Letters To My Daughter's Killer (7 page)

‘First time, I’ll let you off.’

He smiled. When he smiled, his green eyes shone.

Tony isn’t traditionally handsome; he certainly hasn’t got the leading-man looks that Jack has. He’s well built, broad-shouldered, with huge hands and feet. A bit like a prop forward. His nose is sharp, his cheeks round. He had curly blond hair back then but I found him attractive. And he had charisma.

There was also the appeal of his attention; he was really interested in me, in my opinions. We had long discussions, arguing about politics and feminism and social issues; he teased me about my middle-class background and I teased him back about his Manchester scally posturing. He was easily as bright as I was, which was what really mattered.

I fell in love with him.

I didn’t ever stop, though I’ve learnt to hide it. I still don’t know, don’t really know, what Denise gives him that I didn’t. Why he prefers her. Objective as I can be, I don’t get it. I never have.

We are all tense; the atmosphere in the house before we leave to lay the flowers is brittle.

The rain has stopped, but it’s cold and damp and the feel of winter is in the air. Jack looks wiped out, purple shadows under his eyes. On the way in the car he starts shivering, and I reach out and touch him. The look he gives me is so sad, so wretched, I almost ask if we can call the whole thing off.

Jack has white flowers, roses, gypsophila, lilies and carnations. The carnations smell strong, sweet and spicy in the car. Melissa and Mags have been to the allotment and gathered some wild flowers – cornflower, little daisies, cow parsley and sweet peas –included in the florist’s arrangement of yellow roses and blue iris that I carry.

Florence is with us; she has brought a new picture, a drawing of Milky, though if you weren’t primed you’d be hard put to tell it was an animal at all, let alone a cat.

We have our instructions. Jack and Florence will go first, walk down the pavement and leave the bouquet and picture. Then Tony and I will join them; we will go together in a show of solidarity to reinforce that Lizzie was from a loving home. It smacks of hypocrisy to me. This focus on how wholesome Lizzie was. The deserving and the undeserving dead.

‘There’s a story,’ Jack said when Kay talked us through the sequence and Tony asked about Denise being involved too. ‘You keep the story simple.’ Denise wants to pay her respects, so Tony has agreed to visit with her after we have all been. She is a complicating factor.

I’m taken aback to see so many reporters and film crews crowded at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Jack places his flowers down beside all the other bunches there. Florence puts her picture next to it. Then we are told it’s our turn. It is hard to concentrate; my mind keeps jumping back to that night, to Jack and Florence at this spot, the front door ajar. To my Lizzie, so still on the floor.

Getting my glasses out, I make an effort to read the cards that have been left, but time and again my mind slides away. Florence raises her arms and Jack picks her up. She lays her head on his shoulder.

Across the road the waiting journalists do their stuff, a buzz of activity and attention, a continual rippling, click and chime of cameras. Cigarette smoke on the air.

‘Can we get Bert now?’ Florence says.

‘No,’ Jack says, ‘not yet.’

The house is still off limits.

There is a giddy sensation inside me. I feel close to the edge, as if I might suddenly do something grossly inappropriate, fart or vomit or burst out laughing. I clench my teeth until my head aches.

We walk back to the car, a sad little procession, then Florence kicks off, wrenching round in Jack’s arms, pointing back to the house and crying.

‘What is it?’ he asks her. ‘What do you want?’

She is screaming and it’s hard to make out the words.

Jack glances at me to see if I have any idea what’s going on. I shake my head.

‘We have to go to Nana’s,’ Jack tells her. ‘We can’t go home yet.’

‘I know!’ she bawls.

‘Show me,’ Jack says, and lowers her to the ground. Florence runs back and we follow. She snatches up her picture. The crying softens to small sobs.

‘You want to bring it?’ I say.

She nods her head.

‘That’s fine. You keep it.’ Then I do laugh, half laugh, half cry. My throat painful.

We leave again.

