Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  And I will not write again.

  Will I ever be able to think of you before it all went so very wrong, as the young actor with promise and talent, a beautiful face, who loved my daughter so, who cared tenderly for his own little daughter? Can you be both that and the killer, the liar? You have to be if Lizzie is to be complete again and not solely your victim.

  Dr Jansen asked about restitution. There is one thing that is more important than anything else. That you put Florence’s needs ahead of your own. Promise never to seek her out or contact her, never disrupt her life again. You say you love her, and I believe you do. So leave her be. Relinquish her. She can be free of the fear that one day you’ll turn up on the doorstep and try to win her back. As can I.

  When you took Lizzie, you lost Florence. Accept that.

  In addition, I ask this of you – be an example, teach others, however you can. Whatever courses or groups they have in prison, use them to expose your violence, question it, analyse it, challenge it. Show others where it led. Drag it into the public eye, out from behind the sacrament of marriage and the privacy of net curtains and brightly painted front doors. Become an illustration and a force for change.

  Do that for Lizzie.

  I still have to tread down hard on all the ‘ifs’ that sprout like weeds in warm rain. If only she had told me. If only you had sought help for your violence. They are poisonous thorns, piercing the soles of my feet.

  I am coming through the dislocation of my life. The wound is healing but the scar will remain deep and vivid, extensive and life-changing. I’ll never get over what you’ve done but I will learn to live with it. To live and breathe and love.

  Yesterday I called at the library. Stella has gone, moved to the private sector, to make some other minion’s life a misery.

  I chose a book. I brought it back to the house, and last night I began to read. Just a couple of pages.

  It was like coming home. Like I’d found a part of myself again, my humanity.

  Farewell.

  Ruth