Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [32]

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.