Letters To My Daughter's Killer

CHAPTER ONE

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

I hate you. My first letter, and that is all I want to say. I hate you. But those three words can barely convey the depth, the breadth, the soaring height of this hatred. Nearly four years, and what has taken me by surprise is that these feelings, of rage and the desire for vengeance, have not diminished but have grown. Time has not healed them but stoked the fires. The hatred has been forged into something steely, into a rock so dense and heavy inside that I fear it is killing me too. Crushing me. Taking what is left of my life and leaching the goodness, the joy, the optimism from it. So I am writing to you in the vain hope, for I think it is vain, that some communication can help me move beyond or around this pit of hate.

With each passing month the monster grows stronger. I lie awake at night imagining all the many and lurid ways I could hurt you. Longing to punish you, to make you scream and beg for release. My head full of scenarios from Jacobean tragedies: hot pokers and the rack. From black prison ops: rendition flights and redacted statements, naked men in hoods, men with pliers, electricity cables and water. From serial killer stories: the blade in the eyes or between the legs, messages daubed on walls in blood.

Your violence has bred this violence in me, a cuckoo child that would devour me, from the inside out.

This is no way to live.

You won’t be replying to me. We’re not pen pals. The only way I’ll countenance contact with you at all is if I set the parameters. So you will read my letters. No salutation, you’ll note, no Dear or Sir; that sticks in my craw. I have a lot to tell you, a lot you need to know, to understand. It’s all at my fingertips. I kept a journal, you see, put it all in there, an attempt to make sense of things, navigate the nightmare. Impressions, thoughts, notes of everything I wanted to say to you. So, I will send those letters, and then when I am ready, you will answer my questions. They began that night almost four years ago, and like the hatred they have grown and multiplied. So much I still do not know. Because you denied the crime, contested the charge, because you lied and lied and lied. Two questions haunt me most: Why did you kill her? And How did she die?

I doubt whether you have the slightest inkling of what it’s been like for me. Too busy saving your own skin. So I am going to tell you. You will hear it in full, no interruptions, no arguments. The whole of it: 3D, with director’s commentary and extra scenes.

Brace yourself.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWO

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

It starts with a phone call. Or should I say it ends there? Because that is the point of no return. The moment my world slips on its axis.

That fine September evening, 2009, I am home alone as usual. My latest short-term lodger has returned to London and I’ve no one else booked in. I was out the night before with my friend Bea, to the cinema. District 9, the thriller about aliens and prejudice in South Africa. My Saturday unrolls with a comforting routine: a lie-in until nine (the best I can muster with my advancing age – I am fifty-seven), a trip to the newsagent for the weekend Guardian and a slow breakfast reading it, my cat Milky curled on my lap.

A walk to the village for fish. It’s not been a village in that isolated, hamlet sort of way for decades, but we do that here: Levenshulme village, Withington, Didsbury, Chorlton. Perhaps because the joining-up of all the villages to form the city is relatively recent. A couple of hundred years ago and ‘the village’ was a handful of farms and a toll road. Now it’s just another neighbourhood in Manchester, Britain’s second city.

I’m not working at the library today: I do every other Saturday, but it’s my weekend off. After some chores – washing sheets and hanging them out to dry, emptying the litter tray, cleaning the sink – I eat lunch, then go up to the allotment. We’ve had it for years; officially the tenants are Frank and Jan, but when they first got hold of it, they invited Melissa and Mags and Tony and me to join in. It felt less overwhelming than tackling it on their own, as it was completely overgrown, a wilderness of dock leaves and brambles and dandelions. The division of labour between six of us worked well on the whole, especially as crises occurred every so often, affecting people’s availability. Then last year Frank and Jan moved to Cornwall and Tony and I had been divorced for years, so we were down to three. Neither of the others are here this afternoon, though I can see from the state of the beds that they’ve harvested some potatoes recently.

The sun is warm, warm enough for me to shed my jumper once I start digging. This time of year the plot is full of produce, and after I’ve knocked the bulk of the dirt off the potatoes and cleared up any tubers I can find, I collect some leeks and runner beans, carrots and salad stuff: lettuce and radishes and some tomatoes from the greenhouse. There are other allotment-holders working their plots, and we stop to chat in between our efforts.

After a couple of hours my back is protesting. I do some watering, then clean the tools and lock them in the shed. My little harvest will feed me through the week, and I pick some bunches of sweet peas and chrysanthemums to brighten up the house.

Milky goes crazy as I grill the mackerel, and he gets the fish skin for his pains. A soak in the bath with my book marks the start of my evening; a habit left over from the early years of bathing Lizzie when she was little, then topping up the water for myself.

As I’m sitting down to watch television, Lizzie texts me asking if I can babysit Florence the following Saturday; she’ll let me know what time when she’s checked with Jack, who’s out at the gym. Glad to be asked, I agree immediately.

I’m brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, looking forward to fresh sheets, when the phone rings.

I almost don’t answer. Some childish part of me likes to imagine that things might have been different if I’d ignored the ringing. But they wouldn’t. Even with another half-hour of blissful ignorance.

I had no premonition, no sudden goose bumps, no telepathic sensation that things were wrong during the evening. Shouldn’t I have sensed that Lizzie was in danger, that she was fighting for her life? That she was losing. People talk of knowing, of pain in the heart or sudden waves of dread, of dreams and waking nightmares, of a sudden overpowering urge to talk to someone or get home. Animal instincts.

Nothing for me, no alarm bells, no early-warning system. When I answer the phone, I’m calm, relaxed, sleepy.

‘Hello?’ I say, and it’s Jack, my son-in-law, his voice almost unrecognizable.

‘Ruth. Oh God, Ruth.’ Then comes the first rush of fear, pepper-shot on my skin, a twist to my guts. But it is little Florence, my granddaughter, I fear for. An accident, a sudden death, blue-lipped in her small bed.

‘Jack?’ It’s a question. An invitation. Tell me is what I’m saying.

And he does. ‘It’s Lizzie. Oh Ruth, someone’s hurt Lizzie. Oh God.’

I am grappling to make sense of his words. My heart is beating in my throat. ‘Is she all right?’ I say. I know she’s not. I can hear it in the way his breath comes so rapidly and I know that if she was all right he’d have said that first. Still, we are hardwired to hope.

‘I think they’ve killed her.’ He is crying.

Killed! ‘Call the police,’ I say. I think of this instead of what he’s told me. I don’t want to think about that. I cannot. It’s not possible, it can’t be true. I set it aside as too much to handle. Preposterous anyway. Easier to focus on something else. ‘Call the police,’ I repeat.

‘I have, they’re coming.’

My thoughts won’t be stifled. They rear up shrieking in my mind. Killed! Broderick Litton. Lizzie’s stalker. He’s obsessed with her. The police never did anything, not even when he turned up at her house. All they said was they would talk to him. Stalking wasn’t a crime back then. He frightened her; he was a big man, over six feet tall, and soft-spoken. He sent her gifts and watched her performances. At first she thought it was funny but a bit sad. It quickly became oppressive. Then scary. She carried pepper spray and a personal alarm. He threatened her at the end, wrote letters saying she’d be sorry, he’d make her pay. Lizzie took them to the police. Then it all went quiet. Over a year since she’s heard anything, so long enough for her to relax again, to lower her guard. And now this. Oh God, we should have been vigilant. We should have insisted. Echoes bang in my head, other stories, other people’s daughters, inquiries into police negligence, failure to act, ensuing tragedies. All the cases where harassment turned to murder. We didn’t do enough, and now this.

‘Broderick Litton,’ I say to Jack.

‘I’ll tell them,’ he says.

‘Where are you? At home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Florence?’

‘She’s fine. She was fast asleep.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

I’m still dressed, so it’s a matter of moments to get my car keys and pull on shoes. It’s not far to Jack and Lizzie’s, a ten-minute walk, a two-minute drive. I arrive just before the ambulance. I see it coming from the other direction and it turns in to Lizzie’s street seconds after I do. An ambulance gives me faith. They will save her, they can do all sorts these days. There are bubbles in my chest, hysteria.

In my hurry to get out of the car, I trip and fall, scramble up. Jack is at the gate, Florence in his arms. His expression is drawn, harrowed in the street light. His teeth are chattering. The little girl has her face buried in his neck. I clutch his arm and he leans in towards me. When I stroke Florence’s head, she shrugs me off, her narrow shoulders moving under her pyjamas.

Edging past them, I run up the path to the door and Jack calls my name. There’s a whooping sound cut short as a police car pulls up near the ambulance. Blue lights flash around the cul-de-sac.

The door is half open. I push it wide and step inside. The lights are on in the kitchen-diner to my left and the living room area. All open-plan. An advertising jingle prattles from the TV. Lizzie is on the floor. I cannot see her face, it is hidden by her hair. Her blonde hair is drenched in blood. There is blood on her clothes, her camisole vest and cotton trousers, the sort of thing she wears to sleep in, more blood on the wooden floor. Firelight flickers on her arm, her hand.

I turn cold, wild panic sizzling through me. My heart contracts. Blood thrums in my ears. ‘Lizzie,’ I call to her, move forward, wanting to clear the hair from her face, help her up, help her breathe, but hands are pulling me back, people shouting, dragging me away, pushing me outside. I resist, try to fight them off, desperate to see my girl, but they hold me tighter, instruct me to do as I’m told, to let them do their job.

We are moved, Jack and Florence and I, taken further down the street. Various people ask questions. I feel like batting them away, my eyes locked on the doorway, waiting for them to bring Lizzie out and put her in the ambulance, get her to hospital. My frustration is so great that I round on the next person who comes to us. ‘Why aren’t they taking her to hospital?’

‘Mrs Sutton?’ he checks. ‘Lizzie’s mother?’

‘Yes,’ I snap.

His face softens with pity and my throat closes over.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Sutton, Lizzie is dead. We’re treating it as suspected murder. The Home Office pathologist is on his way and the area will be cordoned off for our forensic teams to start their work. Would you be able to take Florence home with you?’

My mouth clamped tightly shut, I nod my head.

‘Mr Tennyson – Jack – will be giving us a statement. And we’ll want to talk to you later. There will be a family liaison officer to help you. They’ve been alerted. I am very sorry,’ he says, ‘but I need to ask you a few questions now, in case there’s anything that might help us. You went in the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you use a key?’

‘The door was open,’ I say.

‘Unlocked, you mean?’

‘No… erm… yes. It wasn’t pulled shut.’

He writes down what I tell him. ‘Where did you go?’ he says.

‘Just inside the living room.’

‘Did you touch the front door?’

I think back. ‘Yes, I pushed it.’

‘Did you touch Lizzie?’

‘No.’ I didn’t get the chance. I wish I had.

‘Did you touch anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Think, anything at all: to steady yourself, perhaps? Or did you pick anything up?’

‘I can’t remember. I don’t think so.’

He writes some more, then says, ‘Because you’ve entered the crime scene, we need to take your clothes and your shoes. How close do you live?’

I tell him.

‘We’ll send someone with you now; if you can change immediately and put everything you’re wearing in the bags you’re given.’

‘Broderick Litton,’ I say, ‘he stalked Lizzie. She reported it. You lot did nothing. You must find him.’ I’m shivering, my words broken up. My knees buckle. He reaches out an arm and steadies me.

‘Do you have an address, date of birth?’ he says.

‘No. Check your files – there must be something there.’

‘We will do.’ But he goes nowhere. ‘We’ll take further details when someone comes round to you – they won’t be long.’

Jack brings Florence to the car. She’s fallen asleep and barely stirs when he eases her into the booster seat I keep in the back.

‘What happened?’ I ask him before we part.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, shaking his head, fresh tears streaking down his face. ‘I’d been to the gym. She was fine when I left. I just saw her…’ He can’t go on, and I hold him close. One of the police officers gets in the passenger seat and I start the engine.

Florence has a little bed in my room for when she comes to stay, but I’m not going to sleep and I don’t want her to wake up alone after all this. Did she see Lizzie? Did Jack manage to get her downstairs and out of the house without her waking? He’d have had to walk through the living room with her. The house is small, modern, the only thing they could afford.

Oh God. Jack was at the gym, so Florence must have been in the house when…

I lay Florence on the sofa and cover her with a blanket.

I change out of my jumper and jeans and walking shoes and put them into separate bags, and the policeman takes them away.

The house is cold, so I go into the kitchen and put the heating on. Milky comes and weaves around my legs. I stare at the vegetables on the counter, the crumbs of soil drying on them, the wispy roots of the carrots, the vivid green of the runner bean pods. Out of the window is a black sky and a frail new moon, scimitar-bright.

My head aches, a thudding pain beating in my temples and behind my eyes, and the words Lizzie’s dead go round and round to the beat of that drum. But they are just words. I can’t believe them. Not when I look at the carrots and the slice of moon and the child at peace on my sofa.

Ruth

CHAPTER THREE

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Did you think you’d got away with it, that first night? What were you feeling? Elation? Terror? Some sexual frisson? It’s the same physiological response, isn’t it – fight, flight, fuck. Violence, fear, sex. It’s on my list of questions. And did you replay events in your head or try to shut them out? Were you racked with guilt or full of exhilaration?

While I wait for someone to come, to break the spell, me and my granddaughter and the cat cocooned in the bubble, I try to imagine you. Broderick Litton, who I never met, never saw. Like a bodyguard, Lizzie said you were; smart, though, a military type, clipped and polished. Always very pleasant except when you were being a vicious bully. At the time you were stalking her, I grew more panicky than Lizzie. When the police did so little, I wanted her to move. Suggested we swap houses.

The questions swoop through my head like bats in the dark, to and fro, silent, quick and shadowy. Why wasn’t Lizzie more careful? Why did she open the door? Why did she let you in? Why? Why? Why?

Where are you? Scurrying through night-black streets smelling of blood, or lurking in some lair, drinking and gloating, or slipping into bed beside your drowsy wife?

It is hard to sit still and Milky senses my agitation, echoes it with repeated sorties out of the cat flap and back. My skin is cold; I am frozen to the marrow, despite the heating being on, and I’m itchy. I can’t stop scratching: my arms, my neck, my calves. As if I am shedding a skin, or trying to claw it off and make my body raw like the rest of me.

Lizzie’s photographs – Lizzie as a baby, as a child, with Jack, with Florence – clutter my walls. I am standing in the corner, staring at one: her graduation day, Lizzie flanked by Tony and me. Her eyes alive with happiness, ours too. Delight and pride. I rub at my shoulder. Tony – I must ring Tony. Should I? Or wait? Make completely sure? If there’s been a horrible mistake and I tell him now… that she is… A wave of nausea breaks through me, coating me in clammy sweat, shrivelling my stomach, forcing bile into the back of my throat. In the kitchen I spit it out and drink a little water.

A knocking at the door makes me jump. It is the family liaison officer. A beanpole of a woman with short greying hair and a weather-beaten face. Kind eyes. Stupid thing to say really, but they are not brash or judgemental, or even overtly emotional, but accepting. The sort of eyes you can stare into and not feel impelled to look away. (Or maybe that’s hindsight. Those early days, Kay, that was her name, was a sort of calm anchor for us all.)

Kay makes tea and explains what is happening, what will happen in the next twenty-four hours. That is as much as I can take in, and even that doesn’t really penetrate. There is a buffer between my understanding and the outside world, a fog that makes it hard to truly hear and know things.

‘It’s the shock,’ Kay says, when I apologize and ask her to repeat something. ‘You won’t be able to think straight,’ she says. ‘It’s normal.’

A flare of anger pierces the fug. I take issue. ‘This is not normal, none of this is normal.’

‘No,’ she agrees.

I pace the room; my scalp itches, I rake at it with my nails. And I try to remember what Kay has said. People will be busy at Lizzie’s house documenting the scene and collecting evidence. There will be a post-mortem. A host of television dramas come to mind, angst-ridden pathologists and flawed but courageous detectives. This is real, I tell myself. Real. Really happening. There will be the formal identification of Lizzie’s body. Kay says that, ‘Lizzie’s body’, not ‘the body’. Every time she mentions her, she uses Lizzie’s name. Keeping it specific and personal. They are probably trained to do that. I appreciate it. The understanding that their victim is more than a victim; she’s my daughter, Jack’s wife, Florence’s mother.

‘I should ring Tony,’ I remember in a rush. ‘Lizzie’s dad.’

‘Does he live nearby?’

‘Reddish Vale.’ A few miles. ‘He remarried,’ I say, ‘Denise.’

