I’m breathless by the time I set her down again. Aware of the oven, smeared in blackening foam, waiting for my attention.
Monday 15 April 2013
It’s a chance article in the Guardian that leads me to Dr Meredith Jansen. She has been advising on a restorative justice programme in El Salvador and has written a book about it. She trained as a psychologist, went into the health service and developed a role in trauma counselling. She has also been a mediator. Although I can find references to her on the Internet, I don’t know how to contact her, until an announcement on LinkedIn that says she is running a training programme based at University College London.
I write to the university and hear nothing.
I ring UCL but the switchboard have no extension number for her.
Then I get an email.
She warns me that she doesn’t think she can help, but she will be in Manchester visiting family in a fortnight’s time; perhaps we could meet then and she could find out a little more.
The rest is history. Slow-moving, but gradually progressing towards an agreement brokered by Dr Jansen. She meets with me three times, the same with Jack. I start my letters.
And now I wait with her in the prison, in a special room. Wait for our first face-to-face meeting. Dr Jansen, Meredith, will be present; we have agreed the terms of engagement.
Now that I am here, I want to bolt, to turn on my heel and put as much distance as possible between us. My skin feels cold; a chill steals through my stomach and bowels. My ears sing and hiss.
I am frightened.
There is a knock at the door.
They are bringing him in.
Part Four
You sit on the chair opposite me. Your face is pale, drawn, your eyes ringed with shadow.
For a long time I cannot meet your gaze. I study my hands while Dr Meredith repeats the agreed protocol for the meeting. She will be with us throughout, guiding us.
As she finishes, I raise my eyes to look at you, and you glance away and back, away again. Rub your palms together.
Your discomfort is a balm.
‘Is there anything you wish to say now?’ Meredith asks me. ‘Before Jack begins?’
‘No.’
‘Jack?’ She invites you to start.
‘I’m sorry,’ you say. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
For what? I think. Say it, say it. What you’ve done. I need it spelled out. I need it in letters ten feet tall, lit in neon. I need it carved in granite. I need it broadcast from the rooftops. I need to hear it.
‘Please go on,’ Meredith says.
‘I killed Lizzie, I took her life, and I am so sorry. I’m sorry I did it, and I’m sorry I lied about it. I loved her so much.’ Your voice is small, shaky.
I hold myself rigid, desperate not to collapse, to stay strong enough to hear all I’ve come to hear, to learn answers to all my questions.
‘Ruth, is there anything you want to say?’ Meredith asks me.
‘Why did you lie?’
You blow out a breath, knuckle your fists together. ‘I didn’t want to end up here,’ you say. ‘I didn’t want to lose Florence.’
I think of her astride your shoulders, curled in your arms that awful night, clinging to your legs and screaming at the police, leaping at the sight of you at the funeral.
‘I was scared,’ you add after a pause.
In the silence I can hear Meredith breathing, hear the click as you swallow.
‘Why have you confessed now?’ I say. And as I speak, I am aware that I’m putting off the moment when I hear the full unvarnished truth, because I am frightened.
You begin to speak. ‘It was eating away at me. I got very depressed, it was destroying me. I tried not to think about it but I couldn’t stop. It got worse. And, erm . . . I started thinking about . . . suicide. A breakdown of sorts. So . . . erm . . .’ You take a deep breath, readying yourself to talk.
Fear rises in me like a tornado, swirling black, devouring me, and I start to my feet. Close to fainting, my head prickling, eyes awash with dancing dots. ‘I can’t do this, I can’t—’
‘We’ll take a break,’ Meredith says. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t wish to. We can leave at any time. Let’s go next door for a moment.’
We leave you and go through to an adjacent space. My teeth are chattering in my head. I can smell Lizzie’s blood; the shock feels fresh, my heart bruised and aching.
‘Breathe,’ Meredith says. ‘Slow, steady. Take your time.’
She does not pressure me, nor rush me.
