Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

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.’

I smile and nod, touched by his kindness.

Something shifts as I realize that not only have you taken Lizzie’s life and shattered ours, not only have you turned Lizzie from an ordinary person into a victim, but you have twisted my identity as well. Warped it. For ever more, for most people I will be Ruth, the woman whose daughter was killed. The mother of a murder victim. That’s what people will see first and above everything else; that’s how people will talk about me, will name me.

What is even more sickening is that it’s a role I’ve embraced in these last four years. Because of my hatred, my thirst for revenge, my greed to see you suffer. My obsession. I have allowed myself to disappear into the role of bereaved parent.

And that is partly why I’m writing to you. I want to be more than that. Break that typecasting.

They say no man is an island, they say we’re a construct of all the roles we play, but I am so very, very tired of this one.

You have brought such bitterness to my door. Filled my veins with such violent animosity and my heart with such hate that I can barely recognize myself any more. I want to find the old Ruth, the Ruth who cursed her screaming baby and rowed with her teenage daughter, the bibliophile who fell in love and copied out poems and learnt to grow vegetables and had a penchant for soul music and chocolate and liked cats.

You’ve done your level best to kill her too, but she’s not dead yet, not completely.

Ruth

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Six days. What’s that in hours? I work it out. One hundred and forty-four. It feels longer. Although time is a pretty nebulous concept, the hours and days bleed together. How many seconds? How many heartbeats?

Had you any idea the police were closing in on you? Or as the days rolled by did you breathe easily, and dare to hope you’d got away with it?

Florence has not touched the doll since she brought it home. She keeps trying to cuddle Milky, hauling the poor animal up with her arms under his stomach. He’s placid, won’t scratch or bite her, but he thrashes about and runs off.

Florence and I are alone. Florence is at the table eating some beans on toast. Kay has a meeting with the investigation team, Jack’s having a rest. We are still stumbling through our lives. I’m sorting through some clean clothes left neglected in the basket. Even this simple task seems to require a Herculean effort.

One of my socks, old grey wool, has a hole in the toe. No point in keeping it. I stick my hand in, wiggle my finger through the hole, put on a funny fluting voice. ‘Hello.’ I make the sock bow.

‘What is it?’ says Florence.

‘I don’t know. Maybe…’ I gather the fabric and narrow it into a windsock shape, ‘maybe it’s a Clanger.’

‘What’s a Clanger?’