Denise the wheeze. My nasty nickname because Denise’s default position is to giggle, to laugh, and she is a smoker, which adds to the breathy quality of her chortling. It’s probably a nervous tic, but it makes me want to slap her. Grab her by the arms and ask her what’s so funny.

I have to look their number up in my address book; it’s not something I ever wanted to memorize. It rings and rings. Tony probably can’t hear it. He’s going deaf, Lizzie said recently, but he’s too proud or too macho to get his ears tested. Lizzie teased him about it, and said she’d have to teach him sign language. A bit more than the few signs we mastered when she first began learning BSL: hello, goodbye, I love you and a couple of swear words. She brings me titbits about Tony (and no doubt does the same in the other direction), and I accept them gracefully. We keep it civilized. For her as much as anything. And for Florence.

The phone rings out. ‘They’re not answering,’ I say to Kay. ‘I’ll try his mobile.’

Tony uses it for work but switches it off when he is at home. Or he used to. It seems to take forever to find my phone and his details. While it rings, it occurs to me that the Tennysons, Jack’s parents, need to know too. I mention it to Kay. ‘Should I wait?’ Have I even got their number?

‘Jack will probably want to tell them himself,’ Kay says.

‘Of course.’

She knows the etiquette, not just of death but of this particular situation: sudden, violent death.

Tony’s cell phone goes to voicemail and I hang up. Bury my head in my hands.

‘Try again in a while,’ Kay says. ‘Or we can send someone round there if you-’

‘No.’ It seems cowardly to do that. I should be the one to tell him, not some stranger.

The man who comes to take my statement seems far too young to be dealing with this sort of thing. But he’s not at all nervous or inept. He takes me slowly through the sequence of events: Jack’s call, the car journey, going into the house, being restrained.

Then he asks more questions about the house. Were the lights on or off, did I put any lights on? Was there any sound, TV or radio? What was the temperature like?

I laugh at this; it seems preposterous that in the face of such a huge shock, my sense of hot and cold would be functioning and that I might still remember.

‘No idea,’ I say.

I picture Lizzie, the contrast of her hair and the dark stains. Recall light flickering over her hand, her left hand. That would have been from the fire, their log-burning stove. ‘The fire was lit,’ I say.

Then the questions become more general, he confirms Lizzie’s date of birth and age. He wants to know about her life, her work, her marriage, her routines. When I last saw her. What we spoke about. And finally if I can think of anyone who might have wanted to cause her harm. I tell him all I can about Broderick Litton, urge him to check the police files. Surely they will know more than me.

He writes it all up and reads it back to me. Four pages in all. And I sign in the proper place.

When I call Tony again, Denise answers.

‘It’s Ruth, I need to talk to Tony.’

There’s a wait while she fetches him or takes him the phone, and then his voice, thick with sleep. I say his name and then I freeze. I swallow. Force breath into my lungs. ‘Tony, I’ve got some really, really bad news. Oh Tony. It’s Lizzie. I’m so sorry. Lizzie, she’s dead.’

He makes a noise, a sort of howl, strangulated.

I can’t tell him the rest, not on the phone. ‘Can you come?’

‘Yes,’ he says. That’s all he says. Just yes. Quick and quiet. And hangs up.

Jack gets back first; it is almost dawn. His eyes are red, his lips chapped, his face grey. He is wearing navy jog pants and black trainers and a nylon anorak which the police must have given him to replace his clothes. He takes the coat off, moving slowly like an arthritic old man, and sits beside Florence, still sleeping on the sofa.

There’s no mistaking whose daughter she is. The same shiny straight black hair and even features, prominent cheekbones. The only thing Florence got from Lizzie are her eyes, sea green, the same as Tony’s.

Jack’s been the main carer the last couple of years. Lizzie and he are both freelance, so whoever has work offered grabs it and the other person picks up the domestic reins. It’s hard for them – juggling, coping with the uncertainty of money – but they both love their work and neither of them would swap it for the security of doing something tedious nine to five.

Jack will do anything he can get: radio parts, panto, telly, as well as theatre, which he likes best. He keeps going up for auditions but hasn’t had anything for months, whereas Lizzie’s been flat out. She first began interpreting at conferences and for deaf students at the universities here, then developed her theatre work, which has really taken off.

Kay brings Jack a cup of tea and he wraps his hands around it and hunches over. She tells him what she’s already told me about the day ahead. About what will happen to Lizzie. What must be done. She leaves us to talk.

He is clearly exhausted, but I am desperate to know what he saw, to hear the sequence of events, to find out if he’s learnt anything yet from the police.

‘What happened?’ I ask him.

He shakes his head. ‘They don’t know.’ His voice is worn out, husky, almost gone. ‘I’d been to the gym…’ He tries to clear his throat. ‘She was watching TV when I left…’

They both go to the gym regularly. Lizzie likes it as a way of keeping fit, and Jack has to keep in shape for his work in the theatre.

‘I got back…’ His hands tighten round the mug. ‘She was there…’ his composure breaks and he speaks, fighting tears, ‘she was there, like that. Who could do that?’ He looks at me.

‘Did you see anyone?’

Jack shakes his head, ruination in his eyes.

‘Broderick Litton,’ I say.

‘They know. They’ll interview him.’

‘She’s not had any trouble from him recently?’

‘No, nothing since last July.’

‘And she’d never have let him in,’ I point out.

‘She might have thought it was me, that I’d forgotten something,’ Jack says.

‘You’d use your key.’

‘Forgotten that, then – I don’t know.’ He casts about. ‘We had a prowler.’

‘What? When?’

‘Wednesday night. There’d been a break-in at number eight on Tuesday.’ Two doors down. ‘Lizzie saw someone in our back garden.’

‘Was it Litton?’

‘She said not, not tall enough, more like a kid, she thought, though she didn’t see his face,’ Jack says. ‘The police came round on the Thursday morning – I told them then.’

‘Have they caught him?’

‘We never heard anything.’

I rub my forehead. Could it be this prowler and not Litton?

‘They always look at the husband, don’t they?’ he says.

My stomach turns over. ‘They have to. They can’t possibly think…’ Shock stings around my wrists.

‘No,’ he says, ‘they know I wasn’t there. But having to go over it and over it. I tried to wake her…’ He puts the mug on the floor, covers his face, shoulders shaking.

I go to him, sit on the arm of the sofa and hug him tight.

Light steals into the room, hurting my eyes.

Kay comes back; she hasn’t slept either. Is she used to it – all-nighters for work?

‘Did they say how she died?’ I ask Jack. I know there was blood. Too much blood.

‘They said the post-mortem would confirm it.’ Jack’s mouth trembles as he speaks. ‘Blunt trauma?’ He looks at Kay, as if checking he’s said it correctly.

‘Blunt force trauma,’ she says. ‘That’s what we think at the moment.’

‘With what?’ I can’t imagine.

Did you bring a weapon with you? A baseball bat or a cosh of some sort? Then it occurs to me that perhaps you used your fists. That feels worse. Was it the first time you’d killed someone? And why pick Lizzie? What did you come to the house for? Money? To steal? To rape? How did you get in?

I go outside for air, out the back. The garden glitters with dew, spiderwebs and lines hang on the shrubs around the border. The air is damp and cool and my windpipe hurts as I draw some in. A pair of coal tits are on the peanut feeder in the magnolia tree. The sky is blue, blushing pink in the east. That slice of moon still visible. Milky stalks out and sits under the tree. The tits ignore him. How can it all be here, just so? It all feels too bright and clear, too high-definition, as though I’ve wandered on to a film set.

On the roof of the terraced row at the back, three magpies bounce and chatter. A crow joins them, edging along to the chimney, then another. And two more. A murder of crows. The phrase springs unbidden, a booby trap, like some ghastly practical joke my mind plays on me.

I’m aware of commotion from inside. Then Tony is here, coming out of the patio door, and Denise behind him. Tony is shaking his head as he reaches me; he embraces me, a hard, swift pressure before he steps back. And it’s all I can bear. Resisting the sense memory of a thousand other hugs, his height, his bulk a comfort. Before I know it I’m hugging Denise, who’s not laughing now. We’ve never touched before, not even a handshake.

We’re a similar height, Denise and I. Both with that padding that comes with middle age. Even if my arms and legs retain their original shape, my belly sticks out and my bum seems to have doubled in size. Denise is chunkier than me, fatter in the face too. She smells of perfume, roses and gardenia, and a trace of tobacco smoke.

As I pull back, we share a look, acknowledging a new settlement. I nod my thanks. I’ve never seen her without make-up on. It’s just one in a whole stream of firsts in the wake of what has happened.

We go inside. Tony can’t sit still. Like me he prowls and patrols, pausing to sweep both hands over his head and clutch at his hair. It’s a gesture that makes me think of screaming. Of that Munch painting.

Once I’ve told Tony and Denise everything I can, which is precious little, he fires one question after another at Kay. What are you doing to catch who did this? How did he get in? Did the neighbours see anything? Was it a burglary? Can’t they use dogs or something? Have you found Broderick Litton? What about this prowler? He looks older, wrinkled face, pot belly. His hair is thick and wavy still, although there’s lots of grey and white among the original bronze colour.

Kay’s answers are honest, considered, all disappointing.

He shakes his head, scowling, his mouth tight. He is angry and he is impotent.

Denise doesn’t say much, but periodically she goes and touches him, clutches his hand, puts her palm on his chest. Calming him.

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

CHAPTER FOUR

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.

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

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

We went to Rusholme and stuffed ourselves full of curry. The food, the warm buzz of the restaurant, the change of scene worked on me like a tonic. My frustration, my unhappiness ebbed away and I determined to ignore the whisper of anxiety at being away from the baby. We even managed to talk about something other than Lizzie. Tony had been running the architectural salvage business on his own for two years after taking it over from his uncle. He was specializing in interior features: stained glass, wood balustrades, tiles and fire surrounds, cornices and dado rails. In the wholesale rush to convert and modernize, these were being ripped out of old villas and terraces. But some people still valued traditional items, and Tony’s business was steadily growing.

From the curry house we went to the pub. We hadn’t been out for a drink together since Lizzie was born. After a couple of halves of Guinness, I told him that I definitely wanted to go back to work after my six months’ leave, but part time if we could possibly manage it. And I also announced that I didn’t want to have any more children. ‘I know everyone says that at first,’ I told him, ‘but I really can’t do this again.’

‘It’s bound to be different,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘because it isn’t going to happen. I mean it.’ What I was saying was serious and he needed to realize it. ‘If you want more kids, you need to be honest with me, and not go along with it thinking I might change my mind. Because I won’t.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I wanted to be a dad, I wanted a child. We’ve got a child. That’s fine.’

I stared at him, into those blue-green eyes, and he met my gaze. He meant what he said.

Florence was so different from Lizzie. Polar opposites. As long as she was fed and clean and warm enough, she was happy. She cried if she needed something but not those raging, painful howls her mother had made, the sort that clawed inside your skull and scraped at your nerves.

‘When Lizzie met you,’ I say to Jack, ‘when you started going out. She was so… giddy.’

I remember her bursting to tell us: ‘The one who played Cassius, the one with the dark hair.’

Lizzie had been sign-language interpreting at the Royal Exchange. One of her first big jobs and she was petrified. We were worried at first; Jack was living with someone, but Lizzie insisted that he was an honourable man. He would tell his partner. Of course I fretted: if he could be fickle once… But Lizzie knew he was the great love of her life. She never doubted they’d be together.

And she was right. Jack left his girlfriend in London and moved to Manchester.

‘And your proposal!’ We laugh with delight and another wave of shame runs through me. Lizzie is dead. I ought never to laugh again.

The men catch my mood.

‘It’s all right,’ Tony says, his eyes on me.

‘She was embarrassed,’ Jack says after a pause.

‘But she loved it,’ I say. ‘The romance of it.’ Several months after their first meeting, Jack was playing in What the Butler Saw at the Birmingham Rep, and Lizzie was doing the signed performances.

At the end of the show, after the curtain call, Jack remained on stage, and the technician, who’d been primed, played a drum roll, alerting the audience, who were already on their feet ready to leave. Lizzie was sitting at the side of the stage, near the wings.

Jack had practised his message and began to sign to her. At first she did nothing, just went bright red. ‘I was too surprised,’ she told me. Jack repeated the signs: Lizzie, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?

Blushing furiously, she stood up and translated to the audience.

A hush of expectation fell over the theatre, broken only by a couple of wolf whistles and someone yelling, ‘Say yes.’ And answering laughter. Then Lizzie in turn signed to Jack. Yes, I will. I love you. And said it aloud. The place erupted with applause and cheers and catcalls.

No one wants to break up our little circle, but eventually at almost two in the morning Tony calls a cab and Jack says good night.

Lizzie was heartbroken when we split up. Is it different for any children? Are there those who find relief in the separation, in the cessation of hostilities? Perhaps.

Lizzie was only fifteen when the mayhem of our troubles clashed with her own teenage trauma. Sometimes it felt like we were three adolescents competing as to who could slam the door hardest, stay silent longest, shout the loudest.

In my memory, that period lasted for years. In reality, it was no more than three or four months. We weren’t complete idiots, and even mired in our own pain, we could see how it was hurting Lizzie.

It was the greatest shock of my life.

Before this.

Tony stayed home from work one day. I was doing the late shift at the library and Lizzie had left for school.

‘Don’t you need to open up?’ I said. He had been working all hours, making the most of the lighter nights and a fresh wave of property development in the region.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said, a peculiar shifty look on his face.

I had no idea.

We sat at the kitchen table. I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine what it was about; my mind alighted on possibilities: financial trouble, a health scare, another discussion about moving house (every few years we’d go through the rigmarole of considering a move, of looking for some wreck and doing it up and selling it on as another way to make some money. But we’d never finally bitten the bullet).

‘I’ve met someone else,’ he said.

I stared at him. Clutching at the possibility that I’d misheard, misunderstood. Waiting in case there was something more to come, a punchline, another phrase to set me straight and allow me to breathe again.

When I didn’t speak, he cleared his throat. ‘It’s serious,’ he said. His hands, big, brawny hands, clenched together, one nail tugging at a scab.

‘Who is it?’ I found my voice.

He blinked, his sea-green eyes glittering with something: shame, or embarrassment?

My throat was dry, I stood quickly, went and poured myself a glass of water, took a drink. Turned to him, repeating my question.

‘Her name’s Denise.’

I didn’t know any Denise.

‘Where did you meet her, who is she?’ My face felt odd, as though I couldn’t control my muscles, little tremors flickering through my cheeks, plucking at my lips.

‘At physio, she works there.’ Tony had hurt his shoulder lifting stuff at work. When it didn’t heal, I pestered him until he went to the GP, who referred him on.

I laughed, feeling sick.

‘She was looking for a fireplace.’

And got a lover into the bargain.

He exhaled slowly and pulled a face.

‘Look, if this is just some fling-’ I was ready to forgive, to forget, to retreat. Something was breaking inside me at the prospect that he might leave.

‘It’s not,’ he interrupted. ‘I can’t stop seeing her, I don’t want to stop.’

I turned to look out of the window. I couldn’t bear to witness it, what he was saying, the strength of his feeling. ‘You bastard,’ I said.

‘Ruth-’

‘Fuck off!’ I threw the glass across the room, relishing the sound as it smashed against the wall and water splashed on to the shelves and the floor. ‘Get out,’ I screeched at him.

He tried to speak, something about sorting things out and Lizzie, but I was incandescent.

That day I called in sick, and I was. Heartsick, wounded. Retreating to my bed, I wept and cursed, all but tore my hair out. What had happened? Obviously he didn’t love me as I still did him, but where had it gone? Nineteen years we’d been together. Nineteen.

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.

CHAPTER SIX

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.

‘The back of Lizzie’s skull was crushed with multiple fractures, the right orbital socket around the eye was fractured, as well as the nose and the right ulna – in the arm. Cause of death was due to blunt force trauma. It is likely that she died as a result of one of the early blows.’ I wonder how they can possibly know that.

‘The weapon was long and narrow, cylindrical, almost certainly the poker that was recovered from the scene,’ Kay says.

‘Oh God,’ I breathe.

‘Poker?’ Tony says. The fire irons. Genuine antiques. Tony gave them to Lizzie and Jack when they put the wood-burner in. You can get modern ones almost identical, black cast iron. Long-handled shovel, tongs, brush and poker.

Jack presses his fist to his head, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘There could be fingerprints?’ he says, looking at Kay.

