Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [28]

‘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.