Letters To My Daughter's Killer (12 page)

‘Daddy’s not dead. He’s alive, like me and you, but he has to go to court and the people there will decide if he hurt Mummy and made her die.’ All the time I’m thinking: this is grotesque, macabre, but the websites I’ve consulted say the same thing: be honest, talk openly, be direct, use simple age-appropriate language.

Her face is blank, like she’s hiding. I have no idea where she’s gone. What she is thinking or feeling.

Did she know? Know that you sometimes battered her mother? Know that Daddy got nasty and smacked Mummy hard?

Too hard this time.

What have you done?

* * *

Three weeks after Lizzie’s death, I am at school with Florence. Time to get her back into the routine. She does not want to be here, but she is not crying or throwing a tantrum. Just very quiet.

The friends she made before, Ben and Paige, are pleased to have her back. They keep coming up with little offerings, trying to draw her out, like Milky and his dead birds for me.

Florence barely makes eye contact. I am sitting at the table nearby. We have read four books together and then, with my thighs aching from her weight (it’s a child-sized chair), I persuade her to sit in the Wendy house in the corner – decorated to represent a greengrocer’s. I don’t expect to leave her here today. It will be a slow process.

The only time I read these days is for Florence. My library books are well overdue. I’ve lost all interest, any ability to concentrate, to engage. It’s like losing a sense almost.

You have been named, once you’d appeared in court; it was all over the place. They used the photo from your Spotlight entry, which must be years out of date. The children in reception are too young to understand what’s happened, but those with brothers or sisters in the older classes may hear it being talked about and perhaps repeat what they hear. Children will talk, will gossip, just like adults. We can only hope that Florence’s infamous status won’t lead to her being taunted:
Your mummy’s dead. Your daddy did it.
So tempting for a child looking for easy prey.

I cannot shake the sense of shame, prickly on my skin, hot inside. Shame because you killed her, shame that I didn’t know you were a risk, that I didn’t protect her. We are all tainted. Would it be easier if it had been a random attack by a stranger? I imagine so. One huge loss, not two.

Ruth

17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX

The independent post-mortem for your defence has been done, the coroner has released Lizzie’s body. It is December.

I touch Lizzie’s hand. It feels cold and smooth and dense. And dead.

The undertaker has covered her face with a white cloth. He has dressed her in the clothes I brought. The green and blue silk tunic that she loved, those linen trousers.

It is cool in the funeral parlour; my arms bristle with goose bumps. She can’t feel it. Her bare arms. And her feet. Toenails polished pink to match her fingers. The undertaker has done a manicure. Her hands. Slender fingers more like mine than Tony’s, but even slimmer than mine. Longer. We used to compare her to ourselves. Allocating features and traits. His eyes, my hair, his sense of humour, my love of language, his blood group, my laugh, his teeth, my fear of heights.

Her hands, fluid and fast, making signs, symbols, flowing from one shape to another, making sense. A different language, one I couldn’t use, beyond a handful of words.

She never told me about your violence, not in English or in sign language. Should I have read it? In the spaces between words, in the flicker of her eye or the incline of her head? Did she ever send me a signal that I missed?

The new truth casts shadows over everything past. So now when I remember you and her – at your wedding, at the hospital when Florence was born, posing by the Andy Goldsworthy trees on that trip we made to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – I no longer trust the memory. I see jeopardy instead, and enmity and apprehension. Her smile to you is one of sick submission, the way she catches your hand a quest for your blessing or forgiveness. Her laughter, her kiss, an effort to please, to praise, to placate.

Those times when I made invitations:
come for tea, fancy a walk, would Florence like the panto?
And she put me off:
busy, away, already booked.
Now I don’t know if that was true or if she was hiding. Hiding her wounds, hiding her shame and her failure.

I raised her, Tony and I raised her, to be her own person. We encouraged her to think she could do whatever she wanted to do, be whoever she wanted to be. That her life was hers to conduct as she saw fit. That she was as good as anyone else, as strong, as beautiful, as brave. That she should treat others as she’d like to be treated. At least I thought we had.

The travesty ripples back through the past and on into the future.

Your mother speaks to me. Same old stuff about your lily-white nature. I am tempted to confront her with your identity as a wife-beater, to ask her if she knew, if there had been whispers with your earlier girlfriends. Was it something you learned from your parents? Was Marian used to feeling the back of Alan’s hand, or his foot in her ribs? Where does it come from, this violence in you?

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

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 months 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.