‘Were there any on the poker?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ Kay says. ‘It will take some time for us to have forensic results back, but fingerprints are one of the first things to be recovered and examined. The CSIs will also look for footwear impressions, palm prints, anything they can find. And DNA traces on Lizzie’s body. Her body has been swabbed and her hair brushed, scrapings taken from under her nails. These are all areas where the attacker may have left traces that can help us to identify him.’

‘Was she raped?’ My voice is uneven.

Jack stiffens, and Tony hunches over in his seat.

‘There is no sign of that.’ Kay waits to see if we have any other questions before continuing. ‘There’s something else that the post-mortem revealed. Lizzie was pregnant.’

‘No!’ Jack says.

Tony and I look at each other, both bewildered.

‘Seven weeks’ gestation. Twins. You didn’t know?’ she says to Jack.

He shakes his head, tears welling in his eyes.

The reverberations from that bombshell echo in the silence that follows. All the futures that might have been. Brothers or sisters or both for Florence; Lizzie pushing a double buggy. The hope and promise of new babies.

Jack gets up abruptly and goes upstairs. We can hear him being sick, a raw, retching sound.

‘What about Broderick Litton?’ Tony says.

‘We’ve not been able to trace him yet.’

‘Why not?’ I say. ‘All the surveillance we have, cameras everywhere, bureaucracy, the internet.’

‘If people want to stay under the radar, it’s possible,’ Kay says.

I think about it: no wages or NI, no GP or car registration, no bank account. You’d have to live on the streets.

‘We are looking,’ she says.

I wonder where you are. Where you can hide. If you have gone on the run, to London, or Spain, or across the globe. Or perhaps you are still here, in Manchester, watching the news updates, relieved as Lizzie’s murder drops off the headlines and the front pages. Do you find an excuse to change channels when it’s on or are you audacious enough to make observations about it? I hope you are paralysed with fear. Unable to eat or sleep or think. Counting the minutes till there’s a knock on the door and they come for you.

Ruth

CHAPTER SEVEN

Monday 14 September 2009

Jack’s parents arrive, Marian and Alan; Jack saw them briefly at their hotel last night. After a tactful few minutes sharing commiserations and expressions of shock and sad disbelief, I leave them to it, ask them to excuse me if I go and lie down. There are too many people in the house as it is, and I think they need some space to talk with their son. I’m also worried that if I don’t stop for a little while, I’ll physically collapse. I’ve never been a fan of melodrama, and me keeling over would only be an added strain for everyone.

My heart is painful in my chest, a dull ache as if it’s swollen, and pounding too fast. I take my slippers off and lie on my back on the bed and try to slow my breathing, to release the knots in my stomach, the slab of tension across my back. It doesn’t work: as soon as I lose concentration, which I do easily, I find myself holding my breath. Dredging up some moves from yoga from years ago, I try those, but it’s hopeless. My body rebels, taut, spastic.

Closing my eyes, I focus on the sounds: birds in the garden, a bus wheezing by, the sound of someone clinking pots from downstairs, the ticking of the central heating radiator, sibilant fragments from Florence’s DVD. There is some tinnitus in my ears, a revolving hum that may be a machine somewhere but is probably just a noise in my head.

Should I see the GP about the burning pain in my chest? I’m on medication already for high cholesterol. Someone mentioned the GP, Tony or Kay, I can’t remember now. For tranquillizers or sleeping pills. The poker. A dozen blows. Twins. Like the whirring in my ears, the images, the details tumble around.

This was Lizzie’s room.

The place where she had her cot, though her incessant crying meant that for much of the first year she slept in with me while Tony managed on a mattress on the floor in here. When she was walking and talking, the crying eased and we moved her into this room. She outgrew the cot, had a child’s bed. Then came bunk beds and sleepovers, posters on the walls and a desk for homework. So fast. It all went so fast.

The room has changed now: once Lizzie moved out for uni, I did it up. Started taking temporary lodgers, actors up for work at the Lowry or the Royal Exchange, Contact or the Palace. There’s a small TV and DVD in here for the lodgers. If we get on well, we watch some programmes together on the big set downstairs. Having the company is nice, and when I have the place to myself again, I enjoy the freedom. It helps pay the bills, and I’ve met some lovely people over the years, only one or two idiots. I also get to see an awful lot of theatre.

‘DI Ferguson wants to meet you,’ Kay tells us. ‘She is leading the investigation. Will this afternoon be all right? What about Tony?’

‘I’ll check with him,’ I say.

‘Have you had anything to eat?’ she asks.

‘I can’t face it.’

‘Some soup,’ she suggests. ‘Your friend Bea called while you were resting. She brought some leek and potato. And a French stick.’

‘I need to ring her.’

‘She said she’ll come round tonight unless you text her,’ Kay says.

‘Where are the others?’

‘They’ve taken Florence to the library.’

‘The library?’

‘That all right?’ Kay says. ‘They asked her where she’d like to go and that’s what she said.’

It makes sense. Somewhere familiar, safe, welcoming. The staff know Florence through me, and Jack takes her to the story sessions and the events we have there. I’m about to reply, to tell Kay something about the library and my lifelong job there, when the pain in my chest ratchets up several notches and my head swims. I put out my hand but there’s nothing there to hold on to, and I feel myself swooning, falling back, my bones gone to water.

The GP, someone from my practice I’d never met, listens to my heart and takes my blood pressure. He knows the situation and advises me to try and eat, little and often, and increase my fluid intake. He thinks I’m dehydrated as well as suffering from shock and stress. ‘Your heart sounds fine, no arrhythmia; your blood pressure is high, but that’s to be expected. I’m not unduly worried.’ Doctor speak. Unduly. Who else says unduly these days?

He writes a prescription for a mild tranquillizer in case I need it.

‘What about side effects?’ I say. ‘Is it addictive?’

‘Not with a short course at this dosage,’ he says. ‘There are a range of potential side effects. The leaflet lists them all, but the most common ones are feelings of detachment…’

Isn’t that the point?

‘… drowsiness, and a dry mouth.’

Do I want to feel detached? If I muffle the emotions, won’t they just grow in intensity, waiting to ambush me when I stop taking the medicine? ‘I’m not sure I want it,’ I tell him.

‘Entirely up to you; the script is valid for six months, anyway. And if there’s anything else you need, do ring the surgery.’

Marian and Alan bring Florence back; she’s clutching a pile of picture books that threaten to overbalance her. They plan to do some shopping for us. Marian is brisk and practical and talks too much, a running commentary. She’s probably afraid that she’ll fall to pieces if she stops. Alan’s reserved, speaks only to agree with her comments or echo her thoughts. We’ve only met them a handful of times, at the wedding, once before that and then at Florence’s first birthday party. I watch Marian heating the soup and talking about allotments and gardens. And home-cooked vegetables. She manages to talk about soup for a good five minutes.

Living in East Anglia, they see much less of Jack and Lizzie and Florence than Tony or I do. What will happen now? Would Jack think of leaving, go and live there, take Florence? The thought sends panic swirling through me, and I grip the table. When they’re ready to leave for the shops, I ask Marian if she will fill the prescription for me.

I can’t cope with all the people calling at my house to comfort us. It seems heartless to turn them away, but Kay suggests she act as gatekeeper and will explain that we are grateful for their good wishes but too distressed to meet anyone.

Cards arrive, from neighbours and colleagues and friends. It takes me ten minutes and several tours of the house to find my reading glasses. I keep losing things. As if now that I have lost Lizzie, I can’t keep hold of anything else.

I open a batch of cards at the table.

‘Is it your birthday?’ Florence says, her head cocked to one side.

‘No. These cards are for us because of Mummy dying. People know we’re sad. They’re thinking about us.’ Her face closes down and she slips from the chair. I go after her into the lounge.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ she says.

‘Gone for a shower. It’s all right to be sad,’ I say. ‘Everyone’s sad.’

‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘This book.’ She pulls out a battered copy of Each Peach Pear Plum, still doing the rounds. I remember reading it to Lizzie.

‘Okay.’ I sit on the sofa and she clambers on to my lap.

We say the words together, and she tilts her head from side to side as she chants, pointing with her finger at the characters hidden in the pages. Mother Hubbard, Cinderella, Robin Hood.

And for a few minutes Florence and I escape, float down the river with Baby Bunting, tumble down the hill with Jack and Jill and climb through the branches of the great tree.

CHAPTER EIGHT

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

DI Ferguson takes my hand in both of hers when we meet, her grasp firm. She looks me in the eyes and says, ‘I’m so sorry. We are doing everything possible to establish what happened to Lizzie and bring whoever is responsible to justice.’ She glances around. ‘Is Mr Tennyson here?’ she says to Kay.

‘I’ll get him. Tony, Mr Sutton, will be here any time.’

We go in the dining room. I call it that but no one ever eats in here. I use it for overspill, for hobbies and storage. The inspector takes her jacket off and drapes it over the back of an armchair. She’s small next to Kay, close to my height though slimmer than me. A black woman, her clothes stylish, her hair pulled up away from her face in a topknot. Specs, red and white and brown patterned frames, on a chain round her neck. A touch of pinky-red lipstick.

She has a pent-up energy to her as though she’s idling and ready to take off at speed. It’s there in the intensity of her gaze, eyes bright, and the pace of her speech. In repose there is a hint of a smile about her mouth, as though life is everything she hoped it would be. She stands and greets Jack and Tony.

When everyone is settled, DI Ferguson says, ‘I’m the senior investigating officer, and that means I’m in charge of the inquiry into Lizzie’s murder. Kay will remain your liaison officer and she’ll pass on to you any significant information, but I want you to know that if you ever need to speak to me directly, if you’ve any concerns or questions that Kay can’t answer, please get in touch. I’ll leave my card before I go. What happened to Lizzie,’ she says, ‘is simply unforgivable.’

I try not to weep, because I need to hear what she has to say.

‘No one should lose a wife, a daughter, a mother, a friend in that way. From your position you may feel as though there is little news, as if things are not moving quickly enough but I want to reassure you that we are making steady progress. The results of the post-mortem, which Kay related to you, have given us the cause of death but also flagged up a number of forensic items of interest which we are now examining. The same goes for the evidence recovered from the scene at the house. But it’s not like on television. Some of the forensic tests we need to do will take several days to be completed, sometimes weeks. They can’t be rushed. They have to be done to an exacting standard, robust enough for prosecution.’

‘Lizzie’s phone,’ I say, thinking of that text she sent me. ‘Did she try and call for help?’

‘No. Her phone was recovered from the house. There was no activity from her after the text she sent to you,’ says DI Ferguson.

No chance to use her phone, perhaps she was oblivious to the danger. Perhaps she never knew what was coming. I think of Florence asleep as the carnage unfolded downstairs. Kay has asked her if she saw or heard anything the night Mummy was hurt but Florence simply shook her head.

‘Our door-to-door inquiries are continuing as well, and calls from the general public are being fed into the investigation and followed up. Officers are examining footage from CCTV cameras in the vicinity to see if the perpetrator can be identified.’

‘Broderick Litton?’ I say.

‘We’ve not found him yet,’ says DI Ferguson.

‘He’s out there,’ Tony says hotly, ‘and…’ He crumples.

‘I can assure you we are making every effort to find him, and as soon as we do, you will know about it.’ She turns to Jack. ‘We have traced and interviewed the man who broke into your neighbour’s property on the Tuesday night. He admits to also having entered your garden on Wednesday.’

I hold my breath.

‘But we have eliminated him from our inquiries.’

‘How come?’ Jack says.

‘He has a watertight alibi for the Saturday evening.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jack says.

‘Yes,’ says DI Ferguson.

Questions toll in my head again: who, why, how?

‘Is there anything we can do?’ Tony says.

DI Ferguson gives a nod. ‘There are two ways you might help, but I want to stress that there is no obligation on any of you to do so. Different families react very differently, and what is right for someone else may not be right for you.’

‘What are they?’ Jack says.

‘We would like your help with a fresh appeal to the general public. A quote from you about Lizzie, saying what sort of person she was, would be very helpful. We want to keep the public involved in assisting us, we want to make her as real as possible to people who have never met her. There is already a high degree of interest because of the circumstances of Lizzie’s murder, because she was an ordinary young woman, a mother, expecting to be safe in her own home.’

Like we all do.

‘Also, well-wishers have been leaving flowers outside the house. If this is something you would like to do, we can arrange that, and if you are willing, we’d like to film your visit and that would form part of a new press release. Again, that’s entirely up to you.’

‘You want to keep it in the news?’ Tony says.

‘That’s right. I certainly do,’ DI Ferguson says keenly.

‘Yes, we’ll help,’ I say, looking to Jack, who nods his agreement.

‘Yes,’ says Tony.

‘Thank you. Kay will go over the details. Now, is there anything you want to ask me? If I can answer you, I will.’

Marian and Alan arrange takeaways for our meal that evening. My table only seats four, but we crowd round it, joined by Tony and Denise. Jack tells his parents what we’ll be doing for the appeal, then people make gentle conversation, mainly on safe topics. We’re all too numb to exchange any more reactions about Lizzie’s death. The medication has kicked in, making me feel dopey.

Marian and Alan go back to their hotel, Kay goes home, Tony and Denise leave and Bea arrives. We hug for a long time. Death does this: suddenly human touch, physical expressions of comfort and warmth, is instinctive. Freely given and received.

We settle in the kitchen and Bea makes coffee. ‘God, Ruth, I don’t know what to say. It still doesn’t seem real.’

‘Not even to me, and I saw her. Perhaps if I’d been able to go and identify her…’ A dozen blows at least. Her face.

‘Will they let you see her another time?’

I shrug.

‘Ask them,’ she says.

‘She was pregnant, Bea.’

Her lip quivers.

I try and keep my voice steady. ‘Twins, not far on, seven weeks.’

‘Oh Ruth, it’s horrendous. Whoever it is, I hope he’s shot resisting arrest or something.’ She slams the cafetière down on the side and I fear the glass will crack.

‘No. Don’t say that.’

‘Why?’ She’s almost cross with me.

‘Because then we won’t know anything.’

She baulks, considering this, raises her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps it’s best-’

‘No,’ I interrupt, ‘it isn’t.’

I try and explain to her.

In the night I wake and hear crying, sobbing, Jack in the other bedroom. No sound from Florence. Poor, poor man.

I wonder whether she knew her fate. Whether she sensed it as the door swung open. She was good at reading body language; intrinsic to her work after all. But she was shy, too, reserved, so that might have been a check on her instinctive response.

At what point did she know? Or did she die ignorant, oblivious? You must have had time to grab the poker, or did you attack her before you picked that up? Trip her over, knock her down, punch her?

One of the hardest things is imagining the terror she must have felt if she did realize you were going to hurt her. If she understood with the innate sense of an animal that she was in jeopardy, in the deepest danger. The preservation of life is the strongest instinct; it’s why starving people will eat their young, why someone trapped will sever their own limb.

Had she the prescience to know her life was ending? It pierces my soul to think of Lizzie riddled with that level of fear.

When you finally answer my questions, I hope that you will tell me that she had no notion of what would befall her, that you tricked her and she turned away, and she never saw you raise the cast-iron stick. That the first blow felled her like a lamb, crushed her brain like a grape, stopped her heart, the swelling of her lungs, the blood in her veins. I hope that you will tell me that.

But I need you to tell me the truth.

However bleak.

Ruth

CHAPTER NINE

Thursday 17 September 2009

Kay orders the flowers. A bouquet from Jack, one from Tony and me. She brings back some stationery too, cream vellum, thick, for us to write notes.

Florence is drawing a rainbow with felt tips, upper teeth snagging her lower lip in concentration. She presses hard on the paper, which begins to tear. When I try to slide another piece of paper underneath, she shoves it away. I feel a moment’s fierce irritation. Hold it in. After all, the kitchen table is already marked with scratches, burns and scuffs, biro marks. A bit of felt tip won’t hurt.

I pick up a pen and stare at the paper. What can I possibly say? ‘I can’t do this,’ I mumble, tears stinging the back of my eyes. I pull my glasses off.

‘Ruth…’ Tony says.

‘No.’ I go outside. Words have been my life, words, books, stories, reading. Okay, maybe not the whole of my life, but a great part of it, and now they fail me. They are inadequate, pale, flimsy, weak.

Tony comes out after a few minutes. ‘We can just keep it simple,’ he says. ‘Say we love her, always.’ His voice wavers and he pinches his nose.

‘It’s not enough.’

‘A poem then, a quotation.’

I smile, a rush of affection. I used to send him poems when we first started going out. Sonnets and verses I thought he’d like. Shakespeare, Donne, Plath, Dickinson.

‘I’ll have a look.’

