notice goes out to all city council workers. Offers of voluntary early retirement and redundancy. Work has become unmanageable; Stella still supervises me, every breath I take.

  ‘I’m thinking of taking voluntary retirement,’ I tell Bea.

  ‘Could you manage?’ Bea says.

  ‘Not on the pension alone, it’s peanuts. But my mortgage is paid off, so I’d just need living costs.’

  ‘Just,’ she says drily.

  ‘I could start with lodgers again,’ I say. ‘That would help.’

  She nods. ‘Might be good to have the company.’

  ‘Imagine the gossip, though. It’s a small world, the acting business. This’ll be the house where Jack Tennyson holed up after killing his wife.’

  ‘There must be other people who need short-term lets in Manchester,’ Bea says. ‘Or you could take someone on for an academic year, a student or postgrad. Someone wanting family life instead of grunge.’

  The redundancy pay-off would give me some breathing space, a few months to find some other way of making a living, so I go for it. I’m not the only
one to take the offer. Morale is low and people like me who’ve been in the service for years miss the vision and excitement of those early days. It sometimes feels like death by a thousand cuts. I’m still proud of the service, but I know it could be so much better. How long can it last with resources shrinking and provision undermined?

  I can’t imagine my future. All I see is day following night and the struggle to keep on, to keep on breathing, to keep on getting up and putting one foot in front of the other.

  CHAPTER THREE

  17 Brinks Avenue

  Manchester

  M19 6FX

  The allotment has gone to seed. Melissa and Mags have kept up with two of the beds and some sections are covered with old carpet, but the remainder is choked with weeds and spinach that has bolted. I’ve not come here today to plant or dig, but to sit in the soft sunshine and consider what to do. Across the allotment bees drowse and a robin is busy finding worms.

  My thirst for vengeance, my dwelling on you and your crime, my hatred – these things keep the wounds of my grief open. I pick away at them. Scratch, scratch, scratch. The sores have become infected. My wrath and my fixation on hating you, defining you as the murderer and nothing more, leaves Lizzie permanently cast as your murder victim above all else. It leads me nowhere, this raging hatred; it fills my head with you, it pins my eyelids open and forces me to see Lizzie in that lake of blood, Lizzie warding off the first blow, terrorized. I don’t want to live the rest of my life thinking of my daughter like that.

  How can I forgive you? Do I want to forgive you? Do you deserve it? You won’t even admit what you have done. I’ve been studying accounts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. So many victims, such a huge abuse of state power. The victims had the opportunity to retell the horrors of apartheid; the abusers were offered amnesty for full disclosure of politically motivated crimes. Very different from the Nuremberg Trials in the wake of World War II. The one punitive, the other attempting to restore justice and heal society.

  In South Africa, people felt they achieved the truth to a greater degree than any reconciliation. Some argued that reconciliation should not be an alternative to justice but something that follows on from it. I have my justice, because you are locked up, but I am not reconciled.

  So many of the other cases I read about, of forgiveness or reconciliation, are underpinned by faith, Christian faith mainly. ‘Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.’ I do not believe in gods or ghosts or fairies. There are some breathtaking examples of bereaved relatives forgiving absolutely, unreservedly, relinquishing the anger and the hatred and letting go of any desire for revenge. I cannot imagine it.

  What I can connect with is how these charitable people frame their emotional state before the act of forgiveness. Speaking of the yoke of bitterness, the cancer of hate and the power that the murderer exerts as long as he defines their waking lives.

  There’s a Sartre quote: Freedom is what we do with what’s been done to us. I’m not free. I may as well be in that cell with you. My hatred, my anxiety, my rage are the shackles I adorn myself with. The longer I resent you, despise you, rail against you, the longer I suffer. But how else am I to be?

  Ruth

  CHAPTER FOUR

  17 Brinks Avenue

  Manchester

  M19 6FX

  Kay calls with the news that you have confessed. I almost fall over, it’s such a shock. There’s a flight of elation immediately afterwards, a giddy sensation. I am vindicated.

  Only later do I begin to think about it more carefully. Is this a gambit so that you can be released sooner? You have to serve a minimum of seventeen years before you can be considered for parole, and you’re just shy of three years in prison. No one is eligible for parole unless they show remorse. So if it is a tactic, it is very forward planning.

  I don’t care, actually. If you’re now admitting your crime, I see an opportunity to get to the truth. That’s what people wanted in South Africa and the other countries that emulated them: truth and then reconciliation. And I decide that for Florence, for myself, for Lizzie, I must find a way forward.

  So we will start with the truth. You will tell me everything. All I need is to find a mechanism for contact with you.

  Tony thinks I am insane to want to communicate with you. He doesn’t seem as damaged by Lizzie’s death, not as embittered by it. He’s heartbroken; a pall of sadness clings to him these days, unshakeable. But he is not livid as I am. Perhaps your betrayal feels greater for me because I saw the fruits of your handiwork and sheltered you for the days that followed.

