Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [57]

How can she know Lizzie was on the floor like that? Jack said he had shielded her from the scene? Held her so she wouldn’t see. Did she come down while he was busy setting up his alibi and see Lizzie? Run back up and hide? Did she peep as he carried her out? Or is the way she’s placed the doll no more than Florence’s interpretation of dead? The doll has to be lying down if it’s dead, and she only has two choices of how to put it on the floor.

I don’t suppose there are many sentences exchanged over the next hour, but each one elicits a nugget of information.

‘What happened to Mummy?’ the therapist says.

‘She fell down dead,’ Florence chants, her chin bobbing up and down on each syllable.

‘Why did she do that?’

‘Daddy did it.’ She knows because I told her after the trial that the court had decided it was Daddy who hurt Mummy and made her dead and he had to stay in prison for a long time.

‘On his own?’ she said. Was she feeling sorry for him?

‘There are other people there – other people who have done naughty things and people looking after them.’

She gave one of her inscrutable little sighs and said no more.

The therapist talks to me too, and asks me how I feel about Lizzie’s death.

‘Furious,’ I say. ‘I play it over and over. I had hoped with the conviction that it would change.’ As I talk, my cheeks flame hot and my belly burns. ‘I hate him, I hate him so much. It’s not enough, him behind bars.’

‘What would be enough?’ he says.

I shake my head. There is no reply possible. ‘Nothing. Even if I could kill the bastard, it wouldn’t bring her back.’

‘When I ask you about Lizzie,’ he says, ‘you talk about Jack.’

‘He killed her.’

‘You lost her. We all grieve differently; there are recognized stages but we may go through them in different ways, revisit some. You are angry, and if this anger is all-consuming, you may find it hard to reach the other stages. In particular, acceptance.’

How can anyone ever accept this? ‘I just want him to pay for what he did, to suffer like I have.’

‘There’s a saying: “He who would seek revenge should first dig two graves.” ’

I nod, I’ve heard it before. ‘It is killing me,’ I agree.

‘Have you heard the term “complicated grief”?’

‘No.’

‘Grief is a natural process, it’s the way we work through and eventually accept the death of a loved one. With complicated bereavement, the process stalls, the bereaved person is stuck, they find it impossible to come to terms with their loss. Unable to move forward.’

I recognize the picture he paints.

‘It’s more common with unexpected and sudden death. From my contact with Florence, I’d say she may be experiencing complicated grief, and it may be the case for you as well. She will sense your anger and regress further. And the involvement of Florence’s father, her other caregiver, in the death is a complicating factor. She is at risk of various negative psychological responses. Guilt for failing to protect her mother, guilt at imagining that her own behaviour led to the attack, that if she had only been really good everything would have been all right. Most disturbingly, an understanding that she is half her mother and half her father. And if he is bad, then half of her is just like him, bad like him.’ To save her from such a view, I need to explain that it was Jack’s behaviour that was wrong, that was bad, not Jack per se. There are no evil people, only evil deeds.

‘For yourself, do you recognize any of these indicators? Do you feel that any apply to you?’ He shows me a list headed Symptoms of Complicated Grief. I read them. Several resound: excessive bitterness related to the death, excessive and prolonged agitation, the prolonged feeling that life is meaningless.

‘I suggest you both need help,’ the therapist says.

Florence carries on with him. We have several more excursions to London.

As for me, I have a handful of visits to a bereavement counsellor. Time and again it’s the anger I end up talking about, that and the desire for retribution.

CHAPTER TWO

Saturday 13 August 2011

I fantasize about escape. A different life. Perhaps a move away from Manchester. As the months slide by, trapped in the slog of work, the demands of looking after Florence, who is still wetting the bed, still almost mute, and often mutinous, I wonder if we are not paralysed by the impact of Lizzie’s murder. Perhaps we are too close to it here, too aware of the gap left by Lizzie. Everything is overshadowed by our loss, everything made piquant, poignant by her absence. Every place, every street, each shop or park or gallery soaked in her memory.

Where would I go? What would I do? How would I make a living? I’m not sure what else I’m equipped to do, and a fifty-nine-year-old woman isn’t going to do great in the job market. It would mean finding a way of making money to support us both. A business. Or perhaps some sort of childcare or work as a teaching assistant.

It’s Bea who comes up with the idea. She’s still in touch with Frank and Jan who had the allotment; they live down in Cornwall and are going travelling over the summer. ‘You could stay,’ Bea says. ‘Jan said it would help to have someone keep an eye on the place.’ They have often asked me to visit before but I’ve never made it. ‘You and Florence could have a holiday,’ Bea says. ‘And it would give you an idea of what it would be like to be somewhere else.’