He had come to the library looking for reference books about architecture, wanting to become more knowledgeable for his salvage work. I had just started there, librarian assistant on a job creation scheme. A way to get off the dole for six months. After a degree in English and history and a year’s teacher training, I decided that teaching was not for me. At least not classroom teaching. But I loved the library work, helping people with all sorts of quests for knowledge.

When Tony asked for advice, whether there were any more books he could get hold of, I suggested he try Central Library with its extensive reference section. I showed him how to find books in the catalogue and, if they weren’t in our Ladybarn branch, how to request an inter-library loan.

He kept coming back. Shelley, one of the other staff, nudged me one day: ‘Romeo’s in again.’ I wondered who she meant. Then she nodded to him. ‘Put him out of his misery, Ruth, ask him out.’

‘You don’t think…’ I blushed.

‘I do. Don’t you like him?’

It took me a moment to answer. ‘Yes.’

‘Well then. Invite him to the Valentine’s Verse Night.’ We were having an event with local poets and musicians.

My face was still aflame as Tony came up to the counter.

‘This one’s overdue,’ he said. ‘My uncle borrowed it.’

‘First time, I’ll let you off.’

He smiled. When he smiled, his green eyes shone.

Tony isn’t traditionally handsome; he certainly hasn’t got the leading-man looks that Jack has. He’s well built, broad-shouldered, with huge hands and feet. A bit like a prop forward. His nose is sharp, his cheeks round. He had curly blond hair back then but I found him attractive. And he had charisma.

There was also the appeal of his attention; he was really interested in me, in my opinions. We had long discussions, arguing about politics and feminism and social issues; he teased me about my middle-class background and I teased him back about his Manchester scally posturing. He was easily as bright as I was, which was what really mattered.

I fell in love with him.

I didn’t ever stop, though I’ve learnt to hide it. I still don’t know, don’t really know, what Denise gives him that I didn’t. Why he prefers her. Objective as I can be, I don’t get it. I never have.

We are all tense; the atmosphere in the house before we leave to lay the flowers is brittle.

The rain has stopped, but it’s cold and damp and the feel of winter is in the air. Jack looks wiped out, purple shadows under his eyes. On the way in the car he starts shivering, and I reach out and touch him. The look he gives me is so sad, so wretched, I almost ask if we can call the whole thing off.

Jack has white flowers, roses, gypsophila, lilies and carnations. The carnations smell strong, sweet and spicy in the car. Melissa and Mags have been to the allotment and gathered some wild flowers – cornflower, little daisies, cow parsley and sweet peas -included in the florist’s arrangement of yellow roses and blue iris that I carry.

Florence is with us; she has brought a new picture, a drawing of Milky, though if you weren’t primed you’d be hard put to tell it was an animal at all, let alone a cat.

We have our instructions. Jack and Florence will go first, walk down the pavement and leave the bouquet and picture. Then Tony and I will join them; we will go together in a show of solidarity to reinforce that Lizzie was from a loving home. It smacks of hypocrisy to me. This focus on how wholesome Lizzie was. The deserving and the undeserving dead.

‘There’s a story,’ Jack said when Kay talked us through the sequence and Tony asked about Denise being involved too. ‘You keep the story simple.’ Denise wants to pay her respects, so Tony has agreed to visit with her after we have all been. She is a complicating factor.

I’m taken aback to see so many reporters and film crews crowded at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Jack places his flowers down beside all the other bunches there. Florence puts her picture next to it. Then we are told it’s our turn. It is hard to concentrate; my mind keeps jumping back to that night, to Jack and Florence at this spot, the front door ajar. To my Lizzie, so still on the floor.

Getting my glasses out, I make an effort to read the cards that have been left, but time and again my mind slides away. Florence raises her arms and Jack picks her up. She lays her head on his shoulder.

Across the road the waiting journalists do their stuff, a buzz of activity and attention, a continual rippling, click and chime of cameras. Cigarette smoke on the air.

‘Can we get Bert now?’ Florence says.

‘No,’ Jack says, ‘not yet.’

The house is still off limits.

There is a giddy sensation inside me. I feel close to the edge, as if I might suddenly do something grossly inappropriate, fart or vomit or burst out laughing. I clench my teeth until my head aches.

We walk back to the car, a sad little procession, then Florence kicks off, wrenching round in Jack’s arms, pointing back to the house and crying.

‘What is it?’ he asks her. ‘What do you want?’

She is screaming and it’s hard to make out the words.

Jack glances at me to see if I have any idea what’s going on. I shake my head.

‘We have to go to Nana’s,’ Jack tells her. ‘We can’t go home yet.’

‘I know!’ she bawls.

‘Show me,’ Jack says, and lowers her to the ground. Florence runs back and we follow. She snatches up her picture. The crying softens to small sobs.

‘You want to bring it?’ I say.

She nods her head.

‘That’s fine. You keep it.’ Then I do laugh, half laugh, half cry. My throat painful.

We leave again.

We look peculiar on the television, Tony and I. If I didn’t know us, had to guess what we did, who we were, I’d say he was a stevedore. Hah! Not much call for stevedores in Manchester in the twenty-first century. A forklift truck driver then, or a brickie. His weathered complexion, solid build, those peasant’s hands. And me? I don’t know. With white hair to my shoulders, the specs and the middle-aged spread, I look older than I feel, older than I really am.

One or two of the reports give more details about Lizzie and Jack. Jack has done some television, guest parts on Casualty and The Bill, as well as his theatre roles. But he’s not a household name. There would be even more attention if he was.

The camera pans over our bouquets propped up against the garden wall, the cards and notes in plastic sleeves, the messages of love, our blessings. A voiceover relates our description of Lizzie: Lizzie was a much-loved daughter, wife and mother, a warm and loving person who lived life to the full. Her passion for theatre and the arts… The film focuses on Florence’s drawing, a row of kisses at the bottom, on Jack’s note, my love forever; it moves to our signatures, Mum and Dad, beneath the verse from Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Echo’, just out of sight.

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

CHAPTER TEN

Friday 18 September 2009

DI Ferguson was right, it does seem as though nothing is happening. Stasis. We go through the motions of eating and drinking; we wash, though I’m tempted not to bother. As though wearing my dirt on my skin and letting my hair grow greasy and tangled can serve as symbols of my distress and sorrow. It makes sense. I understand now those newscasts from other countries: the rending of clothes, the tearing of hair, the howls of grief. See how I hurt, I will hurt myself to show you.

But we are British. And there is Florence to think of. It would all be so different without her. I could indulge myself, not beholden to anyone. Rave and rage and lose control.

Jack signals to me and we move into the hall.

‘What do we do about school?’ he says quietly.

‘I don’t know. The routine…’ I begin thinking perhaps it would help Florence then I falter. I have no idea what is best. She is settling in well there, in reception, moving up from the school’s nursery class, and usually looks forward to going, but I can’t quite imagine a bereaved child returning to school so soon.

‘We can ask Kay,’ I say.

Kay’s advice is to see what Florence wants to do. If she wants to go in, Kay will speak to the school and explain the situation.

‘I’ll take her,’ Jack says, ‘if she wants to go. I usually take her.’

When Jack asks Florence about school, she says no, alarm in her voice.

‘Okay,’ Jack agrees, ‘you’ll go another day, maybe.’

‘No,’ she says again.

He glances at me, I shrug. What can we do?

Tony returns to work. Does that sound heartless? He tells me he is going mad with nothing to do, brooding at home. That he’ll be better occupied, his business won’t run itself, though they could get by on Denise’s income for a few weeks if they had to. There is no way I can face the thought of work, but I force myself to go out of the house once a day. I cannot hide for ever.

Returning the calls of people who have left messages is really difficult, and I give up trying.

‘You’ve not been able to have a funeral yet,’ Kay says. ‘Usually when someone dies you can focus on that, you’re run ragged making arrangements, everything’s leading to saying a very public goodbye. Without that it is hard to move on with grieving.’

She is right, we are rudderless. ‘People will understand and you can get in touch when you’re ready. Don’t sweat it.’

Kay has a few Americanisms that make me smile. She spent some time working over there on an exchange programme. In Chicago. She loved it.

‘You wouldn’t go back?’

‘No chance now, they’re not hiring.’

The tablets help in one regard: they make it easier for me to avoid dwelling on the scene at Lizzie’s house. It is there at the edge of my mind, a shadow hovering, but like a word that can’t be summoned, or a name forgotten, it stays just out of reach. Sometimes I wake suddenly, full of unease, sweating, and I wonder if I’ve been dreaming about Lizzie, visiting the scene in my slumber. Jack hasn’t taken any medication though I suggest he might. I hear him crying most nights, or pacing about.

We do everything we are asked. Jack talks to the police again.

Every day I ask Kay if they’ve had any witnesses come forward, if anyone saw anything, a stranger in the area. If they’ve found Broderick Litton.

‘Nothing yet, but it is very early on,’ she keeps saying.

My neighbours bring more food. We’ve already had to throw some out and I’ve no idea which dishes are whose.

Jack puts a lasagne in the oven.

‘Did the police say anything?’ I ask him.

He shakes his head, and then stills. ‘Only that they think she let him in.’

My heart quickens. Another morsel of fact. They are like shots of a drug. Dizzying, addictive. ‘Why do they think that?’ I sit down.

‘Because there wasn’t any damage to the door, no sign of him breaking in anywhere else.’

I absorb this. ‘She would never have let that man in. Litton. Not in a million years. Or anyone else, come to that.’

‘I know,’ Jack says. ‘I told them.’

‘He might have forced his way in as soon as she opened the door,’ I say.

We look at each other, Jack tightens his mouth and the dimple in his chin deepens.

Kay encourages me to talk about Lizzie. About her before all this. I’m not sure at first; it’s painful until I get lost in the stories. Gradually I see that it’s healthy to shift the focus away from Lizzie’s death to the rest of her life, all those twenty-nine years. To take her off the pedestal too: not some alabaster martyr, flawless and sublime, but a person who made mistakes and could be infuriating at times.

I tell Kay about the colic and the trials of teenage-hood, which I’m sure was normal enough but was a nightmare at the time. About how stubborn Lizzie could be even if she was in the wrong, and the raging rows she’d have particularly with Tony. And I explain how we came through all that. That the good times far outweighed the hard ones and I took such delight in her, her talents and her character and her generous spirit.

At sixteen she had an abortion after getting pregnant by some boy she had only dated for a month. Of course we’d have supported her whatever she chose to do, but I was relieved when she opted for a termination. She was so young, still a child herself in many ways. I was ready to go with her to the clinic, but she wanted to take her friend Rebecca instead. She was sad after the procedure, naturally – she sat beside me on the sofa and cried, and I rocked her in my arms – but she never regretted the choice.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Perhaps you are ill, mentally ill, I think, as I sit and open more cards and letters. Wouldn’t you have to be to stalk my daughter like you did? To come back and kill her? Though I know about the stereotypes. Most people with a mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the instigators. Or to hurt themselves. The Daily Mail notion of the mad axeman is extremely rare. And these days it’s more likely to be a ceremonial sword.

At work, our doors are open to everyone, and some of the library users have health problems, mental or physical or both. In past times they’d have been locked up in asylums. I can’t imagine any of them attacking someone. Not Ruby, who is highly educated and speaks half a dozen languages and trembles like a butterfly, anxiety singing in every cell of her body. Or Giles, who lived with bipolar. ‘I’m manic-depressive,’ he announced when I first met him. ‘If I get on your nerves, just tell me to sod off. I do witter on sometimes.’ Giles wrote poetry, sheaves of it. He had romantic stories published in women’s magazines, and when he was well enough, he attended the creative writing group the WEA ran at the library. One summer’s night he lay down on the train tracks outside Levenshulme station and ended his life. He was a lovely man.

But perhaps you are the exception, the one in a million who won’t take their meds and who runs amok and kills a stranger. The attack on Lizzie was vicious, sustained. Were there voices in your head commanding you to strike? Again and again. Why Lizzie? Why stalk her? Why come and kill her? Are women the enemy? Do you hate all women, or just young, pretty ones?

The sun shines as I walk up to the park. I avoid the shops, haven’t been in to buy anything. No hurry.

I am at the duck pond when someone calls my name.

Squinting into the sun, I see him. Hoodie up, pants halfway down his bum showing his boxers, trainers in some bright electric blue. Doddsy, one of the lads from the basic skills group who used to meet at the library. In his early twenties now. School had failed him but he had enough nous to try a different route when given the opportunity.

‘Hello, Doddsy.’

‘Sorry about your daughter. It’s really… just…’ he says, flushing.

My chest tightens. ‘Thanks. How are you?’

‘Good. Got this mentor now and I’m doing a sound production course. Well good.’

‘That’s great,’ I say.

‘Yeah. If I can help, you know, if there’s anything…’

‘Thanks.’

‘Better go.’ He shrugs, and shuffles his feet. ‘See ya.’

I smile and nod, touched by his kindness.

Something shifts as I realize that not only have you taken Lizzie’s life and shattered ours, not only have you turned Lizzie from an ordinary person into a victim, but you have twisted my identity as well. Warped it. For ever more, for most people I will be Ruth, the woman whose daughter was killed. The mother of a murder victim. That’s what people will see first and above everything else; that’s how people will talk about me, will name me.

What is even more sickening is that it’s a role I’ve embraced in these last four years. Because of my hatred, my thirst for revenge, my greed to see you suffer. My obsession. I have allowed myself to disappear into the role of bereaved parent.

And that is partly why I’m writing to you. I want to be more than that. Break that typecasting.

They say no man is an island, they say we’re a construct of all the roles we play, but I am so very, very tired of this one.

You have brought such bitterness to my door. Filled my veins with such violent animosity and my heart with such hate that I can barely recognize myself any more. I want to find the old Ruth, the Ruth who cursed her screaming baby and rowed with her teenage daughter, the bibliophile who fell in love and copied out poems and learnt to grow vegetables and had a penchant for soul music and chocolate and liked cats.

You’ve done your level best to kill her too, but she’s not dead yet, not completely.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWELVE

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Six days. What’s that in hours? I work it out. One hundred and forty-four. It feels longer. Although time is a pretty nebulous concept, the hours and days bleed together. How many seconds? How many heartbeats?

Had you any idea the police were closing in on you? Or as the days rolled by did you breathe easily, and dare to hope you’d got away with it?

Florence has not touched the doll since she brought it home. She keeps trying to cuddle Milky, hauling the poor animal up with her arms under his stomach. He’s placid, won’t scratch or bite her, but he thrashes about and runs off.

Florence and I are alone. Florence is at the table eating some beans on toast. Kay has a meeting with the investigation team, Jack’s having a rest. We are still stumbling through our lives. I’m sorting through some clean clothes left neglected in the basket. Even this simple task seems to require a Herculean effort.

One of my socks, old grey wool, has a hole in the toe. No point in keeping it. I stick my hand in, wiggle my finger through the hole, put on a funny fluting voice. ‘Hello.’ I make the sock bow.

‘What is it?’ says Florence.

‘I don’t know. Maybe…’ I gather the fabric and narrow it into a windsock shape, ‘maybe it’s a Clanger.’

‘What’s a Clanger?’

‘They were on the telly a long time ago. Lived on a planet with a soup dragon. They made a noise like this.’ I combine a hum and a whistle.

‘I want a Clanger,’ she says. ‘No – I want a sock cat. No – a kitten.’

‘A kitten, eh? What would it need?’

‘Some ears.’ She scoops up the last of her beans.

‘And whiskers?’

‘Yes, and paws.’

My sewing skills are basic. ‘Paws might be tricky. Let’s see…’

The sewing box yields enough black felt scraps to furnish two triangular ears and two round eyes, Florence chooses a brown leather button for a nose.

‘Look at Milky’s eyes,’ I say. Milky is sitting on the chair by the radiator. Florence kneels up in front of him and stares. Milky yawns, affecting disdain, but then his ears flatten and I can see he’s preparing for a rapid exit if she makes a lunge. ‘Yellow bits,’ she says.

‘What shape?’

She sketches something unreadable with her hands.

‘Great.’

I have some yellow cotton and use that to stitch a vertical line on the eyes. Plaited brown wool furnishes a tail. There’s nothing stiff enough for the whiskers, so we make do with more lengths of the wool, which hang down like a droopy moustache, but Florence seems happy.

‘She needs insides,’ Florence says. ‘She’s all flat.’

‘If we leave it empty, it can be a puppet,’ I say.

‘I don’t want a puppet,’ she scowls. ‘Not a puppet!’ Suddenly cross.

‘Okay.’