  Kay tries to put me off when I ask her about it. ‘Restorative justice can be very helpful for low-level crimes – antisocial behaviour, theft, robbery – but it is not used for a crime of this magnitude.’

  ‘There was a case in America,’ I say, ‘I saw it on the Internet. A couple who have been able to meet the man who killed their daughter.’

  ‘That’s very unusual,’ she says, ‘and I’ve never heard of it happening over here.’ She agrees to make some enquiries. A couple of weeks later and she’s telling me she’s not made any progress.

  ‘If Jack was willing,’ I say, ‘and I was too, how can that be a bad thing?’

  ‘You need a professional to set the whole thing up. And I’ve not been able to find anyone prepared to work with you.’

  ‘Kay, I’m drowning.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ruth. I can’t help. I don’t think it can be done.’

  I spend hours hunting people online – psychologists, mediation specialists. I send emails, they come back with apologies, with rejections, no can do.

  I want the truth, to know exactly what you did to Lizzie, to know precisely how she died, to see your remorse. There is no prospect of forgiveness or even acceptance without that. There are so many questions only you can answer.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Thursday 25 October 2012

  I am cleaning the oven, a job I loathe, which means I leave it too long and then it’s even harder to do.

  Florence is at the kitchen table, messing with Play-Doh.

  At first I think I’ve misheard. I’m on my knees, head in the oven, trying not to breathe in the fumes.

  ‘Daddy hit Mummy.’

  I shuffle back, and turn. ‘What?’

  ‘Daddy hit Mummy.’ It is the first time that Florence has ever initiated any discussion of the tragedy with me. Though I’ve been warned that she may well revisit the murder time and again as she grows, needing to refine her understanding as she matures intellectually and emotionally, whenever I bring it up she is silent.

  ‘He did,’ I say slowly. ‘He did, and Mummy died.’

  ‘Lots of times,’ she says.

  I have never been specific about the murder; she knows nothing about the poker, about the dozen-odd blows. Or have I? Did I say ‘lots’ to explain why Lizzie was hurt so badly she wouldn’t get better? ‘Was it?’ I say.

  ‘Sick of it,’ Florence says, and she bangs her hand on to the Play-Doh. ‘Sick of it!’ An echo. An echo of Jack? Or maybe Lizzie?

  Getting to my feet, I strip off the rubber gloves but keep my distance. I don’t want to crowd her. I stare out of the window; Milky is perched on the wheelie bin at the end of the garden, washing himself.

  ‘Who said that: sick of it?’

  ‘Daddy. Very cross.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say blandly. ‘Was he downstairs?’

  ‘One day and another day . . .’ She makes a noise in her throat as if she’s unsure how to phrase it. ‘One day,’ she starts again, ‘in the bedroom and one in the kitchen and lots of days.’

  ‘Daddy hit Mummy on lots of days?’ The fizz of adrenalin whips through me. Tightening everything.

  ‘And then she fell down dead.’

  I glance over and she’s poking holes in the pink dough with her fingers.

  ‘Did you see Daddy and Mummy have that big fight?’

  She shakes her head.
‘Stay in your room,’ she says sternly.

  My eyes water and I blink fast. Have I got it right? Did Jack tell her that? Or did she hear what was unfolding and know she had to stay in her room because the violence was a familiar situation?

  ‘Were you in your room when they had that big fight?’

  She rubs her nose. Nods twice. Notices dough on her fingernails and peers at it.

  ‘Did you hear them have that big fight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor Mummy,’ I say. ‘You were a good girl, Florence, Mummy loved you and when Daddy got cross you hadn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I stayed in my room,’ she says. Like it’s an achievement. I read my book, I brushed my teeth.

  ‘You didn’t see Mummy?’ I have to know. She might have crept down when she heard Jack leave the house, seen Lizzie splayed on the floor, her hair dark with blood. Oh God.

  She sighs and presses her sticky nails together. ‘I stayed in my room,’ she repeats irritably.

  ‘Are you sad about Mummy?’

  She splays her hands like stars and jabs all her fingers down into the mixture.

  ‘Sometimes, perhaps,’ I suggest. ‘I’m sad sometimes.’

  ‘She might come back,’ Florence says to cheer me up.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘she can’t.’

  She begins to scoop the Play-Doh together; her face falls now.

  ‘Let’s have a hug,’ I say, moving to her.

  She gives a little sigh, as though my request is tiresome, but nevertheless stands on the chair and throws her hands around my neck and squeezes, almost choking me. I wrap my arms around her.

  ‘Piggyback,’ she clamours.

  ‘Just a little one.’

  There’s a stabbing pain at the base of my spine as she hikes herself up on to my back. I do a circuit of the kitchen and one of the front room. Florence swings her legs, her heels bumping against my thighs.

  Did Jack know? That she was aware of his brutality? Was it Jack who instructed her to stay in her room, or was it Lizzie, desperate to protect Florence from the sight of another beating?