Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

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.