A couple of J Cloths, torn into strips, serve as stuffing. I sew the top of the sock shut, biting the thread to cut it. ‘There we go.’

Florence bounces the kitten along the table.

‘What will you call it?’

‘Kitten.’

‘Okay, highly original.’

‘No, Kit Kat,’ she says.

‘Right.’

‘No…’ She purses her mouth and furrows her brow as she thinks. ‘Matilda.’

Where’s this come from? Has she had the book? Seen the film? The little girl who is neglected and bullied at home and school but who finds secret powers and blossoms in the love and care of her teacher.

‘Yes,’ she says firmly, ‘Matilda.’

The door opens and I look up, expecting Lizzie, come to collect Florence. Tired from her journey but glad to be working, with stories from her day.

I have forgotten, which means I have to remember anew. A lance in my heart. Swallowing the cry in my mouth, I fight to smile at Jack.

Florence is in the living room with Kay, CBBC on the television. There is talk of the BBC moving to Manchester. Jack hopes it will happen; it might provide more work for him.

‘We should think about getting her back to school,’ I say.

‘I don’t think she’ll wear it,’ Jack says.

‘She’ll have to sooner or later, unless you plan to home-school her.’

He gives me a sceptical look.

‘A phased return,’ I say. ‘We can work something out with the staff. Who is it, Mrs Bradshaw?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even if we have to go and sit in with her for a month. You’ve no work lined up?’ I ask him.

‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ve not had an audition since I went up for The History Boys. I should speak to Veronica, tell her the situation.’

Veronica is his agent. ‘She’ll have heard,’ I say. ‘There’s time.’

‘I should get a phone,’ he says. Like Bert the teddy bear, Jack’s phone was in the house and is off limits for now.

I get a glimpse of all the practicalities Jack will have to face, rearranging work and childcare around Florence, sorting out the house: he will want to move, surely, find somewhere new, neutral, not tainted with Lizzie’s murder. And then all their financial affairs and all the connections of Lizzie’s. All the organizations and individuals she’s linked with. All the arrangements that will need cancelling.

‘Use mine whenever you need,’ I remind him. ‘And if I can help with anything, the school stuff, or looking after Florence when you go back to work, I can reduce my hours. Anything.’

We decide that Florence can go without a bath. I supervise her getting ready for bed and read her book, then she asks for Jack and he stays with her. Downstairs I nod off myself and come to with a start when he returns.

It is windy, a storm is forecast. In bed, I lie with the duvet tight around me and listen to the wind, to the bumping of the gate and the sudden rattle of something along the alley at the back when a stronger gust blows through.

It used to be one thing I relished, being warm and cosy inside while outside the wind prowled and roared. Reminders of ghost stories and adventure yarns. It was a dark and stormy night. That has changed.

I’m cold, chilled deep inside and I no longer feel safe.

Ruth

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

I wake early. The storm is buffeting the house, heavy rain lashes against the window. Milky, unsettled, starts to wash himself, then freezes, cowering. He won’t even come on to my lap for a stroke.

Pain in my chest again. Perhaps I need to go back to the GP. I’m fearful that it’s something serious. No, ‘serious’ is the wrong word. Something physical, mechanical, a blockage or a clot, a leak or a tear. That my heart is broken, not just that I am heartbroken.

Florence and Jack come down together. She has woken him. Before, she used to be happy entertaining herself for a while, able to understand that Mummy and Daddy didn’t want to get up before seven, but now Jack says that as soon as she’s awake she rouses him.

Jack makes her cereal and goes to have a shower.

I consider whether to broach returning to school with her but decide it’s best to let Jack take the lead on that. The line between supporting and interfering is very hard to see in the circumstances. But she’s his daughter and he is the sole parent now, and I trust him to judge how best to handle things with her.

There’s a crashing sound from outside and Florence flinches. I feel myself wince in sympathy.

Peering out of the window, I can see that the planter I fixed up has come away from the wall. And the trellis further down is loose, moving with each fresh blast.

‘It’s just one of Nana’s pots,’ I tell her. ‘You want to see?’

Non-committal, she sits for a few seconds longer then comes over, and I lift her up and show her. ‘See, all the soil’s spilt.’

‘And the flowers,’ she says.

‘They were old anyway. Past their best.’ Verbena and lobelia from the summer.

‘You’re old.’

My mind does gymnastics trying to work out what hers is thinking. That I might just collapse too? If my world feels unsteady, how much more fragile must Florence’s be?

‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I’m not past my best. Fit as a fiddle, me. Fit as a flea.’

A ghost of a smile.

Jack makes some toast and I put the kettle on again.

Kay arrives, commenting about the weather and the disruption. There’s been an accident on the M60 with a lorry gone over. Trees have blocked roads and some of the rail networks have been closed where the overhead lines are down.

Almost immediately her phone goes and she leaves us to take the call in the living room.

I’m mixing a banana milkshake for Florence, whizzing the fruit with milk and a spoonful of honey, when there is a knocking at the front door, just audible above the liquidizer.

Florence has her hands pointedly over her ears.

‘Let Kay get it,’ I say to Jack when he moves to go.

We hear voices, male, more than one. Not Tony, I can tell his voice anywhere.

I pour the frothy yellow drink into a plastic cup.

‘Can I have a straw?’ Florence says.

‘The bits might clog it up,’ I say, ‘but you can try.’

The visitors come into the kitchen with Kay. Police officers. Jackets wet with raindrops.

‘Mr Jack Tennyson,’ one of them says.

‘Yes,’ Jack says, looking to see what they want.

They both hold up their ID cards. And the one who spoke, plump, fair-haired, introduces them. PC Curtis and PC Simmons.

They must have news! Have they found you? I lean against the worktop to steady myself, intent on whatever is coming next. I’m waiting, eager, poised, holding my breath. The men move further into the room past Florence to Jack at the end of the table. Then PC Curtis speaks again. ‘Jack Tennyson, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Lizzie Tennyson, on the twelfth of September 2009…’

Shock jolts through me, stealing my breath.

Jack jumps to his feet, his face white with shock, shouting, ‘No!’

Florence flies to reach him, knocking her drink over as she drops from her chair.

‘… you do not have to say anything…’ Jack lunges along the side of the table, knocking over a chair. PC Simmons charges after him, blocks him in. Jack wrestles, still trying to get away. But Simmons has a set of handcuffs and he grabs for Jack’s arms.

PC Curtis keeps talking as he moves after Jack, ‘… but anything you do say may be given in evidence and…’

Jack is struggling, shouting, ‘This is crazy! I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything.’ Lunging to try and break free. He kicks out with his legs, knocking a chair over, wrenches away but Simmons holds him fast.

Florence is screaming, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ She darts under the table to her father.

My heart hammers in my chest and I feel the pain needle through it, sharp as a knife.

‘… may harm your defence when used in court.’

They have Jack’s hands behind his back. His face has gone rigid, his eyes blazing.

Florence is screaming and hitting at PC Simmons, trying to reach her father. She squeezes past him and grabs Jack’s leg.

Kay calls out, ‘PC Simmons, please!’

‘Let her say goodbye.’ My voice cuts through the mayhem. I stare at PC Simmons, the one who has cuffed him. ‘Look at her, she’s four years old. Let her say goodbye.’

‘Do it,’ says Kay.

His eyes flicker at me. Jack is still shaking his head, his face flooded with colour now.

I move round until I’m by Florence and lift her up so she’s level with Jack. She throws her skinny arms around his neck, still sobbing, ‘Daddy. Daddy.’

‘I’ll be back soon, sweetheart,’ Jack says, his voice hoarse. ‘Just a silly mix-up.’

I have to pull her away, use my hands to release hers, peeling her off him, and she falls silent. Suddenly there’s just the uneven shake of her breath.

The men lead Jack out. The room stinks of banana and male sweat.

The truth settles on me heavy as lead, the ground is wobbly beneath my feet. I edge on to Jack’s empty chair and sit Florence on my knee and stare vacantly at the walls. Outside a car starts and there’s a splatter of rain on the windows behind me.

The truth pours through me like water on sand, soaking in instantly. In my belly and my guts, in my arms, my thighs, from the nape of my neck to the soles of my feet. I’m aware of Florence, her weight on my legs, one hand gripping my little finger, the heat from her body against my stomach.

The truth solidifies inside me, granite-hard yet raw as flesh, quick as lightning and deep as space. Fathomless. I taste it in the roof of my mouth, hear it in the tick of my blood, see it in Kay’s eyes, in the image of Jack trying to run, in the way Lizzie’s hand caught the firelight. I smell it in the stink of body odour and ripe fruit. I feel it in my scalp and my bowels and the marrow of my bones.

You are not Broderick Litton.

Not some prowler.

Not some random stranger.

You are Jack.

Jack killed Lizzie.

Jack is you.

You are Jack.

And I hate you.

Ruth

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Saturday 19 September 2009

The rage comes next. I round on Kay as soon as I can extricate myself from Florence, lay her on the sofa and cover her with a blanket. I’m not even astonished that she goes to sleep.

‘You knew!’ I say. ‘You fucking knew and you let me sit here, you let Florence see that! Her own father dragged off in handcuffs.’ I’m close to belting her, but turn and hit the nearest thing, the shelf with cookery books, send them flying. I would tear the walls down. But still I hold myself together.

‘I’m so sorry. They weren’t supposed to-’

I’m not ready to hear it. Not excuses or explanations. ‘That child,’ I hiss at her, determined not to weep because then I will lose the ability to say my piece, ‘has lost her mother and you people tear her father away like… like savages.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Go. Just get out.’ I can’t bear her, can’t bear it. ‘Just get out.’

‘But-’

‘I don’t want you here.’

‘I’ll ring you later.’ At least she doesn’t argue with me.

A band tightens around my skull and a sweet, brackish taste floods my mouth. In the garden I vomit down the drain, the rain pelting on my back and drenching my hair.

I have to see Tony.

Florence is drowsy as I transfer her to the car. There’s a CD of nursery rhymes among the discs in the glove compartment and I put that on. I could walk to the salvage yard, but not in this weather, in this state, not with Florence.

I’m probably not fit to drive, but it’s only five minutes.

The gates are open and I don’t see any customers’ vehicles in the yard. The lights are on in Tony’s office. I park so that I will be able to see Florence from the windows.

It is years since I’ve been here but it hasn’t changed much. Though I can see he’s surfaced the central courtyard, which used to be rutted and pitted and prone to puddles. And the far end of the lot, once a pair of garages, is now a large open-fronted area with a roof and aisles, presumably for various categories of stock. Adjoining the office and opposite, across the yard, are the same assortment of prefabs, sheds and lean-tos where people can browse for doorknobs and candelabra, newel posts and stained-glass panels.

My hair flies about, blinding me as I cross to the office.

Tony must have heard the car, because he opens the door before I reach it. He steps back and lets me inside.

‘They’ve arrested Jack,’ I say, ‘just now, at my house.’ My voice is blurred, my mouth dry.

His face moves, eyes blinking, mouth working.

‘For Lizzie’s murder,’ I say. My breath comes sharp, blades in it.

The blood falls from Tony’s face, leaving him a ghastly white colour. He sways where he stands, then raises his face to the ceiling. He tries to speak but fails to find the words, just a few stuttering syllables. He swings round, then back to me. ‘That’s crazy. What the hell are they playing at! We should ring someone, a solicitor. Do something. We should… Good God! Fuck! It doesn’t make sense.’ His eyes are wild, he gasps for breath.

‘Tony… I think they’re right.’

‘What? Have you taken leave of your senses? Bloody hell, Ruth.’

‘Stop shouting and listen,’ I say, but he doesn’t.

‘He thought the world of her; this is Jack we’re talking about.’

‘I know! But when they came, when they arrested him, he tried to run away. He was expecting it. Any normal person, if they were innocent, they’d be speechless, stunned, outraged, but it was just like he knew he’d been caught and he made this mad dash for it and they had to physically restrain him.’

The air seems to leak out of Tony. He moves slowly, stooping, around the desk to his ancient office chair with its curved back and castors on the legs and green leather seat and back.

I perch on the edge of the desk so that I have a clear view of the car.

‘But what did they say?’ He gives a great sigh, ragged and fast, and a spasm jolts through his frame.

‘Nothing. I don’t know. Kay was there, she knew they were coming.’

He raises his hands to the sides of his head. I am reminded of Florence when I made her milkshake.

‘And they wouldn’t do that, arrest him, unless there was good reason,’ I say. My mind careers back to that night, bumping over the paltry facts I know. There was no sign of damage. No need to force entry. A dozen blows at least. Jack discovering the body. Jack’s story of a night-time trip to the gym. ‘What’s the alternative? If it’s not Jack? Broderick Litton crawls out of the woodwork after more than a year’s gone by and Lizzie lets him in and he beats her to death and then conveniently disappears into the night before Jack gets back from his workout?’

‘But Jack…’ he whispers.

‘I know. I know.’ I bite down on my tears, breathing hard. ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t… What do we tell Florence?’ I break down.

Tony comes and holds me, his arms strong and heavy round my shoulders, my face pressed against his work sweater, which smells of damp wool and white spirit and wood smoke. Scents that send me back to camping, bonfires on the beach, rain on canvas, the three of us playing cards in the light from the Tilley lamp. To days at the allotment, Lizzie in her dungarees with her toy wheelbarrow. Cycling to the library with Lizzie on the child seat, me helping set up the crèche where she will play with the other kids while I work. Tony collecting her from school and letting her act as sous-chef. Us stripping wallpaper and painting window frames and choosing where to put up bookshelves.

My face is damp, cold, and I ease away, wiping my cheeks and nose.

‘Why?’ Tony says. ‘Why?’

I have no idea, so I say nothing.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he says. ‘Not Jack.’

Not Lizzie.

I think of Jack, his voice on the phone begging for help, standing at the gate, his teeth chattering in his head. Jack eating in my kitchen, sleeping in my bed and weeping in the night. Jack echoing the questions we were all asking.

‘He’s an actor,’ I say. He convinced me.

‘Actors don’t kill people,’ Tony bursts out. Which is a ridiculous statement to make. As if an occupation confers or removes the capacity to take a life.

I snort and laugh. Tony scowls and throws out a hand. ‘You know what I mean. They might let him go, they might not charge him, it could be a mistake, a misunderstanding.’ He is pleading.

I shrug.

‘You really think they’re right?’

I don’t need to repeat myself; he can read it in my eyes.

‘No, no,’ he says, still not prepared to accept it.

The wind whistles through the keyhole, a soft moaning noise.

After a pause, he says, ‘What happens now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What does Kay say?’

‘She’s gone, I chucked her out.’

He looks disapproving.

‘You weren’t there,’ I say. ‘Tony, it was awful. Florence was screaming and trying to get to her dad and Jack tried to run. They way they handled it.’ I shake my head.

When I see Florence move, her starfish palm against the car window, I go and fetch her in. She is cranky, restless, and complains that we’ve left Matilda at home. Tony distracts her, showing her how to wind the grandfather clock in the corner and taking her to see the bells and doorknockers in the sheds. But then she complains she’s hungry.

‘Chip shop chips,’ I say to her.

She blinks with surprise. Chips from the shop are a rare treat. She has frozen chips sometimes at home but Lizzie tries to limit the amount of junk food, much as Tony and I did when Lizzie was small. That all went out the window when she was a teenager and would only eat pizza and Pot Noodles and other crap. I decided not to fight about it. There were more important issues. A couple of years’ rebelling through food choices wouldn’t do her much harm.

‘Now?’ Florence says.

Tony looks at the clock. ‘The shop doesn’t open until twelve.’

Will she last an hour? I don’t think so.

‘I want chips,’ she begins to grizzle.

‘We’ll get chips as soon as the shop opens, but let’s get you something now to be going on with,’ I say. ‘At the baker’s.’

A single nod.

Tony locks up. We walk along the main road, heads bowed in the wind, past the antique and second-hand shops, to the local bakery.

Inside, Florence presses her nose against the display cabinets and surveys the sandwiches, pies and pastries, then cranes her neck, standing on tiptoe. ‘Cake,’ she says.

‘Here.’ Tony lifts her up, names the choices. Custard slice, strawberry tart, coconut macaroon, Eccles cake, chocolate fudge cake, apple pie, rocky road.

‘Rocky road?’ Florence says.

‘It’s got nuts and fruit and chocolate. Very chewy,’ I say.

‘Or there’s fairy buns.’ The assistant points them out.

Florence shakes her head.

We wait and wait as she hums and haws. Tony puts her down.

I edge her to one side so the assistant can deal with new customers. My back aches from standing still. ‘Two more minutes,’ I say, ‘then I’ll pick.’

