Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

Lizzie shared my hurt and outrage when Tony and I finally told her what was going on. It would have been easy to form a little cabal, the two of us, to ostracize him, close ranks and sit together picking over his betrayal for our entertainment. Or to force him to choose between Denise and his daughter. But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be the stereotype of the cuckolded wife, cold and acerbic and unforgiving. Nor did I want Lizzie to be damaged in the fallout from the split.

Yes, I was hurt, and it took me a long time to feel at peace again in my life. To be comfortable in my solitude. Fourteen years since the parting, and to be honest, there is still a residue there. The scars, perhaps, still niggle and ache.

I’ve drunk at least a bottle of wine but I am stone-cold sober. I feel bruised everywhere, my muscles aching, my back sore when I stretch or breathe deeply. As if I’ve been in an accident.

Milky slips up the stairs with me, finds my door shut and yowls and I tell him to hush. He slinks away. When I come into the spare room from the bathroom, he nearly trips me up.

On the pillow, a scrap, bloody strings, half a wing, wet feathers, a beak. A dead chick. I swallow my cry of surprise and fetch tissue paper, take the bird down and put it in the compost bin. Milky at my heels, I retrace my steps.

I spend the night fitfully, frightened to sleep, the cat at my feet. Questions wheeling through my mind: Did she die quickly? Did she suffer? Did she call out, did she speak? What were her last words? Blunt force trauma. How many times did he strike her? What with? Was he counting? Did he kick her? Did he rape her? Why kill her, my Lizzie? Why?

When I do let go, my dreams are dark and steeped in blood, my arms full of dead things that I cannot wake.

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Early Monday morning, there is a nanosecond of innocent ignorance as I come to and find myself in the spare bed. And then the fist of reality hits like a lump hammer. Shock spikes through me, an electric surge bringing with it an overwhelming feeling that I’ve done something very, very wrong. Akin to guilt or shame, the emotion sits cold and heavy in the pit of my stomach. Not logical but visceral, and I don’t even attempt to analyse it.

No one else is up; it is six o’clock. Outside it is raining, a misty drizzle, and the light is violet grey.

Out of habit, I pour a bowl of muesli and add milk. The first mouthful brings nausea as violent as morning sickness. Mourning sickness? A band of heat around my head, saliva thick in my throat, a spasm rippling up from my stomach.

Restless, feeling confined, I leave a note and go out for a walk. The earliest commuters are about, walking briskly to the train station, or driving past me, sole occupants in their cars. None of the pedestrians speak to me. I keep my eyes averted just in case; we are prone to nods and smiles when we pass each other up here, so this signals that I am not available. I am invisible. A dishevelled grandmother in a sensible waterproof and muddy shoes. Thankfully, I don’t meet anyone who recognizes me.

It’s as if I’m experiencing everything through a filter, and the rain blurs the world even further. I wander up to the park, ignoring the joggers and the dog-walkers and their animals. In the gloom of the day, a Japanese maple glows luminous red. Reaching the orchard area, I see apples on the trees. Could I eat an apple?

There was a library project we hosted this time last year with the local Sure Start. The children came here and picked apples and then returned to the library for a puppet show about healthy eating and got to polish off their harvest, suitably washed and cored. The trees are labelled. I spot the Cox’s orange pippins, my favourite, and twist a small one from the branch, rub the fruit on my jacket and take a bite. It is tart and crisp and stings my taste buds. My eyes water. All those myths, apples that bring evil. Snow White choking, Eve and the snake. I won’t be tempting fate. The serpent has already come for me.

The park is full of Lizzie, in her pram, on the climbing frame – though the old one was dull grey metal, four-square, not the wood and rope wigwam that Florence plays on nowadays. Lizzie flat on her back, having a full-blown tantrum, trying to kick me when I went to pick her up, her face red with rage and her hair still a toffee colour before the blonde came in. Blonde like I used to be. My hair now is white, better than grey, but people often assume I’m even older than I am because of it. Lizzie on the field for those family fun days. Later, bigger, huddled on the bowling green benches with her mates, smoking fags.

I manage half the apple before my stomach revolts. I leave the rest for the birds.

Jack and Florence are in the kitchen when I arrive home. She’s eating cereal and humming to herself. I can’t make out the tune. What on earth is going on in her head? Does she understand what she’s been told? Should I talk to her about it as well? I’m not sure I can do it without collapsing in tears. I remember my own high panic and deep unease as a child on the rare occasion my mother cried.

‘I’ve been sent through a summary of the post-mortem,’ Kay says when she arrives. ‘Would you like Tony to be here? Or I can do it separately?’

‘I’ll ring him,’ I say.

Tony wears the same clothes he had on yesterday. I hesitate, but he moves to me, we hug again, and I’m thankful. We are her parents, after all; no one else can share our perspective. All our arguments and enmity, the bitterness and sorrow, set aside now.

We sit around the kitchen table. More cups of tea. The only thing I can stomach. I have a DVD of Kung Fu Panda and I put it on in the living room and leave the door open so that Florence, clinging to Jack’s leg, can hear it. It takes a few minutes: she goes through to look and then comes back, twice. The third time she stays there.

‘She’s checking on you,’ I say to Jack, ‘in case you disappear as well. Has she said anything?’

‘No, nothing.’

I’ve no idea whether that is a healthy response or not.

Kay has the official papers in her hand. We fall silent and she clears her throat, then reads them to us. ‘The post-mortem was carried out yesterday afternoon by Mr Hathaway. He’s one of the Home Office pathologists for the region. It began at two fifteen and lasted two and a half hours.’

It’s peculiar, but the facts and figures help. Lizzie’s murder is impossible to deal with, to frame, but numbers, names, procedures are something to hold on to. Crutches, or footholds in the rock we have to scale. Are we climbing up or climbing down? A peak or a pothole? It is bleak and unmapped, our journey, but these facts are like sparks of light, matches that flame for a second and then gutter out in the fierce wind.

‘There was severe blunt force trauma to Lizzie’s head, her shoulders, her right arm. A dozen blows at least.’

I start to shake, everywhere, uncontrollably. But I say, ‘Go on.’

‘The back of her skull was-’

‘Do we need this?’ Tony bursts out, ‘Do we really have to hear-’

‘No,’ Kay says immediately.

‘I do,’ I say, ‘I want to know. Everything.’

It is true. There’s a void, a hunger that can’t be sated. The gap left by Lizzie’s absence is huge. Unfathomable. I need to fill it with anything I can. Better to fill it with truth than fantasy. No matter how dark the contents of the report are, they will never match what I dredge up in my imagination.

‘Tony, if you want to wait?’ Kay says.

‘It’s fine… just…’ Tony clamps his hands over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut tight.

Jack is silent, ashen, trembling as I am.