Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [33]

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.’