‘No!’ she objects.

‘We can’t stand here all day.’

She seems unable to decide, rocking in an agony of indecision. I am reminded of the way she acted choosing the toy. Impatience simmers beneath my skin, my nerves already shredded by Jack’s arrest. ‘Get two different things,’ I suggest, keeping my voice level, ‘one for you and one for Matilda.’

That works.

‘Rocky road for Matilda. Chocolate for me.’

We are halfway back to the yard when she bursts into tears. ‘I don’t want chocolate, I don’t want it.’

Tony gives me a look suggesting we go back, but I think she’ll just repeat it all. There’s a newsagent’s on the next corner and I nip in there, buy a bag of Hula Hoops and a carton of Vimto.

Florence eyes them as I come out. She is still crying. I don’t say anything, but we walk on and she quietens. Once we’re in Tony’s office again, I open the Hula Hoops and eat a couple. Put the cakes on the table. Offer the Hula Hoops to Tony. He shakes his head until he sees me glare, then he takes one and eats it. Florence watches.

She can tell something is going on but can’t quite work out what.

I shake the Vimto, pierce it with the straw and take a sip. Offer it to Florence. She takes it and drinks. All the crying will have made her thirsty.

‘Can I have some of your cake?’ I say.

She screws up her mouth, uncertain.

‘You can have some of my Hula Hoops.’

She nods.

I give her the Hula Hoops. She eats them all. I take a morsel of cake. She eats the rest, then the Rocky Road, her little teeth cracking the nuts with relish.

Tony fields calls while we’re there. There’s a strange, sad intimacy in the situation. It’s like we’re hiding. I should speak for myself. I’m hiding. Playing house. Not willing to face real life. Real death.

Dead on noon, we go to buy chips, and they are huge and crisp and golden. The vinegar makes my eyes water. We eat them in the car. I burn my tongue. Florence polishes off plenty. Her appetite is amazing.

‘We’d better go,’ I tell Tony, ‘let you get on with work.’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘We’ll go.’

‘If you hear anything…’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll come round later.’

I’m at sea, unmoored. I drive home, and Florence and I lie on the sofa together with Matilda and watch films back to back.

What do I do now? How on earth do I explain this to her?

Kay does ring and I am civil – just – and ask her what is happening. ‘As soon as I know,’ she says, ‘I will tell you.’

It’s not enough.

By the time night falls, the storm has gone. The trees outside are still, the ground is drying up. All is quiet. But inside me the tempest rages. I am fit to crack, like Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Is there any chance you’ll be released without charge? Just thinking of it makes me jittery. I don’t want you anywhere near me, near Florence. Surely they won’t let you go now; they must have hard evidence to arrest you.

You bolting, your scrabble to escape, your vehement denials -they were what betrayed you. Jumping to your feet, trying to barge past the police officer, struggling and shouting. If you were innocent, I’m sure your response would have been different. Numb disbelief, uneasy laughter, a sense of hurt, of injustice, growing anger, outrage. You should have rehearsed that better. Done the preparation. Perhaps you had, but when they came with their set faces and their handcuffs, their stolid caution learned by rote, you fluffed your lines, acted out of character, dropped the mask.

You’d done well up till then, I’ll give you that. Five-star review. I had no inkling, not one iota. No moment when the thought that it might be you crept into view or tickled at the back of my skull, or niggled in my belly. No sniff of suspicion that you were anything other than a grieving husband knocked sideways by the tragedy. You were superb. Didn’t put a foot wrong, not where I was concerned. Give that man an Oscar.

Ruth

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Saturday 19 September 2009

‘Where’s Daddy?’

‘He’s had to go to work,’ I lie.

Florence pulls a face. But she doesn’t query the unusual way Jack left, the men who dragged him away, the fact that his hands were cuffed together and he was raging.

I resort to practicalities. ‘So I’ll put you to bed. Think it’s time for a hairwash, too.’

‘When is he coming back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Soon?’ she says, with a sharp nod, as if it’s definite. As if by wishing it she can make it so. ‘Now,’ she says.

‘Not now.’ Though I have no idea how long Jack might be away or whether he will be back. Will I let him in? Will we sit here and drink tea and pretend he hasn’t been ‘helping the police with their inquiries’?

‘We’ll get you ready and I’ll sleep back in my bed,’ I say.

Her face falls in resignation, and she gives a small sigh.

The bastard. I curse him for what he has done already and the hurt that’s yet to come.

Tony doesn’t stay long. With Florence asleep, I’m aware that we are alone together. And that hasn’t happened for years.

He looks so tired: the network of broken capillaries that craze his cheeks, a fake rosiness set against his dull eyes and the rash of grey stubble on his chin. His hand shakes when he lifts his mug of tea.

‘Do you think Lizzie was seeing someone else?’ he says.

I’m stung by the suggestion. ‘What? No. Why would you-’

‘Why would he hurt her? Why would he do that? He loved her,’ Tony says, heat in the questions.

Was that it? A crime of passion? A moment’s madness. Did Jack suspect Lizzie of adultery and lose his mind?

‘When would she have had time?’ I say. ‘If she wasn’t working, she had Florence. She wouldn’t do that. She loved him.’ There’d have been signs, surely. I’d have known, wouldn’t I? But then I never knew she was pregnant.

‘I need a smoke.’ Tony signals to the back door.

‘You started again?’ It’s a rhetorical question.

He goes out.

‘The trellis needs mending,’ he says when he comes back in.

‘It’s not top of my list,’ I say more harshly than I meant to. Then, ‘Sorry.’ Tony is a doer, a problem-solver. Constructive. He wants to fix things.

He can’t fix this.

The pillow on my bed smells alien, starchy, slightly cheesy. Of Jack. His tears, his sweat, his saliva. I’ve not the energy to change the whole bed and I don’t want to wake Florence, who is asleep in the child’s bed, Matilda in her hand. But I do go and fetch the pillow from the spare room and use that.

‘Nana. Nana.’ Florence is by the bedside, whimpering, clutching the toy kitten.

‘Did you have a bad dream?’ I say. And woke up to find it was real? ‘Want a cuddle? Come on.’ I edge over and throw the duvet back. She climbs in beside me and hunches up close. I put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head, which smells of my shampoo: apple and almond. I listen to her breathing. Little sips that grow quieter and quieter.

My arm gets numb and I ease it away, flexing my hand against the pins and needles.

The next thing I know Milky is on my chest, butting my chin with his head. Begging for food. Florence is still asleep.

My nightdress is damp but I’m not hot, not sweaty. I feel the bed. The sheet is cold and wet between us, and drawing back the duvet I can smell it, sharp, ammonia. Florence has wet the bed.

She shivers as I peel the sodden pyjamas off her and turn the shower on.

When she’s dry and dressed, I strip the bed. The mattress is wet too, and I wonder if I have any bicarb in to wipe it with. How can one small child contain so much urine? I should buy a mattress protector, something waterproof, just in case it happens again.

And what else? There is no plan. Time stretches ahead like foreign territory, completely unfamiliar, unknown. And I am lost. I don’t speak the language or know why I’m here or what I must do.

Sunday 20 September 2009

It is late afternoon, and I have been on the computer for the first time in a week and ordered a plastic mattress cover. And remade my bed. The rest of the day has trickled away. Florence is having a strop. Kicking the sofa, her face mutinous and flushed, because I have asked her to pick up some of her toys before I read her a story. I want her to stop. I’ve told her twice. Close to snapping, I go into the dining room and have a silent scream, balling my fists.

How long can she keep it up? Resentment makes me truculent. I want to leave her to it, cold and passive-aggressive, rather than act the mature adult and distract her or calmly discipline her. This is no good for her, cooped up. This artificial environment. The limbo we’re in. She doesn’t want me, she wants her mummy and daddy. I’m on my way to tell her she can help me make toast when the doorbell goes.

Is it Jack? Panic squirts through me. Briefly I consider hiding, but that seems pathetic. My mouth is dry, my legs feel weak as I open the door.

DI Ferguson and Kay. My stomach flips over as they step inside.

Nobody’s smiling. There’s a hiatus from the living room, then Florence resumes her kicking.

‘Come in here,’ I say. We go into the dining room. The sun comes in through the window and the air is full of dust motes, golden, circling.

I move a pile of old newspapers off one chair and clear coats from another, and we all sit down.

DI Ferguson speaks. ‘Ruth, I’ve come to tell you that we have been interviewing Jack under caution, and as a result of those interviews and the evidence gathered during our inquiry, we have agreed with the Crown Prosecution Service to bring charges.’

It is hard to breathe, as though I’m in a vacuum. My ears buzz and spots dance at the edge of my vision. ‘About Lizzie?’

‘Yes. Jack has been charged with Lizzie’s murder. I am so very sorry.’

I gasp, even though I believed him guilty from the moment of the arrest. My skin crawls.

‘I realize this must be a terrible shock,’ she says. ‘Is there anyone you’d like me to contact?’

Lizzie, only Lizzie.

I shake my head.

‘Jack will be taken to the magistrates’ court in the morning; that’s a formality really, to commit the case to Crown Court. We expect him to be remanded in custody until the trial.’ Her voice seems to swell and shrink.

‘In prison,’ I say, needing to be certain, to be crystal clear.

‘That’s right. It could take several months to get to court. You may be called as a witness.’

I wipe my eyes. ‘Did he say why? Why he did it?’

‘No. He is denying any involvement.’

‘Honestly?’ I’d expected him to see the game was up and confess. They always look at the husband. He’d said that, and I’d hurried to reassure him.

Yes, they always look at the husband.

For good reason.

‘He will have to enter a formal plea,’ DI Ferguson says, ‘but for now he’s telling us he is not guilty.’

‘But you can prove he did it?’ I say, my mouth dry.

‘Yes. In order to charge someone, we have to consider the evidence and decide whether we have a better chance of winning rather than losing. We’re confident we have.’

‘We could still lose?’ I say. I look from DI Ferguson, the intense gleam in her eyes, to Kay’s calm gaze, searching for doubt.

‘We can never be certain what the outcome of a trial will be, how a jury will vote on the evidence, but we have a very strong case.’

I think of Jack confined in a small cell, damp staining the stone walls, a metal door and bedstead, a soiled blanket.

And I wish him dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

It wasn’t me. Not guilty.

Three years you kept that up. That monstrous lie. Three years without the grace, the humanity, the balls to take responsibility.

In childbirth, the afterpains are often as strong as those in labour. I had them when I had Lizzie, forcing me to stop whatever I was doing and breathe through the contraction until it passed. Earthquakes have aftershocks following the original devastation, continuing to tear at anything left standing, to paralyse rescue missions, to terrorize survivors.

After the trauma of Lizzie’s murder, your arrest, the understanding that she died at your hand is just like that, an aftershock. And because I am already weakened by the loss, your calumny, your crime feels equally grievous.

I cannot believe she’s gone.

I cannot believe you took her.

I know these facts are true, but they are as hard to grasp as the beams of sunshine streaming into my dining room.

There’s a bitter taste of triumph, sour at the back of my mouth. Any inclination to punch the air or cheer or clap with relief is suffocated by the awful, senseless waste of it all.

You have ruined your own life as well as Lizzie’s. God only knows what you’ve done to Florence. Hear her? Still whining and kicking the furniture.

You fool, you bloody stupid fool. I wish Lizzie had never met you. I wish you’d never been born. But then I wouldn’t have Florence. I’m not in any position to bargain. To trade my granddaughter for my daughter. For what you’ve done cannot be undone. This isn’t a dress rehearsal, no press preview. The curtain has come down, the audience are long gone. The place is tacky, tawdry in the cold glare of the house lights. You are locked up. I would rain misery and terror on your head.

I want my daughter back.

Ruth

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Your parents won’t believe it. Marian calls my mobile. She’s left messages on the landline but I have not responded. It’s as if I’m over the limit in terms of the emotional burden I can withstand and the prospect of a conversation with her is just too much. But I see her name and answer.

‘We’ve heard about Jack,’ she says without any preliminaries. ‘It’s outrageous.’

The choice of words gives me pause. I’m still wondering what exactly is outrageous when she continues, ‘They’re obviously determined to blame it on someone rather than do their job properly and catch the real culprit. That monster Litton is still out there, he must be having a great laugh at our expense.’

‘You think Jack’s innocent?’ I say. This is what’s outrageous. I feel a wave of heat in my face and anger blossoming in my belly.

‘Of course!’ she explodes. ‘Ruth, he would never do something like this, not in a million years. How can you even think… He’s innocent. I know my son. It’s a terrible mistake. I don’t know what they’re playing at, but they’ve got the wrong man.’ She stops, and I don’t say anything.

When she speaks again, she is quieter, more measured, though I can hear high emotion trembling at the fringes of her words. ‘Ruth, honestly, Jack did not hurt Lizzie. He adored her. He needs us to believe in him, to stand by him until the truth comes out.’

‘No,’ I say flatly.

‘Ruth-’

‘No. You can do what you like.’

‘You can’t just condemn him outright. He’s-’

‘It won’t be up to me, will it?’ I say.

‘Until we know the truth…’

I think of Tony’s reaction after your arrest, his reluctance to believe your guilt: Have you taken leave of your senses? How I argued that I’d seen first-hand your impulse to run away, that surge of animal energy when you were cornered. How the hard facts meant you were far more likely to be responsible than an elusive stalker or some unidentified stranger.

Perhaps Marian has to believe in you, because she is your mother. I try to twist it round, imagine Lizzie accused of violence, of murder, but fail. I have not had a son; would that would be different, bring a different perspective? So easy to blame the women, isn’t it? Blame Marian for some fault in your upbringing, some problem relating to women. Or blame Lizzie for an affair, like Tony suggested, or some provocation.

Perhaps Marian dares not allow that it might be you because of the cost to her. Parents will do anything for their children, after all. Destroy evidence, invent alibis, lie under oath. Only this year there’s been the Rhys Jones case. A schoolboy shot as he played out on his bike. The killer’s mother lied to the police and was charged with perverting the course of justice.

‘Jack has never been in trouble in his life,’ Marian says. ‘You’re so wrong. I simply don’t understand how you can choose to believe for one moment-’

‘Marian, it’s not something I’ve chosen. It’s a gut feeling. As soon as they arrested him, I knew. He tried to run away.’

‘That’s just ridiculous.’ Now she’s arsey, aggressive, telling me off. ‘You’re just going to abandon him?’

Any restraint snaps. ‘He killed my daughter! Too bloody right I’m abandoning him. I hope he rots in jail.’ I hang up.

‘Nana,’ Florence calls out from the living room. I close my eyes for a moment, then go through to her.

She’s lying on the floor, hands by her sides, eyes half open; she shuts them tight when I come in.

‘Where’s Florence?’ I say, pretending I can’t see her. She loves hide-and-seek. Though she usually picks slightly better hiding places.

‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘Look!’

‘What are you doing down there?’

‘I being dead.’

Fuck! My stomach plummets. I stamp down the urge to haul her up, to tell her to stop it. A flurry of uncertainty: should I ask her more, give her a chance to talk, or explain again what dead is, what’s happened to Lizzie? See if she really understands? But I’m not ready, too wound up.

‘Are you now? That’s sad. So you won’t want any fish fingers then?’

Her eyes fly open. ‘Yes!’ she says.

‘How many? Three?’

‘Two. No, three.’ She gets up and rubs her nose on her sleeve.

I will have to tell her about you, as well. She must be confused. The scene in the kitchen, her brave attempt to protect you, to keep you. My lie about you working. I need help. No doubt there is advice online from bereavement charities about explaining death to a four-year-old. But I doubt there’s much about explaining that the police think Daddy did it. That Daddy killed Mummy.

She adores you.

And I will destroy that.

Ruth

CHAPTER NINETEEN

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Rebecca is here. When I open the door, she starts talking, saying if it’s a bad time she can come back later, then she dissolves into tears.

I bring her in.

Rebecca is Lizzie’s soul sister. They met at primary school. Rebecca has three sisters; she’s the youngest. Their dad left when Rebecca was a baby. Her mum was unhappy and took it out on the children, Rebecca particularly. Looking after four children on your own is no picnic. I felt sorry for her, Samantha, but she rebuffed any moves I made to be friendly. She worked as a secretary at a private school in Sale. On several occasions when we were collecting the kids from the after-school club I heard her belittling Rebecca. I didn’t have the courage to intervene directly, but when Rebecca stayed over at ours or came to play, I made a point of praising her, because she was a lovely girl.

