Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

I look away.

Florence wakes and sits on Jack’s lap. She’s subdued, she must be bewildered; my house isn’t that big, and it’s full of people, including Kay, who she’s never met before.

‘Kay?’ I take her into the kitchen. ‘What do we tell Florence?’

‘Jack says she didn’t see anything?’ Kay checks.

‘That’s right; well,’ I amend, ‘as far as he knows.’ He was out at the gym so it’s possible Florence could have seen or heard something. There must have been some noise. Things were broken, weren’t they? Why do I think that? My impression of their living room is so sketchy, like a painting where the central subject is clear but everything beyond it is smudged and out of focus.

‘She needs to know,’ Kay says, ‘the simple facts. She might not understand.’

‘That makes two of us,’ I say bitterly.

Kay regards me steadily. ‘She’s four, she may not have a concept of death. She needs to understand that Mummy won’t be coming back, that her body doesn’t work any more, that she won’t wake up.’

‘I’ll get her breakfast first,’ I say tersely.

While Florence enjoys the bizarre novelty of having Grandpa Tony and Nana Denise watch her eat her Shreddies, I explain to Jack what Kay has told me.

‘I’ll do it,’ he says. ‘Can I take her upstairs?’

‘Yes, use my room or the spare room, there’s no one staying. If you want me to be there…’ He shakes my offer away.

It is the longest day. There seems to be no beginning to it and no end in sight. Florence is Jack’s shadow, and when it is time to identify the body I have to prise her off him, kicking and screaming. I had hoped to go, wanting to see Lizzie’s face, to be certain that the body I’d seen really was my daughter. To make it undeniably real. But Florence needs me here.

Jack’s parents, the Tennysons, are on their way from East Anglia, and Tony and Denise have left for now but Tony promised to return later.

After Jack gets back, he tells me that he had to identify Lizzie without looking at her face, which was covered because of the extent of the damage. He had to look at her hands and feet, her wedding ring and the tattoo on her right shoulder: a swallow in flight.

The savagery you must have used. To destroy her face. It astounds me.

Ruth

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

‘Can we go home now?’ Florence has a boiled egg with soldiers. I’m relieved to see her eating. She turns to her father, wiping crumbs from her tiny fingers, a smear of egg yolk on her cheek.

‘Not yet,’ Jack says.

‘When?’

‘Another day, I don’t know when.’

She thinks about this, a small frown darkening her expression. ‘I want Bert.’ Bert is Florence’s teddy bear. White originally, a gift from Tony and Denise, he is now a muddy grey colour, with bald and ragged ears which Florence liked to chew on as a toddler.

‘Can someone fetch it?’ I ask Kay. Surely retrieving a child’s toy from a different room in the house will not hamper their endeavours, but Kay shakes her head. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as you can collect anything. Do you have clothes here for Florence?’

‘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.