Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [12]

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.