I loved to hear the pair of them, Lizzie and Rebecca, in fits of giggles. There was never a cross word.

It wasn’t so much what Samantha said – ‘Oh come on, Rebecca, are you blind or just stupid?’ or ‘You can damn well do without or buy a new one with your pocket money, I’m sick of you’ – as the very harsh tone she used that made me so uncomfortable. And it must have hurt Rebecca.

Every time Samantha came to our house, I offered her a cup of tea or coffee. She always said no. I don’t think she liked me. Perhaps she sensed that I disapproved of the way she spoke to her daughter. Perhaps she hated it herself. I could relate -when Lizzie was small and bawling her head off, I felt so cross with her, unfairly, but the emotion was there all the same. Felt almost cold in my frustration. So if I’d had four kids and a job and no partner maybe I’d be mean now and again.

Lizzie hardly ever slept over at Rebecca’s. She told me in later years that Samantha used to shout at Rebecca, on and on until she made her cry, which really upset Lizzie.

Rebecca will feel Lizzie’s loss so keenly.

‘I’m sorry,’ she keeps saying, and I tell her it’s all right and I’m glad she’s here. When she’s calmer, we sit in the living room, still awash with Florence’s toys.

‘The police…’ I clear my throat. ‘They’ve charged Jack with Lizzie’s murder.’

Rebecca nods. She has glossy brown hair, cut in a bob, and striking clothes: a black and white geometric tunic, tweedy tights, Converse trainers, chunky jewellery. On anyone else it would look bizarre. Rebecca carries it off. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick.

‘He hit her?’ Rebecca says.

Does she need to hear the details? Like I did? The grotesque litany of injuries. The back of Lizzie’s skull was crushed with multiple fractures, the right orbital socket around the eye was fractured, as well as the nose and the right ulna… A dozen blows at least.

I nod. ‘They think he used the poker.’ My voice catches.

‘No.’ She grimaces. I sense she’s feeling awkward and start talking, but she interrupts me. ‘No, he hit her before.’ Her lip trembles. She puts her fingers to her mouth.

My face freezes. I stare at her. ‘What?’

‘Jack.’ She bites her thumb. ‘He hit Lizzie before.’

It’s like I’m falling. A swoop in my stomach. I don’t know what to say. ‘How…’ I begin, then, ‘When?’

She blinks rapidly. ‘This summer. And before that, once that I know of.’

My head feels thick, as though the blood is clotting. Foggy. As if I’ve been clouted hard. Stunned.

‘Are you sure?’

Rebecca nods. She has tears in her eyes. ‘She told me,’ she says.

And not me? The betrayal scalds me. How could Lizzie hide this?

‘Tell me,’ I say.

‘When she was pregnant with Florence, we were supposed to be going for a swim. She cried off, she said she didn’t feel like it so we were going to go for a walk instead.’ Rebecca sniffs. ‘I called for her and I grabbed her arm, just – I don’t know why, to hurry her along or something, and she yelped.’ Rebecca stops and bites her lip. ‘And she told me.’ Her voice is thinner now.

She was pregnant then. Pregnant this time.

‘She made me promise never to say anything, to anyone. She said Jack got very down about work, he’d not had anything for a while, and she’d tried to reassure him and jolly him along and he just exploded. He really didn’t mean to hurt her. He was so sorry.’ Rebecca looks directly at me. ‘I told her to leave. To come and stay with me. Anything. She said she had warned him, afterwards, when he was all sorry and asking her to forgive him, that if he ever touched her again she would leave him and never go back. And he swore it would never happen again.’

And Lizzie believed that? I cover my face with my hands.

I think of you crying when DI Ferguson told us Lizzie was carrying twins. Imagine you hitting her, hurting her. Your face contorted with fury. Lizzie flinching to avoid the blows, crying out as you slap her, punch her in the stomach, pull her hair. Her lovely hair.

‘But it did,’ I say to Rebecca. ‘Happen again.’

‘Everything was fine for a while,’ she says. ‘For years.’ She shrugs. ‘That’s what Lizzie said.’ She looks at me nervously.

‘Go on,’ I say. Milky comes in, his tail high as he picks his way over the bits of plastic and wood from the toy box. He jumps on to the arm of the sofa beside me.

‘I’d ask sometimes how things were, but she said Jack was fine, just needed to grow up a bit. Then this summer we were going to have a girls’ night out together. Us and Hannah and Faith.’ Other friends. ‘Lizzie cancelled. Said she had a stomach bug. It just felt a bit weird. I called round the following day, just turned up. They were both there, and Florence. Jack let me in. He was very welcoming, chatty. He made us a cuppa. He stayed in the room. And Lizzie was saying she’d been sick and not to get too close and she was asking after the girls and it was all just… it didn’t feel right, you know?’

I don’t know. I didn’t know.

‘I couldn’t say anything with him there. I didn’t want to make it worse. Then I wondered if I was imagining it. She did look wiped out. But then Florence climbed on to her knee and Lizzie yelped and went white as a sheet. She was hurt. She tried to hide it, said something about sharp elbows, but she was hurt. It was all fake. I texted her after. “Are you really OK? Anything I can do?” She just fobbed me off.’

‘You should have told me,’ I say.

‘I couldn’t. I’d promised.’

‘She was in danger. If we’d known-’

‘I’m sorry, Ruth,’ she cries. ‘She was my friend and I promised.’

Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie. How could she be so stupid?

With a lurch, I realize I am blaming her. You hit her. You killed her. I cling to that. You.

‘Rebecca, you must tell the police,’ I say. ‘If he’s done this before, then-’

‘I did,’ she says. ‘I came up yesterday, I made a statement.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

Before they charged you.

‘I wish I’d told you,’ Rebecca says miserably. ‘I wish I’d told everybody, but now it’s too late.’ And she is weeping and hitting at her own head.

I go and catch her fists and hold them and say, ‘You weren’t to know. And the only person responsible for this is Jack. No one else. Not you, not Lizzie, but Jack. Yes?’

Rebecca has left. I’m angry with her. And angry with Lizzie. I rail against them both. As well as you. You bastard. I see you belting her, thumping her. Did you swear at her too? Ridicule her, humiliate her? You bully. Is this why she died? Because you were out of control? Because you used your wife as a punchbag? Because your anger was greater than your love?

Protestations crowd my mind. Lizzie wasn’t stupid. She must have known you would hit her again. If she’d told me, if I’d known, then I’d have… What exactly? A cold, cruel voice butts in: Saved her? Reported it? Got a restraining order, an injunction? Forced him to attend anger management classes? She stopped confiding in Rebecca; would it have been any different with me?

I do believe what I told Rebecca, that you are the only person to blame, but the fact that Lizzie bore your violence and hid it from me, that she didn’t ask for my help and support, makes me want to howl. Did she not trust me? Did she imagine I’d think less of her? Or interfere? Or criticize her? Was she ashamed? Ashamed of your behaviour, ashamed of her reaction, her failure to act, to walk away? In turn I am ashamed that she kept this secret from me, that dirty, ugly secret at the heart of your marriage. Ashamed that I wasn’t a good enough mother.

Did you know she was pregnant? Is that another lie? You’ve obviously no aversion to beating a pregnant woman. You pathetic little man. That’s what bullies are, aren’t they? Insecure, fearful, riddled with self-loathing. And attacking others is a way of feeling bigger, stronger, of exercising power. Is there much violence in prison? I imagine you on the receiving end as the days till your trial creep by. I’d gloat, except that’s not who I want to be any more. Loathing you, despising you, on and on and on, is a way of giving power to you. I’m sick of you in my head, in my teeth and my blood and my spine.

You need exorcising. Will this work? This calling to account, the search for understanding?

I do not know.

But I have nothing else.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWENTY

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Florence is like a limpet. She sticks so close. She must be half convinced I’ll disappear next. And no wonder. Remember how she clung to your legs when they came to arrest you? How she followed you around before then? Her diligence, her attempts to hold on to the only parent she had left came to nought, and now she is to all intent and purposes an orphan.

She sleeps with me and wets the bed every night. She is with me from waking until bedtime and often finds ways to spin that out, so it can be nine or after until she is asleep.

My response to her clinginess is ambivalent. Having lost Lizzie, I want to gather Florence tight to me and never let her go. And it is true, the thought of leaving her at school and coming home alone brings anxiety spinning through me. Haven’t you learnt anything? my body seems to say. You let Lizzie free, let her be independent, let her fly, and look how that turned out. The danger is that I’ll smother Florence, wrap her in cotton wool and make her overdependent on me, incapable of functioning properly. This need to keep her close alternates with a hunger for some solitude, some peace, some time for me, to try and get my head round what has happened. When I am not smothering her, she is suffocating me.

I know she needs a constant, reliable, loving person with her, and that has to be me, but I find the relentlessness of it so tough. I draw solace from her presence, don’t misunderstand, but there are times when I just want to bow down and weep for Lizzie. Times I want to lie in bed all day or just sit in the back yard and stare at the walls. I am so very tired, I don’t know how my legs hold me up, or how I can still string a sentence together.

In the night, when my resources are at their lowest, I frighten myself thinking that my selfish need for space, for time apart, will reap ill rewards.

The sun is shining, it’s unseasonably warm, hot enough to sunbathe; certainly we need the sunscreen on. I am going to tell Florence what you have done – well, what you are suspected of doing. She is outside, she has been digging the soil out of the planter – the one that fell off the wall, the morning they came for you.

Milky is sprawled on the path, soaking up the heat, one eye twitching open each time Florence bangs the trowel on the ground.

I make her a drink of juice and add a straw, take it outside.

She is hunkered down and has taken off the sunhat I’ve lent her, safety-pinned to fit.

‘Here,’ I say, ‘if you’re not going to wear the hat, you need more cream on.’

She shrugs.

‘I’ll get it,’ I threaten, and she snatches the hat up and pulls it on, glowers up at me from under it. ‘Good girl.’

I have rehearsed what to say with both Tony and Bea. Keep it simple. Let her respond, take my cues from that. She has not asked about you since that day. But I have found her looking under the beds and in the wardrobe, and when I ask her what she’s looking for she says, ‘I’m not.’

She may be looking for you, or for Lizzie. Unable to accept you’ve gone. Hoping that if she’s good, you’ll both come back. She’ll go home and Bert will be there and everything will be all right again.

Florence takes the juice and has a drink. A ladybird lands on my blouse. ‘Look, Florence.’

She looks, gives a nod, puts her drink down and resumes scraping the soil up.

‘You know about Mummy being dead,’ I say.

She hesitates, lets go of the trowel, her head bent to the ground, her face obscured by the hat.

‘It is very sad,’ I continue. ‘Mummy won’t come back. She can’t come back and we miss her such a lot.’

Florence presses her hand on to the compost. Is any of this going in? Getting through to her?

‘You might feel cross or lonely or sad inside. I do. And you remember the other day, the men came and Daddy went with them. Well, they think maybe Daddy hurt Mummy. He…’ I don’t want to say ‘killed’. ‘He made her dead, they think. So he’s got to stay in a special place, called prison. He’s not coming home.’

‘Is he coming to Nana’s?’ she says, hopefully. Of course -this isn’t home.

‘No, he’s got to stay where he is for now, until they decide if he did hurt Mummy and make her die. Do you want to say anything?’

She ignores me, uses her fingers to scatter the soil.

‘Is there anything you want to know – about Mummy or Daddy?’

Still no answer.

‘You were a very good girl with Mummy and Daddy, their best girl. They both love you lots and lots. We don’t know why Daddy hurt Mummy so she couldn’t get better, but you didn’t do anything wrong. You were good. Shall we have a cuddle?’

She ignores that too, straightens up, drags the hat from her head and throws it down. She goes inside.

I feel like a failure, but what did I except? She’s four. I can barely remember being four; my only memory from then is of kindergarten, of a striped smock I wore for painting.

‘Nana?’ she calls after a few minutes. She’s in the kitchen. A wasp has fallen in her cup and is spinning round, buzzing angrily in its effort to escape. I take the whole thing outside and chuck it. She waits at the door, watches the wasp until it flies off.

‘I want to go home,’ she says, her lip quivering.

‘I’m sorry, Florence, you can’t go home, you have to stay here.’

‘I want to go home with Mummy.’

‘Mummy’s not there. Mummy’s dead. She can’t go home. She can’t go anywhere any more. One day we will all get together, all Mummy’s family, and have a special day and say goodbye, but she won’t be able to hear us, or see us, because Mummy’s body doesn’t work any more. It’s broken.’

‘The doctors could make it better,’ she says.

‘No, they can’t.’

‘Can they make Daddy better?’

‘Daddy’s not dead. He’s alive, like me and you, but he has to go to court and the people there will decide if he hurt Mummy and made her die.’ All the time I’m thinking: this is grotesque, macabre, but the websites I’ve consulted say the same thing: be honest, talk openly, be direct, use simple age-appropriate language.

Her face is blank, like she’s hiding. I have no idea where she’s gone. What she is thinking or feeling.

Did she know? Know that you sometimes battered her mother? Know that Daddy got nasty and smacked Mummy hard?

Too hard this time.

What have you done?

Three weeks after Lizzie’s death, I am at school with Florence. Time to get her back into the routine. She does not want to be here, but she is not crying or throwing a tantrum. Just very quiet.

The friends she made before, Ben and Paige, are pleased to have her back. They keep coming up with little offerings, trying to draw her out, like Milky and his dead birds for me.

Florence barely makes eye contact. I am sitting at the table nearby. We have read four books together and then, with my thighs aching from her weight (it’s a child-sized chair), I persuade her to sit in the Wendy house in the corner – decorated to represent a greengrocer’s. I don’t expect to leave her here today. It will be a slow process.

The only time I read these days is for Florence. My library books are well overdue. I’ve lost all interest, any ability to concentrate, to engage. It’s like losing a sense almost.

You have been named, once you’d appeared in court; it was all over the place. They used the photo from your Spotlight entry, which must be years out of date. The children in reception are too young to understand what’s happened, but those with brothers or sisters in the older classes may hear it being talked about and perhaps repeat what they hear. Children will talk, will gossip, just like adults. We can only hope that Florence’s infamous status won’t lead to her being taunted: Your mummy’s dead. Your daddy did it. So tempting for a child looking for easy prey.

I cannot shake the sense of shame, prickly on my skin, hot inside. Shame because you killed her, shame that I didn’t know you were a risk, that I didn’t protect her. We are all tainted. Would it be easier if it had been a random attack by a stranger? I imagine so. One huge loss, not two.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

The independent post-mortem for your defence has been done, the coroner has released Lizzie’s body. It is December.

I touch Lizzie’s hand. It feels cold and smooth and dense. And dead.

The undertaker has covered her face with a white cloth. He has dressed her in the clothes I brought. The green and blue silk tunic that she loved, those linen trousers.

It is cool in the funeral parlour; my arms bristle with goose bumps. She can’t feel it. Her bare arms. And her feet. Toenails polished pink to match her fingers. The undertaker has done a manicure. Her hands. Slender fingers more like mine than Tony’s, but even slimmer than mine. Longer. We used to compare her to ourselves. Allocating features and traits. His eyes, my hair, his sense of humour, my love of language, his blood group, my laugh, his teeth, my fear of heights.

Her hands, fluid and fast, making signs, symbols, flowing from one shape to another, making sense. A different language, one I couldn’t use, beyond a handful of words.

She never told me about your violence, not in English or in sign language. Should I have read it? In the spaces between words, in the flicker of her eye or the incline of her head? Did she ever send me a signal that I missed?

The new truth casts shadows over everything past. So now when I remember you and her – at your wedding, at the hospital when Florence was born, posing by the Andy Goldsworthy trees on that trip we made to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – I no longer trust the memory. I see jeopardy instead, and enmity and apprehension. Her smile to you is one of sick submission, the way she catches your hand a quest for your blessing or forgiveness. Her laughter, her kiss, an effort to please, to praise, to placate.

Those times when I made invitations: come for tea, fancy a walk, would Florence like the panto? And she put me off: busy, away, already booked. Now I don’t know if that was true or if she was hiding. Hiding her wounds, hiding her shame and her failure.

I raised her, Tony and I raised her, to be her own person. We encouraged her to think she could do whatever she wanted to do, be whoever she wanted to be. That her life was hers to conduct as she saw fit. That she was as good as anyone else, as strong, as beautiful, as brave. That she should treat others as she’d like to be treated. At least I thought we had.

The travesty ripples back through the past and on into the future.