Should I go? Should I leave and try again another time? Would that be any easier? If I go now, will I ever come back? Ever know?
Oh Lizzie.
‘I want to carry on,’ I say.
Meredith nods.
We go back in.
Your face is wet. Your nose red. You have been weeping.
I am poised, on the tightrope, on the cliff edge, at the high point of the zip wire. ‘Tell me,’ I say. Plunging, tumbling, vertigo in my head.
‘That day,’ you clear your throat, ‘it had been difficult. We were struggling money-wise, we were having to take a break from the mortgage. We’d been shopping and then there was Lizzie’s haircut.’ You bite your cheek. I wait. ‘We had tea and put Florence to bed. Lizzie put Florence to bed,’ you amend. ‘I was angry, angry about everything, not having any work, the fact that Lizzie had spent over seventy pounds on her hair, but I hadn’t said anything to her yet.’
‘Why not?’ I interrupt.
You consider for a moment, then say, ‘Because I wanted to take it out on her. I wanted to hit her. I was winding up to it. I never saw it like that back then, but the course I’ve been doing, the anger management, that’s what I’ve learnt. I wanted to hit her.’
It is hard to hear.
‘She said she had something to tell me, she hoped I’d be happy.’ You shake your head several times. I can see the rise and fall of your chest, as if the words are pulsing to escape. ‘She was pregnant.’
You knew. Something flies loose inside me.
‘I said she’d have to get rid of it. We could barely feed and clothe Florence, let alone another child. We started arguing. She was saying that I could find some other work, office work, temping or a call centre, that we’d manage. She wouldn’t listen to me.’
I know what’s coming, can feel the vibrations underfoot, sense it in the way every hair on my body rises.
‘Did she shout at you?’ I say. The need for the tiniest specific, accurate detail is acute. I want it all pinned down, to the nth degree.
‘No, she knew not to shout.’
A pang in my heart.
‘You’d hit her before?’
‘Yes,’ you say simply, your mouth working.
‘How many times?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sorry.’
‘How often, then?’ I say.
‘Three or four times a year.’
I hate you. Why could she never tell me? ‘You hit her when she was expecting Florence, and the summer before she died, like Rebecca said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you use a weapon before?’
‘Sometimes. Not the poker.’ Your voice tight.
‘What, then?’
‘A wine bottle, her straighteners.’
I groan in sorrow. Start to cry, wipe the tears away fiercely.
‘Are you all right to continue?’ Dr Meredith says. ‘Would you like a break?’
‘No, I want to go on.’ Go on for Lizzie and for Florence and myself. I’m frozen in grief, entombed in my bitter loss. I need a way to shatter the stasis, smash through the crypt I find myself in.
‘She wouldn’t listen to me.’ You speak softly. ‘She kept saying that we’d work something out, that another child would be company for Florence, that she’d go back to work soon after the baby.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I was shouting: “You stupid bitch, you fucking stupid, selfish bitch.” �
� The words are blows. But I will take them: every consonant, every vowel. ‘ “No way are you having a baby, you hear me, get rid of it.” ’ You jab a finger half-heartedly, a faint echo of that anger.
‘Where was she? Was she sitting or standing?’ I say.
‘She was sitting, on the big sofa. I was standing. Then she got up. She was frightened.’
‘Frightened of you? How do you know?’
‘She had her eyes down.’ You take a tremulous breath. ‘She knew I was . . . I was losing it. We both knew. She stood up and she said, “No, I’m not going to do that. I’ll leave you if I have to.” And I don’t . . . I don’t remember picking up the poker.’
Sweat springs and cools under my arms and at the back of my neck. A chemical taste on my tongue.
‘I must have just grabbed it.’ You press a hand to your mouth. My toes are curled rigid, my jaw clamped tight. My insides seething.
‘I hit her with it.’
‘Where?’ I whisper.
‘Her shoulder.’
‘Did you speak?’ I ask.
‘I said, “You will, you will. You’ll do what I say.” ’
‘What then?’
