Letters To My Daughter's Killer

Part Four

You sit on the chair opposite me. Your face is pale, drawn, your eyes ringed with shadow.

For a long time I cannot meet your gaze. I study my hands while Dr Meredith repeats the agreed protocol for the meeting. She will be with us throughout, guiding us.

As she finishes, I raise my eyes to look at you, and you glance away and back, away again. Rub your palms together.

Your discomfort is a balm.

‘Is there anything you wish to say now?’ Meredith asks me. ‘Before Jack begins?’

‘No.’

‘Jack?’ She invites you to start.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say. ‘I am so, so sorry.’

For what? I think. Say it, say it. What you’ve done. I need it spelled out. I need it in letters ten feet tall, lit in neon. I need it carved in granite. I need it broadcast from the rooftops. I need to hear it.

‘Please go on,’ Meredith says.

‘I killed Lizzie, I took her life, and I am so sorry. I’m sorry I did it, and I’m sorry I lied about it. I loved her so much.’ Your voice is small, shaky.

I hold myself rigid, desperate not to collapse, to stay strong enough to hear all I’ve come to hear, to learn answers to all my questions.

‘Ruth, is there anything you want to say?’ Meredith asks me.

‘Why did you lie?’

You blow out a breath, knuckle your fists together. ‘I didn’t want to end up here,’ you say. ‘I didn’t want to lose Florence.’

I think of her astride your shoulders, curled in your arms that awful night, clinging to your legs and screaming at the police, leaping at the sight of you at the funeral.

‘I was scared,’ you add after a pause.

In the silence I can hear Meredith breathing, hear the click as you swallow.

‘Why have you confessed now?’ I say. And as I speak, I am aware that I’m putting off the moment when I hear the full unvarnished truth, because I am frightened.

You begin to speak. ‘It was eating away at me. I got very depressed, it was destroying me. I tried not to think about it but I couldn’t stop. It got worse. And, erm… I started thinking about… suicide. A breakdown of sorts. So… erm…’ You take a deep breath, readying yourself to talk.

Fear rises in me like a tornado, swirling black, devouring me, and I start to my feet. Close to fainting, my head prickling, eyes awash with dancing dots. ‘I can’t do this, I can’t-’

‘We’ll take a break,’ Meredith says. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t wish to. We can leave at any time. Let’s go next door for a moment.’

We leave you and go through to an adjacent space. My teeth are chattering in my head. I can smell Lizzie’s blood; the shock feels fresh, my heart bruised and aching.

‘Breathe,’ Meredith says. ‘Slow, steady. Take your time.’

She does not pressure me, nor rush me.

Should I go? Should I leave and try again another time? Would that be any easier? If I go now, will I ever come back? Ever know?

Oh Lizzie.

‘I want to carry on,’ I say.

Meredith nods.

We go back in.

Your face is wet. Your nose red. You have been weeping.

I am poised, on the tightrope, on the cliff edge, at the high point of the zip wire. ‘Tell me,’ I say. Plunging, tumbling, vertigo in my head.

‘That day,’ you clear your throat, ‘it had been difficult. We were struggling money-wise, we were having to take a break from the mortgage. We’d been shopping and then there was Lizzie’s haircut.’ You bite your cheek. I wait. ‘We had tea and put Florence to bed. Lizzie put Florence to bed,’ you amend. ‘I was angry, angry about everything, not having any work, the fact that Lizzie had spent over seventy pounds on her hair, but I hadn’t said anything to her yet.’

‘Why not?’ I interrupt.

You consider for a moment, then say, ‘Because I wanted to take it out on her. I wanted to hit her. I was winding up to it. I never saw it like that back then, but the course I’ve been doing, the anger management, that’s what I’ve learnt. I wanted to hit her.’

It is hard to hear.

‘She said she had something to tell me, she hoped I’d be happy.’ You shake your head several times. I can see the rise and fall of your chest, as if the words are pulsing to escape. ‘She was pregnant.’

You knew. Something flies loose inside me.

‘I said she’d have to get rid of it. We could barely feed and clothe Florence, let alone another child. We started arguing. She was saying that I could find some other work, office work, temping or a call centre, that we’d manage. She wouldn’t listen to me.’

I know what’s coming, can feel the vibrations underfoot, sense it in the way every hair on my body rises.

‘Did she shout at you?’ I say. The need for the tiniest specific, accurate detail is acute. I want it all pinned down, to the nth degree.

‘No, she knew not to shout.’

A pang in my heart.

‘You’d hit her before?’

‘Yes,’ you say simply, your mouth working.

‘How many times?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sorry.’

‘How often, then?’ I say.

‘Three or four times a year.’

I hate you. Why could she never tell me? ‘You hit her when she was expecting Florence, and the summer before she died, like Rebecca said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you use a weapon before?’

‘Sometimes. Not the poker.’ Your voice tight.

‘What, then?’

‘A wine bottle, her straighteners.’