Your mother speaks to me. Same old stuff about your lily-white nature. I am tempted to confront her with your identity as a wife-beater, to ask her if she knew, if there had been whispers with your earlier girlfriends. Was it something you learned from your parents? Was Marian used to feeling the back of Alan’s hand, or his foot in her ribs? Where does it come from, this violence in you?

But I hold my peace, because although I’m not familiar with how these things work, I realize that Rebecca might be a witness against you, and I don’t want you to know, to have a chance to prepare for that.

Marian says you want to go to the funeral. Of course you do! It makes perfect sense, all part of the charade of wronged man, dutiful spouse.

I almost choke on my rage. Over my dead body springs to mind but I say, ‘No way.’

‘He’s innocent. Even if you don’t believe it, he is innocent. Until proven guilty. Lizzie’s his wife. He’s every right-’

‘It’s not going to happen. Has he thought about Florence? How that will be for her?’

‘She’s not going, is she?’ Marian sounds disgusted.

‘Yes,’ I say, as firmly as I can. ‘It’s important for her to be able to say goodbye. And it would be catastrophic for her if Jack waltzes in, then disappears again.’

But you don’t care about that, do you? There’s only one person that matters in your universe, and that’s you. The big I Am. If you had a shred of love for your daughter or anyone else, you wouldn’t be putting us all through the mockery of a trial. You’d have been honourable enough to confess, to spare her, to spare us everything that followed.

I ring Kay, blurt out what Marian said, keen for her to reassure me.

‘He’s able to apply for compassionate leave, and if granted, he’ll be escorted to the service, but first they will have to consider a number of factors, carry out a risk assessment. Most importantly determine if there’s any risk either to Jack himself or to the public, or if there might be any issues affecting public order.’

‘And if I say I’ll kill him if he comes anywhere near?’

‘You’ve every right to be upset,’ Kay says. ‘I know it sucks, big-time.’ She doesn’t believe my threat.

‘What about Florence? It would be terrible for her.’ I think of the day they came for you, the way she flew to you. I don’t know what’s in her head, what she understands of all this. Whether she will instinctively cleave to you again, delighted to have you back only to see you escorted away like before. A ghastly rerun. Or whether she will fear you now. Understand that you killed Lizzie, think perhaps that she may be next. But either way your attending will only damage her. And she’s not well. She is not strong enough for further trauma.

I try and tell Kay this, and she says that she is sure Florence’s well-being will be taken into account.

How will they know? I think. These people who make the decision. They’ve not met Florence or talked to me. They don’t know what a good actor you are.

You get your way. You pollute the day with your presence. I have explained to Florence until I’m blue in the face that Daddy is coming to say goodbye too but because no one has agreed if he hurt Mummy or not he will have to go back to prison afterwards. Her face is expressionless. I search it for excitement, the dance of anticipation or the shadow of anxiety in her, but find nothing.

‘Daddy won’t be allowed to talk to you, or pick you up or sit with you.’

She holds up Matilda.

‘You’ll bring Matilda? Good plan, Batman.’ The toy cat is like a security blanket and has supplanted Bert in Florence’s affections. Lord knows what would happen if she lost the thing.

The authorities have decided that you pose no risk to us nor we to you. There won’t be a baying mob eager to tear you limb from limb. No drive-by shooters. No gang of neighbours jockeying to land one on you, no vigilantes tooled up and blood-crazed.

I haven’t seen you since your arrest. As we wait outside the crematorium in our dull black clothes and with the smell of frost in the air and the murmur of mourners all about, my energy is screwed to a point, waiting for your grand entrance.

Tony and Denise and I greet people; some make an effort to talk to Florence. She doesn’t reply, not even to those she knows, like Rebecca or my friend Bea. Nor to the deaf friends who sign to us, ‘Hello’ and ‘Sorry’.

We have hired an interpreter for the service, someone Lizzie worked with, so that everyone can appreciate what is said.

I force myself to look directly at you. You look the same. How can you look exactly the same, now that I know what you have done? But then what did I expect? Horns, the mark of Cain, the decrepitude of Dorian Gray’s portrait? There is a prison guard either side of you, and you wear handcuffs.

Florence sees you. She’s standing in front of me, I have my hands on her shoulders and I feel a jump travel through her. She moves to run to you. I squeeze gently and she remembers. And sinks back towards me. She waves. A tentative wave, not lifting her hand far, a quick, uncertain gesture. I see you blanch, a flash of pain across your face. You meet my eyes. You look sad, wretched, but my heart is hardened against you like a lump of clay in my chest, dense and cold. I don’t disguise my feelings, my bitterness, my anger, but once I know you have seen it naked, I turn away. I will not look at you again.

Photographers take pictures, the cameras are weapons, firing snap after snap.

The chapel is packed. Because she was murdered? If cancer or a heart attack had claimed her, would there be so many people? Some are strangers to me. Did they know her? Are they voyeurs? Do some of these strangers feel a genuine connection to someone they never met?

We don’t sing hymns. No word of God or heaven in the speeches.

We play a recording of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez; the haunting melody swells in the room, and tears prick my eyes. Rebecca talks about Lizzie, a lovely warm speech. Tony reads ‘Echo’, his hand trembling as he holds the paper, his voice steady. Denise wheezes as she weeps. Florence is restless, turning round and kneeling up on her seat, dropping Matilda and scrabbling on the floor to retrieve her.

The woman conducting the service is a friend of Bea’s, a free-range minister for hire. She talks about the importance of celebrating life. Suddenly everything falls away from me. A swirl of cold oil in the pit of my stomach, my back tightens, panic climbs through me. Lizzie. Lizzie. Gone. I stare at the wooden coffin carpeted thick with flowers and know she’s in there. That she is going, that she’s lost to me. I fear I will faint. My grief rises like a flood. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out, to keep from screaming.

I do not speak to your parents. I don’t have the wherewithal to be that generous. As long as they defend you, I cast them as the enemy.

At the hotel afterwards, where we have the reception – you have been taken back by then; no buffet and booze for you – the kindness of people is overwhelming, and I long for the afternoon to be done. To escape.

You make the late edition of the paper and the regional news. ACCUSED ATTENDS WIFE’S FUNERAL. Great shot. Sorrow writ large on your face, sharp suit, hands in irons.

It’s like Lizzie is an afterthought. You’re top of the bill. The main attraction.

Milky has found a mouse. He chases it around the living room. I’m so shattered I’m tempted to leave him to it, but who knows where the little creature would end up, or in what state. I wait until he’s caught it again, dangling from his mouth, then grab him, force open his jaws and scoop up the mouse by the skin on its back. It weighs nothing. I feel the bones slide under its loose skin. When I throw it into the garden, keeping Milky behind me with one foot, it freezes for a moment, then streaks away. In the dark comes a snatch of song, a blackbird.

I wait, hoping it will sing again, but all I hear is the rattle of a train and the howl of a motorbike ridden too fast.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

No one seems to know what will happen to the house. Whether the life insurance for the mortgage will pay out in these circumstances and you’ll end up owning it outright, or whether it won’t and the property will be repossessed. Kay comes round to tell me that the police have finished their work there and gives me a set of keys. ‘Florence can finally get Bert,’ she says.

Five months have passed. She warns me the place will be a mess. We may wish to contract a specialist cleaning company to sort it out.

A mess doesn’t come anywhere close. It’s a foggy January morning and the air tastes dirty, a chemical tang in it. I have come in the car and brought large bags and bin liners to fetch things for Florence. The bare-leaved trees and naked bushes look desolate, dead.

The house smells sour, I notice that as I push back the door, step over the scattering of junk mail and leaflets piled up behind it.

Blood. Everywhere. Dried black splashes on the walls, across the glass front of the stove, spread over the floor. Is that the smell? My heart stumbles, kicks and beats unevenly and all the hairs on my skin rise.

Oh Lizzie, oh my Lizzie.

Some of the laminate flooring, where she lay, has been taken up. I put my hand out to steady myself and the door jamb is gritty, sticky to the touch, and leaves a glittery dark grey residue on my hands. Some sort of mould? More of it here and there on the walls in the living room and around the kitchen diner. Fingerprint powder. Smeared everywhere. And the blood, dried and cracked, flaking on the walls.

The fear won’t leave me. It grows inside me, something heavy crawling up my back, hands around my throat, making me dizzy. I drop the bags and leave the house and flee for home.

I am at your house again. Tony is with me. I did consider getting someone else in to clean up, but it’s another expense when money is really tight and this is something we can do ourselves, upsetting though it is. I’ve tried to prepare him for what we’ll find, described the blood, the scene of carnage, but he’s still shaken. He freezes by the couch, then swings round and I think he will leave like I did.

‘The bastard,’ he says. ‘That bastard.’ And he kicks out, smashing his foot into a side table, which splinters apart, the lamp on it crashing to the floor. ‘If he gets off, comes back…’ Tony says.

‘He won’t,’ I snap. It’s what I fear. You evading justice, taking up the reins, reclaiming Florence. They must not let you go.

But Tony is steadfast. While he rips up the floor and loads the pieces into bags for the tip, I go upstairs and collect Florence’s clothes and toys, including Bert. The unease about being in the space clings to me as I’m busy sorting through Florence’s clothes. She’s not grown much, so most of her things will still fit. I hope the shoes will. It’s the shoes that make me cry. Why they set me off, I’ve no idea. But the row of them – red ankle boots, canvas sandals, blue T-bar shoes, wellies with fish painted on – just unseats me. I allow myself to weep for a few minutes, then wash my face.

The same sparkly dark dust is all over the bathroom. There are your toiletries beside Lizzie’s. I feel like a voyeur.

Looking in the mirror, I wonder about you, what you saw when you did the same. Did you check your expression here before you rang me? Distraught spouse, grief-stricken lover. Did you wash your hands? You must have done. Here or in the kitchen sink. Looking at the room downstairs, the way blood is sprayed about the walls over the sofa, you must have been covered in it. I don’t recall blood on your clothes; did you change before you rang me?

What will I do with Lizzie’s things? I hadn’t thought of that. Bracing myself, in case there is more blood, more signs of your violence, I open the door to your bedroom. But it is bland, innocuous. Some of the surfaces glimmer with the powder. On her dressing table: earrings, make-up, perfume. I sniff the bottle. Jo Malone, the orange blossom. Downstairs I can hear the creak and snap as Tony tears at the laminate. My thoughts tangle. I go back into Florence’s room and carry on.

‘Ruth?’

Tony comes up, ‘I’m off to the tip. You going to wait here?’

‘No.’ I don’t want to be alone in the house. ‘I’ll take these back.’ I lift the last pair of shoes into the top of a bin bag.

‘Can’t believe they’d just leave it like that,’ Tony says.

‘I know.’

‘I’ll collect the new flooring on my way back here.’

‘D’you want a hand putting it down?’ I offer.

‘Okay. I’ll ring you when I’m back again.’

‘You take the keys, then,’ I say.

We lay half the floor, snapping the tongue-and-groove boards into place, then it’s time to collect Florence from school. I can’t be late. Her anxiety soars if she thinks I’m late, if she can’t see me near the front of the line of parents. Tony and I have spent most of our time talking about Florence.

My knees creak and my back is stiff when I straighten up.

‘I don’t trust Marian and Alan not to go for custody if Jack’s convicted,’ I say.

‘What?’ he scowls. ‘You are joking. Would they? They wouldn’t stand a chance, would they?’

‘They are a couple, and they’re better off.’

‘But she hardly knows them.’

‘Jack’s still her legal guardian,’ I say, ‘and if we apply for custody, he can fight it.’

Tony grits his teeth and expels air through them. ‘Bloody cheek.’

‘We need some advice.’

‘Social services?’

I feel a lurch at the thought of an outsider judging me, judging my capacity to be Florence’s carer. But I know it’s better to get some professional advice and hopefully support. Surely they’ll see that the best place for her is with me.

Ruth

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Monday 4 January 2010

It’s good to be back at work, even though I feel light-headed and tense. Probably three-quarters of the library users know me, know about Lizzie. Some were at the funeral. Most of them now offer condolences. These range from ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘It’s good to see you’ to ‘They want to bring back hanging, bloody disgrace’. Which doesn’t really help me much.

I’ve come back part-time on earlies as agreed in my meeting with the area manager. Saturdays are difficult because Florence is at home. I plan to use my leave for the school holidays. Hopefully by summer things will be easier and she will be looked after by Tony and Denise or with her friends Ben or Paige. Ben’s mother has offered several times.

‘Ruth? I’m Stella.’ My new supervisor, a senior library assistant come from North area. She smiles and shakes my hand. ‘Sorry for your loss. I don’t know how you can… It must be so very difficult.’ She gives me a sympathetic smile, then carries on, ‘My cousin’s brother-in-law, his grandma was one of Harold Shipman’s victims. Awful.’

I am poleaxed by her clumsy attempt at – what? Empathy, solidarity?

‘If you need more time, if it all gets too much, you just say.’ She nods eagerly. ‘You can’t rush something like this.’ Flashing me another smile, her teeth whitened, almost neon. I must be twenty years older, but feel like a child, as if she’ll pat me on the head any moment.

‘We’re thinking of shaking things up a bit,’ Stella says.

I look at the display for New Year in the corner – charting the different ways it is celebrated around the world – and the books in translation in front of it for people who’d like to read about another place. Then there’s the frieze we did last summer to brighten up the children’s library, and the mobiles made by the Sure Start group. The new notices for the pensioners’ Young At Heart group. I scan the room, see the people busy on the computers, the group of Asian men gathered around the tables, talking over the news, and it all looks good to me.

‘Fine,’ I say. I’ll bide my time, see what she does.

‘What d’you think?’ Tracey says when Stella has disappeared. Tracey and I have worked together for nine years. She’s great, a bit lazy perhaps, reluctant to do the shelving, which some people would get brassed off about but it doesn’t really bother me. She has a tough time at home: her mother has dementia and sometimes goes walkabout but so far has been returned unscathed.

‘Seems friendly enough,’ I say.

Tracey arches an eyebrow.

‘I’ve only just met her,’ I add. ‘Bit patronizing maybe.’

Unfortunately Stella is in work when I get an urgent call from school. Florence is distressed and they think I should come and settle her or take her home.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I’ll have to go.’ My heart pattering too fast as I pull my coat on. Small upsets mushroom these days. I’ve lost perspective.

‘Of course,’ she croons. ‘Perhaps you came back too early. The little girl, she must be so-’

I cut her off. ‘The block loans, can you ask Tracey?’

‘I will, don’t you worry about a thing.’ Which would be reassuring if I didn’t already know that she is taking every opportunity to question my fitness for work with Tracey, under the guise of concern. Always on about how awful I must be feeling and how it’s bound to affect my competence.

I can hear Florence as soon as I get close to the building, howling sobs, her throat sounding raw. She is in the Wendy house, which is now decorated like a tropical beach hut. Pictures of palm trees and surf fixed to the walls, a table with a raffia cover. Lei garlands of flowers and whole coconuts and large shells strewn about. She is curled over on her front, hands, knees and face on the floor.

‘She got upset at snack time,’ Lisa says. ‘I think Paige was a bit too enthusiastic about handing round the drinks and something set Florence off.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I crawl into the Wendy house and begin talking to her. ‘It’s all right, Nana’s here now. What a sad girl, come on, it’s all right now.’ Stroking down her back, easing her. Gradually her crying slows and peters out. The other children have gone outside to play. There’s just Lisa tidying round.

I manage to cajole Florence out of the house and we sit on a chair.

‘Coffee?’ says Lisa.

I’m so grateful. I know she’s got thirty kids to cater to and lesson plans and God knows what else, but she’s one of those people who just makes time, makes connections. Caring, I guess.

Florence’s face is red and puffy, her nose swollen and snotty, lips cracked. I wipe her nose. Offer her water, which she takes in little sips. While I drink coffee, I try to think of anything new that might have troubled her. She knows I’m back at work, but I’ve never been late to pick her up.

‘She’s not done anything like this before?’ I check, though I’m sure they’d have told me. Lisa shakes her head. I’ve no way of knowing if this is progress or not. Certainly not good for the well-being of the other kids in the class.

‘Did Paige say anything? They haven’t had a falling out or…’ I don’t like to suggest it but I wonder if somebody’s bullying Florence, making comments about her mum or her dad. Or me. Your fat old-lady nana.

‘No. Paige just took her the milkshake and Florence went into meltdown. Has she had night terrors? It reminded me of that.’

‘Milkshake? Was it banana?’

‘Yes. For our tropical theme. How did you know? Is she allergic to bananas?’

In a manner of speaking. Oh, Florence.

I close my eyes.

I think of Jack.

With ice in my heart.