‘She lost her balance, fell towards the stove. But she recovered, stayed up, and then she grabbed me.’
‘Your arm?’ Those scratches. The skin she clawed from you. The damning evidence.
‘Yes.’
‘Did she speak?’
‘She said, “Please don’t, please please don’t.” ’ Your voice fractures.
Something collapses in me. Oh my baby girl. My lovely girl. My beautiful young woman. Oh my daughter. I close my eyes. I breathe. I look at you. ‘Go on.’
‘I hit her on the arm, then the head.’ You start weeping, your nose reddening, the tears running down your cheeks. ‘She fell to her knees.’
‘Did she speak?’
‘No, not again.’
Never again.
‘I don’t remember much. I know I kept striking out, and then she was still and there was blood. Everywhere there was blood.’ You are gulping, gasping as you talk. ‘I couldn’t believe it. What I’d done. I didn’t want anybody to know. I didn’t want to be found out. I wanted to run away. Hide. But there was Florence. I didn’t want her to know.’
‘All that noise and Florence didn’t come down.’
‘She knew not to.’ I think of Florence’s stern instruction: Stay in your room. ‘I looked in on her before I left and she was asleep.’
‘She heard you attack Lizzie,’ I say. ‘She told me.’
You flinch, cry out. Turn away.
I don’t stop. ‘And after, you cleared up like they said at the trial?’
‘Yes,’ you whisper.
‘You burnt your trainers?’
‘Yes.’
‘And sent those texts?’ I think of that last message, a fake request to me to babysit. The warm glow when I read it, a moment of connection with Lizzie, and then looking forward to seeing Florence.
‘Yes.’
‘You left Florence.’ Something catches in my throat. ‘You left Lizzie and went to the gym?’
‘Yes,’ you say.
‘Your clothes?’
You shuffle in your chair. ‘I went the back way, over the playing fields and round behind the shops. Where the takeaways are – there’s some dumpsters. I hid them in there, under bags of food waste.’
It is still so astonishing to me, what you have done. I have the facts, but still I cannot comprehend why you killed Lizzie, why you hit her in the first place. So I ask you, ‘Why did you ever hit her at all? Did your father hit you?’
You blush, a flood of red in your cheeks, up your throat. You swallow. ‘No.’
I stare at you. There must be something. ‘Jack?’
You inhale sharply, throw back your head. I can see the pulse in your neck. You slowly lower your head to face me. Tears stand in your eyes. ‘My mother did.’
Good God. Marian.
‘I was a handful, apparently,’ you say quietly. Then add more quickly, ‘But what happened, it’s my fault. There are no excuses. It’s down to me.’ You hide your face momentarily, then look at me, a naked gaze, anguish in your eyes, a frown across your brow. ‘I am so sorry, Ruth. Tell Florence too, please, I am so, so sorry.’
You cannot ask for my forgiveness outright. It is one of our ground rules. There is to be no pressure on me to forgive. No expectation of absolution.
Meredith asks me if there is anything I would like to ask by way of restitution. I shake my head. I cannot imagine what that might be, what would help at all. She asks if I have anything to say before we end, but I don’t. Nothing profound or perceptive or acutely intelligent. All I say is, ‘Not now. I’ll write.’
I am hollowed out.
Exhausted.
EPILOGUE
17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX
It’s taken me a while to write. Months, I know. Things got very difficult again after we met. It was as if I was grieving afresh. It brought it all back. All my energy went into making it through each day and caring for Florence.
If my meeting with you has achieved anything, it is a sort of settling. Lizzie’s death was obscene, a horrible tragedy, but now every element of it is known to me, now the ghastly steps of it have been laid out for me in full view, now I have retold it to myself endlessly, rehearsing it, memorizing it until I know every beat off by heart. So the chasm of ignorance that was filled with fantasy has gone. I have the truth. Stark and gruesome and cruel.
