Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘Not really, just the one change for emergencies.’ The words die in my mouth. I swallow. ‘And a box of toys.’ It’s kept in one of the kitchen cupboards, but someone got it out earlier and put it in the living room. Florence has ignored it so far.

  ‘Make a list,’ Kay says. ‘A few basics we can buy. You’ll need something too,’ she says to Jack. She passes him some paper and a pen.

  ‘I want Bert,’ Florence says, her voice rising.

  ‘You’ll see Bert soon,’ I try to reassure her. ‘Perhaps you could look after someone new till then.’

  ‘Who?’ she says suspiciously.

  ‘A dolly or a pony? Something from the toyshop. We could go and choose.’

  It’s touch and go whether she’ll play ball or have a tantrum. ‘With Daddy,’ she says. She doesn’t want to be parted from him.

  ‘Of course,’ Kay says.

  ‘You’ll have to go barefoot,’ I say to Florence.

  She makes a funny face and I laugh, then feel clumsy and guilty. Lizzie is dead. What sort of mother am I? What sort of human being?

  I go with them. I’m not so different from my granddaughter, not keen to let people out of my sight, not comfortable at being left. After all, anything could happen. The world is a chaotic, dangerous, random place now.

  We go to John Lewis; it’s out of town, with free parking and everything under one roof. We must make a strange sight: Jack and I looking wrecked, slow and distracted, Kay guiding us through the various departments.

  We pick a couple of books, familiar ones that Florence has at home, then go to the toy section. Florence stands with her arms folded and surveys the bins of soft toys and the shelves of dolls with disdain. Jack and I make some suggestions: the little donkey’s sweet, how about a polar bear, or the tiger? She shakes her head each time.

  Another child arrives, an older girl, perhaps seven, dressed in a pink pinafore dress and ballet shoes and with fuchsia-pink bows in her hair, dragging a woman, presumably her mother, by the hand. ‘This one,’ the girl squeals and grabs a baby doll. It’s one of those designed to look realistic, with a floppy neck and a protruding navel. There is a range of accessories to buy too, clothes and bottles, nappies and wipes. The woman asks the girl if she’s sure, and they move away with their booty.

  ‘Come on, Florence,’ Jack says. ‘Time to choose.’

  Florence goes to one end of the display, then the other, picking up and relinquishing the toys. I can feel something like panic thickening in the air as she darts about.

  ‘You don’t have to get one,’ I tell her, ‘if you don’t like them.’

  She gives a little shrug. We make it to the escalator, then she turns and runs back. Jack follows her. She picks up one of the lifelike dolls. It’s revolting. Staring blue eyes and a pursed rosebud mouth. The wrinkles around its neck and furrows on its forehead make me think of an alien or something old and decrepit.

  When we reach the counter, Jack sways. ‘I’ve no card – my wallet . . .’ He throws his hands wide.

  ‘I’ve got mine, no problem,’ I tell him.

  While Jack goes to get some clothes for himself, I select a few basic outfits for Florence, and spare pyjamas, a coat and some shoes. I barely look at the prices or the designs; all that matters is getting this done, finding the right size.

  We go to the supermarket next door – cereal and fish fingers for Florence, a hot chicken, a French stick, wine, bananas, bread and milk.

  As I wait to pay, I come close to meltdown. Barely able to stand this: buying food and choosing fruit seems sacrilegious. Irreverent. It’s only Florence really that keeps me halfway grounded. As it is, I get my pin number wrong this time. The girl on the checkout looks at us and says very slowly, ‘Try it again, love, you get three goes.’ She probably imagines we are a care-in-the-community group, practising our basic skills, or refugees of some sort. Which I suppose we are. Except there is no refuge, nowhere to flee. Reality, the reality you brought to our door, is inescapable. Our landscape has altered. We’re in the wilderness. You brought it to us.

