Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

Downstairs we read one of the books, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Of course we can go to the library and get more on Monday, if Jack and Florence are still here. I’ve no idea how long it will be until they can go home. I might ask Kay to take her to choose some books. I don’t know if I can face people at work. I want to hide away from the world.

Florence insists on sharing a room with Jack, so I tell him to use mine and I’ll take the spare room. I fetch some things I’ll need, then he puts her to bed and waits until she is asleep and comes downstairs leaving the doors open so we can hear if she cries out.

Kay advises us to only talk to the media with guidance from the police. She says they may ring me, so I put the answer-phone on to screen calls.

Lizzie’s murder is all over the television news, reports accompanied by a picture of her, cropped from a family photo. Film of their house, sealed off with that tape they use, provides the backdrop for the reporter talking to the camera. They say the same thing each time. ‘Greater Manchester Police launched a murder inquiry today after the body of twenty-nine-year-old Lizzie Tennyson was discovered yesterday evening in her home in the Levenshulme area of the city. Lizzie Tennyson was married with one child, and police are asking for anyone with any information to come forward.’

Bea, my oldest friend, is on the doorstep. Her face crumples when she sees me and I pull her inside and she gives me a hug so fierce I think she’ll crack my ribs. We go into the lounge. ‘I won’t stay,’ she says, ‘unless you-’

‘No, thanks.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s crazy.’

‘What can I do?’ she says. ‘Anything, anything at all?’

My mind is blank, woolly. My mobile phone rings. It’s been going repeatedly; each time I check the display in case it’s Tony. He’s the only person I can entertain.

‘Ring round people,’ I say to Bea. ‘Tell them we don’t know anything at the moment. When we do, I’ll let you know.’

‘And I can pass it on.’ She’s trying so hard not to cry, it tears me up. We’re only fit for nods and clenched mouths by way of farewell.

It makes me think of the deaf people Lizzie works with. When tragedy strikes them, do their signs fail, their fingers falter in the same way that words fail the hearing? Lizzie would know. There’s a split in my head: part of my brain thinking I must ask her, see what she says, and the other part saying, don’t be so bloody stupid, Lizzie’s not here any more. And she’s never coming back. I think it, I shape the words, but they don’t add up. Computer says no. You can’t get there from here. My heart cannot keep up with my head and I continually find myself imagining how I will describe all this to Lizzie.

We play the messages on the answerphone at the end of the day. It’s agonizing to listen to people’s shock and grief and compassion. We make a note of who has rung. There’s a message from Rebecca, Lizzie’s oldest friend.

‘I just heard about Lizzie,’ she says. ‘Oh Ruth, I am so sorry. If there’s anything I can do…’ She starts crying. As a graphic designer, the only job she’s found since graduating is in London. She can’t afford to rent anywhere in the capital so she’s staying with friends, sleeping on their sofa.

I steel myself and ring her back. ‘Rebecca, it’s Ruth.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.

‘I know. Oh Rebecca.’

‘What happened?’

‘We don’t really know anything yet.’ I have learnt that I’m not the only one wanting answers; it’s natural to seek understanding, comprehension for something so hard to believe. ‘Nothing will happen for a while, with the funeral,’ I tell her. ‘They, erm… they have to wait so an independent post-mortem can be done if there’s going to be a trial.’

There has to be a trial, doesn’t there? What purgatory would it be to never know who’d hurt Lizzie, to never know the truth?

You were a bogeyman back then. I reinvented you time and again during that long day. The vicious stalker with a fatal obsession, back to carry out your threats. Those sick letters, awful warnings preyed on us all for months. We should have acted, protected her.

Or I pictured you as the prowler, a blurred photofit with dead eyes and jail tattoos, peering in through the windows, sizing up the house, or Lizzie. Watching. Perhaps waiting for Jack to leave. To do what? What were your intentions? Did you plan to take her life, or did something go so terribly wrong that you beat her to keep her quiet?

I wondered if you slept. If you curled up somewhere, safe and warm, muscles relaxing, breath becoming shallow, thoughts fading. Of course I preferred to think of you as frantic, sickened, haunted, like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. I had glimpses of you ‘coming to your senses’, the guilt and horror at what you’d done growing so large as to be unbearable, so you would have to confess. Turn yourself in and beg for forgiveness.

Even then, part of needing to know who you were was because I needed someone to blame. Someone to hate.

Ruth

Sunday 13 September 2009

Tony comes back about nine. He comes back and I’m relieved he comes alone. And he and Jack and I drink and talk about Lizzie. An impromptu wake, I suppose.

Our anecdotes are punctuated by expressions of disbelief and sudden urgent questions as we pick over the few stark facts we have. Time and again we are brought up short, confronted by her death. Almost a rhythm to it, waves breaking over us, cold and salty, a merciless tide.

Jack listens intently to the reminiscences that Tony and I share of Lizzie’s childhood. The birth was a nightmare, with the baby in distress and me being rushed for an emergency C-section. And it turned our world upside down, not necessarily in a good way at first. The operation left me very weak and it took a long time for me to regain any strength and energy. Which Lizzie snatched from me. She had colic and screamed for hours on end, she kept me marooned in the house, exhausted and weepy and slightly mad. Whenever I managed to get us both up and out, wherever we went, she cried the place down. She failed to thrive, which made me feel like a failure, and I gave up trying to breastfeed, but the formula only seemed to aggravate her colic. We spent money we didn’t have trying every possible solution: cranial massage, homeopathy, Reiki healing. Nothing helped.

One night Tony got in late from the salvage yard to find me weeping in the kitchen and Lizzie screaming in the lounge. The oven had broken, just conked out halfway through baking some potatoes. It was a bitter winter’s day, and even with the heating on, the house was chilly. No double glazing or decent insulation back then.

‘I’ll fix it,’ Tony said. He can fix just about anything.

‘It’ll still take another hour even if you can,’ I shouted. ‘It’s seven already.’ Lizzie was still screaming.

‘Does she need changing?’ Tony said.

‘No idea. Why don’t you have a look? I’m not doing anything else today. I’m sick of it. Sick of it all.’

He disappeared into the living room. I heard him pick her up, jig her about. The screaming halted for a moment, then resumed.

I lit a cigarette, went outside and smoked it in the perishing wind. I felt cheated: it wasn’t meant to be like this.

When I came back in, my eyes watering and my fingers numb, Tony said, ‘Get ready, we’ll go out to eat.’

‘The baby,’ I said scornfully.

‘My mum’s coming round.’

‘I don’t know if that’s-’

‘Get ready,’ he said, his eyes snapping at me.

‘Fine!’ I flung back.

I left him mixing formula, Lizzie grizzling in her bouncy chair, and went to change. I felt ugly, lumpen and sullen. My hair greasy and in need of a trim. But I made myself halfway presentable with clothes that didn’t reek of baby sick, and when his mother arrived we left her to it.