I pick my moment to talk to Florence about seeing you. We are at the park, having a picnic of cucumber sandwiches and cheese straws. Near enough to retreat home if she takes it badly.
We sit in the shade of a large oak at the edge of the field. Florence has collected some old acorns, missed by the squirrels, to take home. We will plant them and see if anything grows.
To help Florence I must constantly redraw you as a flawed man but not a monster. As someone who did something terribly wrong but knows it was wrong. Someone who had free will, who is sorry. She needs to know that you accept your guilt and are full of remorse.
‘I went to see Daddy, in prison.’
She looks surprised.
‘He’s really sorry he hurt Mummy, he wishes he hadn’t. He wants me to tell you he’s really, really sorry. He knows he made everyone sad, that we all miss Mummy, and he’s sad about that too. You were good. It’s not your fault. You were just a little girl and couldn’t help Mummy. What Daddy did was wrong and he is very, very sorry.’
‘All her blood came out.’
I swallow. ‘Did it?’ My heart aches in my chest. ‘Did you peep?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘I bet that was a bit scary.’
She looks crestfallen. She dips her head. ‘Is he coming home?’
‘No. You’re going to stay with me.’
‘For ever?
‘Yes, until you grow up and want a house of your own.’
‘I don’t want a house on my own, I want to stay in your house for ever and ever and ever.’
‘Fine.’
Of course I worry about her future. When Florence is eighteen, I’ll be seventy-one. What will happen if, or should I say when, my health falters? It is physically hard, the lifting and carrying, running around after her. I thought my child-rearing days were long gone. There will be more emotional challenges too. How could there not be? We will do our best. It’s all we can do. That and love.
Her speech is better, she’s a little more sociable, a little less clingy now. We no longer make those visits to London, but to be honest, I don’t think she will ever truly be free of the impact of your actions. She will have to live with that knowledge and hopefully accept it. Her life will go differently because of Lizzie’s murder. It will affect her on the deepest level. To expect her to rise above that, to be unaffected, is unrealistic and unfair. But she will know love and security and happiness with me. I wil
l endeavour to the best of my ability to give her the stability and the reassurance she craves.
Do your parents visit you? I imagine they will, but I don’t care much. We have not seen them since that awful time during the trial. Perhaps there wasn’t a strong bond there between them and your daughter in the first place, or maybe they decided it was best to stay away. I’m glad: it would have been very difficult for me and an added pressure on Florence, who finds it so hard to trust people.
We’re staying put in Manchester. I can’t see us anywhere else. A lovely Russian student rents my spare room. I’m looking for work. Most of the time I don’t get any response to my applications. I have yet to have an interview. There are so many people competing for so few vacancies. And I have my bus pass now, which is not seen as an advantage by prospective employers. On my CV I have to account for that break in employment, those lost months. I keep changing it from sabbatical to family bereavement and back. I claim all the benefits I can for Florence, but it amounts to a pittance. Like my pension. We live a very frugal life, and Tony contributes. There won’t be any foreign holidays or iPhones for Florence.
Slowly, slowly, all those thousands of other memories I have of Lizzie are getting stronger. Gradually replacing that bloody black night of her death. I am winning her back. Reclaiming her. And as I do, the love of her, the joy in her is diluting the bitterness and anger I feel for you. It’s fair to say that I no longer crave vengeance, no longer get drunk on imagining your pain, your destruction. I am no longer buried in my grief, no longer on the pyre day and night. It is resolving into something simpler, without the complication of that gnawing lust for vengeance.
I will never forget.
And I know now that it is beyond me to forgive. But having the truth from you has made it possible for me to at least comprehend what you have done. Alien though your actions were, they are no longer unfathomable. Just terribly sad. Such a terrible waste.
I do not know how those other people, the ones who do forgive, reach that point. I do not think you deserve my forgiveness, actually. And I am not sure it is a gift in my power. I think perhaps the only person who can truly forgive you is yourself.
Letters To My Daughter's Killer Page 19