Tony and Denise and I greet people; some make an effort to talk to Florence. She doesn’t reply, not even to those she knows, like Rebecca or my friend Bea. Nor to the deaf friends who sign to us, ‘Hello’ and ‘Sorry’.
We have hired an interpreter for the service, someone Lizzie worked with, so that everyone can appreciate what is said.
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.
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.