We look peculiar on the television, Tony and I. If I didn’t know us, had to guess what we did, who we were, I’d say he was a stevedore. Hah! Not much call for stevedores in Manchester in the twenty-first century. A forklift truck driver then, or a brickie. His weathered complexion, solid build, those peasant’s hands. And me? I don’t know. With white hair to my shoulders, the specs and the middle-aged spread, I look older than I feel, older than I really am.

One or two of the reports give more details about Lizzie and Jack. Jack has done some television, guest parts on
Casualty
and
The Bill,
as well as his theatre roles. But he’s not a household name. There would be even more attention if he was.

The camera pans over our bouquets propped up against the garden wall, the cards and notes in plastic sleeves, the messages of love, our blessings. A voiceover relates our description of Lizzie:
Lizzie was a much-loved daughter, wife and mother, a warm and loving person who lived life to the full. Her passion for theatre and the arts . . .
The film focuses on Florence’s drawing, a row of kisses at the bottom, on Jack’s note,
my love forever;
it moves to our signatures,
Mum
and
Dad,
beneath the verse from Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Echo’, just out of sight.

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Friday 18 September 2009

DI Ferguson was right, it does seem as though nothing is happening. Stasis. We go through the motions of eating and drinking; we wash, though I’m tempted not to bother. As though wearing my dirt on my skin and letting my hair grow greasy and tangled can serve as symbols of my distress and sorrow. It makes sense. I understand now those newscasts from other countries: the rending of clothes, the tearing of hair, the howls of grief.
See how I hurt, I will hurt myself to show you.

But we are British. And there is Florence to think of. It would all be so different without her. I could indulge myself, not beholden to anyone. Rave and rage and lose control.

Jack signals to me and we move into the hall.

‘What do we do about school?’ he says quietly.

‘I don’t know. The routine . . .’ I begin thinking perhaps it would help Florence then I falter. I have no idea what is best. She is settling in well there, in reception, moving up from the school’s nursery class, and usually looks forward to going, but I can’t quite imagine a bereaved child returning to school so soon.

‘We can ask Kay,’ I say.

Kay’s advice is to see what Florence wants to do. If she wants to go in, Kay will speak to the school and explain the situation.

‘I’ll take her,’ Jack says, ‘if she wants to go. I usually take her.’

When Jack asks Florence about school, she says no, alarm in her voice.

‘Okay,’ Jack agrees, ‘you’ll go another day, maybe.’

‘No,’ she says again.

He glances at me, I shrug. What can we do?

Tony returns to work. Does that sound heartless? He tells me he is going mad with nothing to do, brooding at home. That he’ll be better occupied, his business won’t run itself, though they could get by on Denise’s income for a few weeks if they had to. There is no way I can face the thought of work, but I force myself to go out of the house once a day. I cannot hide for ever.

Returning the calls of people who have left messages is really difficult, and I give up trying.

‘You’ve not been able to have a funeral yet,’ Kay says. ‘Usually when someone dies you can focus on that, you’re run ragged making arrangements, everything’s leading to saying a very public goodbye. Without that it is hard to move on with grieving.’

She is right, we are rudderless. ‘People will understand and you can get in touch when you’re ready. Don’t sweat it.’

Kay has a few Americanisms that make me smile. She spent some time working over there on an exchange programme. In Chicago. She loved it.

‘You wouldn’t go back?’

‘No chance now, they’re not hiring.’

The tablets help in one regard: they make it easier for me to avoid dwelling on the scene at Lizzie’s house. It is there at the edge of my mind, a shadow hovering, but like a word that can’t be summoned, or a name forgotten, it stays just out of reach. Sometimes I wake suddenly, full of unease, sweating, and I wonder if I’ve been dreaming about Lizzie, visiting the scene in my slumber. Jack hasn’t taken any medication though I suggest he might. I hear him crying most nights, or pacing about.

We do everything we are asked. Jack talks to the police again.

Every day I ask Kay if they’ve had any witnesses come forward, if anyone saw anything, a stranger in the area. If they’ve found Broderick Litton.

‘Nothing yet, but it is very early on,’ she keeps saying.

My neighbours bring more food. We’ve already had to throw some out and I’ve no idea which dishes are whose.