  At home, Florence leaves the doll, discarded, on the floor in the kitchen. After tea, once Jack promises to tuck her in, she lets me bath her. I dress her in her new pyjamas and dry her hair. Abruptly she bursts into tears, wailing, ‘I want Mummy.’ Her face is creased and red, tears streaming from her eyes and snot bubbling from her nose. I sit her on my lap and rock her and murmur little phrases: ‘You’re sad, Mummy’s dead and she can’t come back. Poor Florence. Poor Mummy. Poor Daddy.’ I weep too, but silently, not wanting to distress her any more. Gradually her crying fades and stops. She has hiccups.

  Downstairs we read one of the books, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Of course we can go to the library and get more on Monday, if Jack and Florence are still here. I’ve no idea how long it will be until they can go home. I might ask Kay to take her to choose some books. I don’t know if I can face people at work. I want to hide away from the world.

  Florence insists on sharing a room with Jack, so I tell him to use mine and I’ll take the spare room. I fetch some things I’ll need, then he puts her to bed and waits until she is asleep and comes downstairs leaving the doors open so we can hear if she cries out.

  Kay advises us to only talk to the media with guidance from the police. She says they may ring me, so I put the answer-phone on to screen calls.

  Lizzie’s murder is all over the television news, reports accompanied by a picture of her, cropped from a family photo. Film of their house, sealed off with that tape they use, provides the backdrop for the reporter talking to the camera. They say the same thing each time. ‘Greater Manchester Police launched a murder inquiry today after the body of twenty-nine-year-old Lizzie Tennyson was discovered yesterday evening in her home in the Levenshulme area of the city. Lizzie Tennyson was married with one child, and police are asking for anyone with any information to come forward.’

  Bea, my oldest friend, is on the doorstep. Her face crumples when she sees me and I pull her inside and she gives me a hug so fierce I think she’ll crack my ribs. We go into the lounge. ‘I won’t stay,’ she says, ‘unless you—’

  ‘No, thanks.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s crazy.’

  ‘What can I do?’ she says. ‘Anything, anything at all?’

  My mind is blank, woolly. My mobile phone rings. It’s been going repeatedly; each time I check the display in case it’s Tony. He’s the only person I can entertain.

  ‘Ring round people,’ I say to Bea. ‘Tell them we don’t know anything at the moment. When we do, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘And I can pass it on.’ She’s trying so hard not to cry, it tears me up. We’re only fit for nods and clenched mouths by way of farewell.

  It makes me think of the deaf people Lizzie works with. When tragedy strikes them, do their signs fail, their fingers falter in the same way that words fail the hearing? Lizzie would know. There’s a split in my head: part of my brain thinking I must ask her, see what she says, and the other part saying, don’t be so bloody stupid, Lizzie’s not here any more. And she’s never coming back. I think it, I shape the words, but they don’t add up. Computer says no. You can’t get there from here. My heart cannot keep up with my head and I continually find myself imagining how I will describe all this to Lizzie.

  We play the messages on the answerphone at the end of the day. It’s agonizing to listen to people’s shock and grief and compassion. We make a note of who has rung. There’s a message from Rebecca, Lizzie’s oldest friend.

  ‘I just heard about Lizzie,’ she says. ‘Oh Ruth, I am so sorry. If there’s anything I can do . . .’ She starts crying. As a graphic designer, the only job she’s found since graduating is in London. She can’t afford to rent anywhere in the capital so she’s staying with friends, sleeping on their sofa.

  I steel myself and ring her back. ‘Rebecca, it’s Ruth.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.

  ‘I know. Oh Rebecca.’

  ‘What happen
ed?’

  ‘We don’t really know anything yet.’ I have learnt that I’m not the only one wanting answers; it’s natural to seek understanding, comprehension for something so hard to believe. ‘Nothing will happen for a while, with the funeral,’ I tell her. ‘They, erm . . . they have to wait so an independent post-mortem can be done if there’s going to be a trial.’

  There has to be a trial, doesn’t there? What purgatory would it be to never know who’d hurt Lizzie, to never know the truth?

  You were a bogeyman back then. I reinvented you time and again during that long day. The vicious stalker with a fatal obsession, back to carry out your threats. Those sick letters, awful warnings preyed on us all for months. We should have acted, protected her.

