‘She needs to know,’ Kay says, ‘the simple facts. She might not understand.’
‘That makes two of us,’ I say bitterly.
Kay regards me steadily. ‘She’s four, she may not have a concept of death. She needs to understand that Mummy won’t be coming back, that her body doesn’t work any more, that she won’t wake up.’
‘I’ll get her breakfast first,’ I say tersely.
While Florence enjoys the bizarre novelty of having Grandpa Tony and Nana Denise watch her eat her Shreddies, I explain to Jack what Kay has told me.
‘I’ll do it,’ he says. ‘Can I take her upstairs?’
‘Yes, use my room or the spare room, there’s no one staying. If you want me to be there…’ He shakes my offer away.
It is the longest day. There seems to be no beginning to it and no end in sight. Florence is Jack’s shadow, and when it is time to identify the body I have to prise her off him, kicking and screaming. I had hoped to go, wanting to see Lizzie’s face, to be certain that the body I’d seen really was my daughter. To make it undeniably real. But Florence needs me here.
Jack’s parents, the Tennysons, are on their way from East Anglia, and Tony and Denise have left for now but Tony promised to return later.
After Jack gets back, he tells me that he had to identify Lizzie without looking at her face, which was covered because of the extent of the damage. He had to look at her hands and feet, her wedding ring and the tattoo on her right shoulder: a swallow in flight.
The savagery you must have used. To destroy her face. It astounds me.
Ruth
17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX
‘Can we go home now?’ Florence has a boiled egg with soldiers. I’m relieved to see her eating. She turns to her father, wiping crumbs from her tiny fingers, a smear of egg yolk on her cheek.
‘Not yet,’ Jack says.
‘When?’
‘Another day, I don’t know when.’
She thinks about this, a small frown darkening her expression. ‘I want Bert.’ Bert is Florence’s teddy bear. White originally, a gift from Tony and Denise, he is now a muddy grey colour, with bald and ragged ears which Florence liked to chew on as a toddler.
‘Can someone fetch it?’ I ask Kay. Surely retrieving a child’s toy from a different room in the house will not hamper their endeavours, but Kay shakes her head. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as you can collect anything. Do you have clothes here for Florence?’
‘Not really, just the one change for emergencies.’ The words die in my mouth. I swallow. ‘And a box of toys.’ It’s kept in one of the kitchen cupboards, but someone got it out earlier and put it in the living room. Florence has ignored it so far.