I groan in sorrow. Start to cry, wipe the tears away fiercely.

‘Are you all right to continue?’ Dr Meredith says. ‘Would you like a break?’

‘No, I want to go on.’ Go on for Lizzie and for Florence and myself. I’m frozen in grief, entombed in my bitter loss. I need a way to shatter the stasis, smash through the crypt I find myself in.

‘She wouldn’t listen to me.’ You speak softly. ‘She kept saying that we’d work something out, that another child would be company for Florence, that she’d go back to work soon after the baby.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I was shouting: “You stupid bitch, you fucking stupid, selfish bitch.” ’ The words are blows. But I will take them: every consonant, every vowel. ‘ “No way are you having a baby, you hear me, get rid of it.” ’ You jab a finger half-heartedly, a faint echo of that anger.

‘Where was she? Was she sitting or standing?’ I say.

‘She was sitting, on the big sofa. I was standing. Then she got up. She was frightened.’

‘Frightened of you? How do you know?’

‘She had her eyes down.’ You take a tremulous breath. ‘She knew I was… I was losing it. We both knew. She stood up and she said, “No, I’m not going to do that. I’ll leave you if I have to.” And I don’t… I don’t remember picking up the poker.’

Sweat springs and cools under my arms and at the back of my neck. A chemical taste on my tongue.

‘I must have just grabbed it.’ You press a hand to your mouth. My toes are curled rigid, my jaw clamped tight. My insides seething.

‘I hit her with it.’

‘Where?’ I whisper.

‘Her shoulder.’

‘Did you speak?’ I ask.

‘I said, “You will, you will. You’ll do what I say.” ’

‘What then?’

‘She lost her balance, fell towards the stove. But she recovered, stayed up, and then she grabbed me.’

‘Your arm?’ Those scratches. The skin she clawed from you. The damning evidence.

‘Yes.’

‘Did she speak?’

‘She said, “Please don’t, please please don’t.” ’ Your voice fractures.

Something collapses in me. Oh my baby girl. My lovely girl. My beautiful young woman. Oh my daughter. I close my eyes. I breathe. I look at you. ‘Go on.’

‘I hit her on the arm, then the head.’ You start weeping, your nose reddening, the tears running down your cheeks. ‘She fell to her knees.’

‘Did she speak?’

‘No, not again.’

Never again.

‘I don’t remember much. I know I kept striking out, and then she was still and there was blood. Everywhere there was blood.’ You are gulping, gasping as you talk. ‘I couldn’t believe it. What I’d done. I didn’t want anybody to know. I didn’t want to be found out. I wanted to run away. Hide. But there was Florence. I didn’t want her to know.’

‘All that noise and Florence didn’t come down.’

‘She knew not to.’ I think of Florence’s stern instruction: Stay in your room. ‘I looked in on her before I left and she was asleep.’

‘She heard you attack Lizzie,’ I say. ‘She told me.’

You flinch, cry out. Turn away.

I don’t stop. ‘And after, you cleared up like they said at the trial?’

‘Yes,’ you whisper.

‘You burnt your trainers?’

‘Yes.’

‘And sent those texts?’ I think of that last message, a fake request to me to babysit. The warm glow when I read it, a moment of connection with Lizzie, and then looking forward to seeing Florence.

‘Yes.’

‘You left Florence.’ Something catches in my throat. ‘You left Lizzie and went to the gym?’

‘Yes,’ you say.

‘Your clothes?’

You shuffle in your chair. ‘I went the back way, over the playing fields and round behind the shops. Where the takeaways are – there’s some dumpsters. I hid them in there, under bags of food waste.’

It is still so astonishing to me, what you have done. I have the facts, but still I cannot comprehend why you killed Lizzie, why you hit her in the first place. So I ask you, ‘Why did you ever hit her at all? Did your father hit you?’

You blush, a flood of red in your cheeks, up your throat. You swallow. ‘No.’

I stare at you. There must be something. ‘Jack?’

You inhale sharply, throw back your head. I can see the pulse in your neck. You slowly lower your head to face me. Tears stand in your eyes. ‘My mother did.’

Good God. Marian.

‘I was a handful, apparently,’ you say quietly. Then add more quickly, ‘But what happened, it’s my fault. There are no excuses. It’s down to me.’ You hide your face momentarily, then look at me, a naked gaze, anguish in your eyes, a frown across your brow. ‘I am so sorry, Ruth. Tell Florence too, please, I am so, so sorry.’

You cannot ask for my forgiveness outright. It is one of our ground rules. There is to be no pressure on me to forgive. No expectation of absolution.

Meredith asks me if there is anything I would like to ask by way of restitution. I shake my head. I cannot imagine what that might be, what would help at all. She asks if I have anything to say before we end, but I don’t. Nothing profound or perceptive or acutely intelligent. All I say is, ‘Not now. I’ll write.’

I am hollowed out.

Exhausted.