Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

But no. So little has changed. I am still adrift, still drowning in my hate. And guilt.

The hate will be obvious to anyone with half a brain, but the guilt is just as corrosive. A wild, frantic sense of having failed Lizzie, a chill that aches in my guts all the time. The only escape, when my dreams allow, is sleep. Where I forget for long enough and my muscles ease. Many nights I wake with a sense of panic, knowing I will die too, die soon, am dying. Know with a lurch that Florence is dead. Reaching out in bed to feel her warmth, the jump of her heart.

Round and round my mind goes, sifting through the details from the trial, wanting to embrace them, assimilate them, absorb them into every cell and sinew, but how can I do that and achieve peace when so much is still hidden from me? There are too many gaps, holes where his silence, his lies, stain the story.

I wonder if a transcript from the trial would help, but when I enquire, they tell me it would cost over two thousand pounds. Money I don’t have. After the cost of the funeral, the money spent on repairing their house (which has now been repossessed), the money I need for Florence, I am living on credit. Something else to worry about.

During daylight hours I have mood swings; anger, bright and fierce and hot, comes from nowhere over the pettiest setback, the most trivial incident.

Stella has turned out to be an idiot. Oozing false sympathy and bitching behind my back in a passive-aggressive way. It would be easier to deal with her if she would be frank, but everything is elliptical and delivered with that blinding smile and indulgent tone.

‘Shit-stirrer,’ Tony says when I describe it. He takes Florence out, he and Denise; they make a point of stopping for a cup of tea when they bring her back.

Today, in the library, I’m working on lost and damaged: sending out letters to the borrowers whose books are long overdue; assessing items that have been returned ripped or defaced, marked with tea stains or cigarette burns, one with a rasher of bacon used as a bookmark.

Stella hovers over my shoulder. Never a good sign.

‘Some people have no respect,’ she tuts, nodding at the damaged pile. ‘Like animals, some of them. It’s a miracle they can read.’

‘Most of it’s accidental,’ I say. ‘Though there’s a few with malice aforethought, like this one.’ I pick up a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. ‘Someone has crossed out every swear word in blue biro.’

‘It’s the ones who scribble in swear words that I’m more concerned about,’ she says.

‘It’s vandalism either way,’ I point out.

‘There’s no call for such gratuitous language,’ she says.

It’s a perennial issue for a small minority of readers, who use our knowledge to help them screen out books they’ll be offended by. The majority of borrowers are broad-minded, though, and have no problem at all with earthy prose if it suits the book. The same is true of librarians, who love books with a passion; someone narrow-minded is a rarity in the service. And I’m stuck with her as my supervisor. I think of the Billy Connolly quote: There is no such thing as bad language. It’s just our morals that are fucked.

‘It’s not gratuitous. It’s a great book, the language fits. Have you read it?’

Stella shakes her head. Does she read? We’ve not talked books since we met.

‘I was going to ask you to unpack and check off the new stock. I hadn’t realized this would take you quite so long, though I understand that with everything that’s happened…’

I push myself up and away from the desk, a sharp pain in my knee as I do. Anger flaring. ‘You do it, for fuck’s sake, if you think you can do it any quicker. I’ll discharge the new stock.’

Her mouth falls open, a perfect circle. I know I should apologize, but I am out of control. I go and hide in the room at the back with the boxes of books that have arrived.

After a couple of days off sick I go back, my tail between my legs. I can’t spin it out any longer with Florence to think of now, and although Tony and Denise chip in, I have to earn a living. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper,’ I say to Stella. ‘I know it’s not acceptable. I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes,’ she says. She’s still in a huff, though, her mouth pursed with censure. She punishes me over the next few weeks, on my back all the time, but feigning concern. ‘Ruth, have you… Ruth, if you’re feeling up to it… Ruth, could you… Ruth… Ruth.’ Always showing her teeth. Her eyes cold. I dread going into work now because of Stella.

I take Florence to the GP and get a referral for someone who might be able to help her. It means travelling down to London and halfway across the city. A marathon trek, so we stay with Rebecca on an airbed.

The therapist is a middle-aged man, bearded, plump. One of those people whose eyes dance with kindness, so that just seeing him lifts the heart a little. He speaks quite directly to Florence.

The first session, and she is playing with some Duplo dolls on the floor.

‘Show me what happened to Mummy,’ he says.

Florence stops dead for a minute, and I expect her to withdraw as she so often does, but then she places one doll face down on the floor.

How can she know Lizzie was on the floor like that? Jack said he had shielded her from the scene? Held her so she wouldn’t see. Did she come down while he was busy setting up his alibi and see Lizzie? Run back up and hide? Did she peep as he carried her out? Or is the way she’s placed the doll no more than Florence’s interpretation of dead? The doll has to be lying down if it’s dead, and she only has two choices of how to put it on the floor.

I don’t suppose there are many sentences exchanged over the next hour, but each one elicits a nugget of information.

‘What happened to Mummy?’ the therapist says.

‘She fell down dead,’ Florence chants, her chin bobbing up and down on each syllable.

‘Why did she do that?’

‘Daddy did it.’ She knows because I told her after the trial that the court had decided it was Daddy who hurt Mummy and made her dead and he had to stay in prison for a long time.

‘On his own?’ she said. Was she feeling sorry for him?

‘There are other people there – other people who have done naughty things and people looking after them.’

She gave one of her inscrutable little sighs and said no more.

The therapist talks to me too, and asks me how I feel about Lizzie’s death.

‘Furious,’ I say. ‘I play it over and over. I had hoped with the conviction that it would change.’ As I talk, my cheeks flame hot and my belly burns. ‘I hate him, I hate him so much. It’s not enough, him behind bars.’

‘What would be enough?’ he says.

I shake my head. There is no reply possible. ‘Nothing. Even if I could kill the bastard, it wouldn’t bring her back.’

‘When I ask you about Lizzie,’ he says, ‘you talk about Jack.’

‘He killed her.’

‘You lost her. We all grieve differently; there are recognized stages but we may go through them in different ways, revisit some. You are angry, and if this anger is all-consuming, you may find it hard to reach the other stages. In particular, acceptance.’

How can anyone ever accept this? ‘I just want him to pay for what he did, to suffer like I have.’

‘There’s a saying: “He who would seek revenge should first dig two graves.” ’

I nod, I’ve heard it before. ‘It is killing me,’ I agree.

‘Have you heard the term “complicated grief”?’

‘No.’

‘Grief is a natural process, it’s the way we work through and eventually accept the death of a loved one. With complicated bereavement, the process stalls, the bereaved person is stuck, they find it impossible to come to terms with their loss. Unable to move forward.’