Jack puts a lasagne in the oven.

‘Did the police say anything?’ I ask him.

He shakes his head, and then stills. ‘Only that they think she let him in.’

My heart quickens. Another morsel of fact. They are like shots of a drug. Dizzying, addictive. ‘Why do they think that?’ I sit down.

‘Because there wasn’t any damage to the door, no sign of him breaking in anywhere else.’

I absorb this. ‘She would never have let that man in. Litton. Not in a million years. Or anyone else, come to that.’

‘I know,’ Jack says. ‘I told them.’

‘He might have forced his way in as soon as she opened the door,’ I say.

We look at each other, Jack tightens his mouth and the dimple in his chin deepens.

Kay encourages me to talk about Lizzie. About her before all this. I’m not sure at first; it’s painful until I get lost in the stories. Gradually I see that it’s healthy to shift the focus away from Lizzie’s death to the rest of her life, all those twenty-nine years. To take her off the pedestal too: not some alabaster martyr, flawless and sublime, but a person who made mistakes and could be infuriating at times.

I tell Kay about the colic and the trials of teenage-hood, which I’m sure was normal enough but was a nightmare at the time. About how stubborn Lizzie could be even if she was in the wrong, and the raging rows she’d have particularly with Tony. And I explain how we came through all that. That the good times far outweighed the hard ones and I took such delight in her, her talents and her character and her generous spirit.

At sixteen she had an abortion after getting pregnant by some boy she had only dated for a month. Of course we’d have supported her whatever she chose to do, but I was relieved when she opted for a termination. She was so young, still a child herself in many ways. I was ready to go with her to the clinic, but she wanted to take her friend Rebecca instead. She was sad after the procedure, naturally – she sat beside me on the sofa and cried, and I rocked her in my arms – but she never regretted the choice.

17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX

Perhaps you are ill, mentally ill, I think, as I sit and open more cards and letters. Wouldn’t you have to be to stalk my daughter like you did? To come back and kill her? Though I know about the stereotypes. Most people with a mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the instigators. Or to hurt themselves. The
Daily Mail
notion of the mad axeman is extremely rare. And these days it’s more likely to be a ceremonial sword.

At work, our doors are open to everyone, and some of the library users have health problems, mental or physical or both. In past times they’d have been locked up in asylums. I can’t imagine any of them attacking someone. Not Ruby, who is highly educated and speaks half a dozen languages and trembles like a butterfly, anxiety singing in every cell of her body. Or Giles, who lived with bipolar. ‘I’m manic-depressive,’ he announced when I first met him. ‘If I get on your nerves, just tell me to sod off. I do witter on sometimes.’ Giles wrote poetry, sheaves of it. He had romantic stories published in women’s magazines, and when he was well enough, he attended the creative writing group the WEA ran at the library. One summer’s night he lay down on the train tracks outside Levenshulme station and ended his life. He was a lovely man.

But perhaps you are the exception, the one in a million who won’t take their meds and who runs amok and kills a stranger. The attack on Lizzie was vicious, sustained. Were there voices in your head commanding you to strike? Again and again. Why Lizzie? Why stalk her? Why come and kill her? Are women the enemy? Do you hate all women, or just young, pretty ones?

The sun shines as I walk up to the park. I avoid the shops, haven’t been in to buy anything. No hurry.

I am at the duck pond when someone calls my name.

Squinting into the sun, I see him. Hoodie up, pants halfway down his bum showing his boxers, trainers in some bright electric blue. Doddsy, one of the lads from the basic skills group who used to meet at the library. In his early twenties now. School had failed him but he had enough nous to try a different route when given the opportunity.

‘Hello, Doddsy.’

‘Sorry about your daughter. It’s really . . . just . . .’ he says, flushing.

My chest tightens. ‘Thanks. How are you?’

‘Good. Got this mentor now and I’m doing a sound production course. Well good.’

‘That’s great,’ I say.

‘Yeah. If I can help, you know, if there’s anything . . .’

‘Thanks.’

‘Better go.’ He shrugs, and shuffles his feet. ‘See ya.’