  Or I pictured you as the prowler, a blurred photofit with dead eyes and jail tattoos, peering in through the windows, sizing up the house, or Lizzie. Watching. Perhaps waiting for Jack to leave. To do what? What were your intentions? Did you plan to take her life, or did something go so terribly wrong that you beat her to keep her quiet?

  I wondered if you slept. If you curled up somewhere, safe and warm, muscles relaxing, breath becoming shallow, thoughts fading. Of course I preferred to think of you as frantic, sickened, haunted, like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. I had glimpses of you ‘coming to your senses’, the guilt and horror at what you’d done growing so large as to be unbearable, so you would have to confess. Turn yourself in and beg for forgiveness.

  Even then, part of needing to know who you were was because I needed someone to blame. Someone to hate.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sunday 13 September 2009

  Tony comes back about nine. He comes back and I’m relieved he comes alone. And he and Jack and I drink and talk about Lizzie. An impromptu wake, I suppose.

  Our anecdotes are punctuated by expressions of disbelief and sudden urgent questions as we pick over the few stark facts we have. Time and again we are brought up short, confronted by her death. Almost a rhythm to it, waves breaking over us, cold and salty, a merciless tide.

  Jack listens intently to the reminiscences that Tony and I share of Lizzie’s childhood. The birth was a nightmare, with the baby in distress and me being rushed for an emergency C-section. And it turned our world upside down, not necessarily in a good way at first. The operation left me very weak and it took a long time for me to regain any strength and energy. Which Lizzie snatched from me. She had colic and screamed for hours on end, she kept me marooned in the house, exhausted and weepy and slightly mad. Whenever I managed to get us both up and out, wherever we went, she cried the place down. She failed to thrive, which made me feel like a failure, and I gave up trying to breastfeed, but the formula only seemed to aggravate her colic. We spent money we didn’t have trying every possible solution: cranial massage, homeopathy, Reiki healing. Nothing helped.

  One night Tony got in late from the salvage yard to find me weeping in the kitchen and Lizzie screaming in the lounge. The oven had broken, just conked out halfway through baking some potatoes. It was a bitter winter’s day, and even with the heating on, the house was chilly. No double glazing or decent insulation back then.

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ Tony said. He can fix just about anything.

  ‘It’ll still take another hour even if you can,’ I shouted. ‘It’s seven already.’ Lizzie was still screaming.

  ‘Does she need changing?’ Tony said.

  ‘No idea. Why don’t you have a look? I’m not doing anything else today. I’m sick of it. Sick of it all.’

  He disappeared into the living room. I heard him pick her up, jig her about. The screaming halted for a moment, then resumed.

  I lit a cigarette, went outside and smoked it in the perishing wind. I felt cheated: it wasn’t meant to be like this.

  When I came back in, my eyes watering and my fingers numb, Tony said, ‘Get ready, we’ll go out to eat.’

  ‘The baby,’ I said scornfully.

  ‘My mum’s coming round.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s—’

  ‘Get ready,’ he said, his eyes snapping at me.

  ‘Fine!’ I flung back.

  I left him mixing formula, Lizzie grizzling in her bouncy chair, and went to change. I felt ugly, lumpen and sullen. My hair greasy and in need of a trim. But I made myself halfway presentable with clothes that didn’t reek of baby sick, and when his mother arrived we left her to it.

  We went to Rusholme and stuffed ourselves full of curry. The food, the warm buzz of the restaurant, the change of scene worked on me like a tonic. My frustration, my unhappiness ebbed away and I determined to ignore the whisper of anxiety at being away from the baby. We even managed to talk about something other than Lizzie. Tony had been running the architectural salvage business on his own for two years after taking it over from his uncle. He was specializing in interior features: stained glass, wood balustrades, tiles and fire surrounds, cornices and dado rails. In the wholesale rush to convert and modernize, these were being ripped out of old villas and terraces. But some people still valued traditional items, and Tony’s business was steadily growing.

