We’re staying put in Manchester. I can’t see us anywhere else. A lovely Russian student rents my spare room. I’m looking for work. Most of the time I don’t get any response to my applications. I have yet to have an interview. There are so many people competing for so few vacancies. And I have my bus pass now, which is not seen as an advantage by prospective employers. On my CV I have to account for that break in employment, those lost months. I keep changing it from sabbatical to family bereavement and back. I claim all the benefits I can for Florence, but it amounts to a pittance. Like my pension. We live a very frugal life, and Tony contributes. There won’t be any foreign holidays or iPhones for Florence.
Slowly, slowly, all those thousands of other memories I have of Lizzie are getting stronger. Gradually replacing that bloody black night of her death. I am winning her back. Reclaiming her. And as I do, the love of her, the joy in her is diluting the bitterness and anger I feel for you. It’s fair to say that I no longer crave vengeance, no longer get drunk on imagining your pain, your destruction. I am no longer buried in my grief, no longer on the pyre day and night. It is resolving into something simpler, without the complication of that gnawing lust for vengeance.
I will never forget.
And I know now that it is beyond me to forgive. But having the truth from you has made it possible for me to at least comprehend what you have done. Alien though your actions were, they are no longer unfathomable. Just terribly sad. Such a terrible waste.
I do not know how those other people, the ones who do forgive, reach that point. I do not think you deserve my forgiveness, actually. And I am not sure it is a gift in my power. I think perhaps the only person who can truly forgive you is yourself.
And I will not write again.
Will I ever be able to think of you before it all went so very wrong, as the young actor with promise and talent, a beautiful face, who loved my daughter so, who cared tenderly for his own little daughter? Can you be both that and the killer, the liar? You have to be if Lizzie is to be complete again and not solely your victim.
Dr Jansen asked about restitution. There is one thing that is more important than anything else. That you put Florence’s needs ahead of your own. Promise never to seek her out or contact her, never disrupt her life again. You say you love her, and I believe you do. So leave her be. Relinquish her. She can be free of the fear that one day you’ll turn up on the doorstep and try to win her back. As can I.
When you took Lizzie, you lost Florence. Accept that.
In addition, I ask this of you – be an example, teach others, however you can. Whatever courses or groups they have in prison, use them to expose your violence, question it, analyse it, challenge it. Show others where it led. Drag it into the public eye, out from behind the sacrament of marriage and the privacy of net curtains and brightly painted front doors. Become an illustration and a force for change.
Do that for Lizzie.
I still have to tread down hard on all the ‘ifs’ that sprout like weeds in warm rain. If only she had told me. If only you had sought help for your violence. They are poisonous thorns, piercing the soles of my feet.
I am coming through the dislocation of my life. The wound is healing but the scar will remain deep and vivid, extensive and life-changing. I’ll never get over what you’ve done but I will learn to live with it. To live and breathe and love.
Yesterday I called at the library. Stella has gone, moved to the private sector, to make some other minion’s life a misery.
I chose a book. I brought it back to the house, and last night I began to read. Just a couple of pages.
It was like coming home. Like I’d found a part of myself again, my humanity.
Farewell.
Ruth
About the Author
Cath Staincliffe is an established novelist, radio playwright and creator of ITV’s hit series, Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis. Cath was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Best First Novel award for her acclaimed Sal Kilkenny series, and for the Dagger in the Library award in 2006. Her latest stand-alone novels all focus on topical moral dilemmas. She was joint winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger award in 2012 for Laptop. She is a founding member of Murder Squad, a group who promote crime fiction.
www.cathstaincliffe.co.uk