  From the curry house we went to the pub. We hadn’t been out for a drink together since Lizzie was born. After a couple of halves of Guinness, I told him that I definitely wanted to go back to work after my six months’ leave, but part time if we could possibly manage it. And I also announced that I didn’t want to have any more children. ‘I know everyone says that at first,’ I told him, ‘but I really can’t do this again.’

  ‘It’s bound to be different,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘because it isn’t going to happen. I mean it.’ What I was saying was serious and he needed to realize it. ‘If you want more kids, you need to be honest with me, and not go along with it thinking I might change my mind. Because I won’t.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I wanted to be a dad, I wanted a child. We’ve got a child. That’s fine.’

  I stared at him, into those blue-green eyes, and he met my gaze. He meant what he said.

  Florence was so different from Lizzie. Polar opposites. As long as she was fed and clean and warm enough, she was happy. She cried if she needed something but not those raging, painful howls her mother had made, the sort that clawed inside your skull and scraped at your nerves.

  ‘When Lizzie met you,’ I say to Jack, ‘when you started going out. She was so . . . giddy.’

  I remember her bursting to tell us: ‘The one who played Cassius, the one with the dark hair.’

  Lizzie had been sign-language interpreting at the Royal Exchange. One of her first big jobs and she was petrified. We were worried at first; Jack was living with someone, but Lizzie insisted that he was an honourable man. He would tell his partner. Of course I fretted: if he could be fickle once . . . But Lizzie knew he was the great love of her life. She never doubted they’d be together.

  And she was right. Jack left his girlfriend in London and moved to Manchester.

  ‘And your proposal!’ We laugh with delight and another wave of shame runs through me. Lizzie is dead. I ought never to laugh again.

  The men catch my mood.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tony says, his eyes on me.

  ‘She was embarrassed,’ Jack says after a pause.

  ‘But she loved it,’ I say. ‘The romance of it.’ Several months after their first meeting, Jack was playing in What the Butler Saw at the Birmingham Rep, and Lizzie was doing the signed performances.

  At the end of the show, after the curtain call, Jack remained on stage, and the technician, who’d been primed, played a drum roll, alerting the audience, who were already on their feet ready to leave. Lizzie was sitting at the side of the stage, near the wings.

  Jack had practised his message and began to sign to her. At first she did nothing, just went bright red. ‘I was too surprised,’ she told me. Jack repeated the signs: Lizzie, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?

 
Blushing furiously, she stood up and translated to the audience.

  A hush of expectation fell over the theatre, broken only by a couple of wolf whistles and someone yelling, ‘Say yes.’ And answering laughter. Then Lizzie in turn signed to Jack. Yes, I will. I love you. And said it aloud. The place erupted with applause and cheers and catcalls.

  No one wants to break up our little circle, but eventually at almost two in the morning Tony calls a cab and Jack says good night.

  Lizzie was heartbroken when we split up. Is it different for any children? Are there those who find relief in the separation, in the cessation of hostilities? Perhaps.

  Lizzie was only fifteen when the mayhem of our troubles clashed with her own teenage trauma. Sometimes it felt like we were three adolescents competing as to who could slam the door hardest, stay silent longest, shout the loudest.

  In my memory, that period lasted for years. In reality, it was no more than three or four months. We weren’t complete idiots, and even mired in our own pain, we could see how it was hurting Lizzie.

  It was the greatest shock of my life.

  Before this.

  Tony stayed home from work one day. I was doing the late shift at the library and Lizzie had left for school.

  ‘Don’t you need to open up?’ I said. He had been working all hours, making the most of the lighter nights and a fresh wave of property development in the region.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said, a peculiar shifty look on his face.

  I had no idea.

  We sat at the kitchen table. I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine what it was about; my mind alighted on possibilities: financial trouble, a health scare, another discussion about moving house (every few years we’d go through the rigmarole of considering a move, of looking for some wreck and doing it up and selling it on as another way to make some money. But we’d never finally bitten the bullet).

  ‘I’ve met someone else,’ he said.

  I stared at him. Clutching at the possibility that I’d misheard, misunderstood. Waiting in case there was something more to come, a punchline, another phrase to set me straight and allow me to breathe again.