The park is full of Lizzie, in her pram, on the climbing frame – though the old one was dull grey metal, four-square, not the wood and rope wigwam that Florence plays on nowadays. Lizzie flat on her back, having a full-blown tantrum, trying to kick me when I went to pick her up, her face red with rage and her hair still a toffee colour before the blonde came in. Blonde like I used to be. My hair now is white, better than grey, but people often assume I’m even older than I am because of it. Lizzie on the field for those family fun days. Later, bigger, huddled on the bowling green benches with her mates, smoking fags.
I manage half the apple before my stomach revolts. I leave the rest for the birds.
Jack and Florence are in the kitchen when I arrive home. She’s eating cereal and humming to herself. I can’t make out the tune. What on earth is going on in her head? Does she understand what she’s been told? Should I talk to her about it as well? I’m not sure I can do it without collapsing in tears. I remember my own high panic and deep unease as a child on the rare occasion my mother cried.
‘I’ve been sent through a summary of the post-mortem,’ Kay says when she arrives. ‘Would you like Tony to be here? Or I can do it separately?’
‘I’ll ring him,’ I say.
Tony wears the same clothes he had on yesterday. I hesitate, but he moves to me, we hug again, and I’m thankful. We are her parents, after all; no one else can share our perspective. All our arguments and enmity, the bitterness and sorrow, set aside now.
We sit around the kitchen table. More cups of tea. The only thing I can stomach. I have a DVD of Kung Fu Panda and I put it on in the living room and leave the door open so that Florence, clinging to Jack’s leg, can hear it. It takes a few minutes: she goes through to look and then comes back, twice. The third time she stays there.
‘She’s checking on you,’ I say to Jack, ‘in case you disappear as well. Has she said anything?’
‘No, nothing.’
I’ve no idea whether that is a healthy response or not.
Kay has the official papers in her hand. We fall silent and she clears her throat, then reads them to us. ‘The post-mortem was carried out yesterday afternoon by Mr Hathaway. He’s one of the Home Office pathologists for the region. It began at two fifteen and lasted two and a half hours.’
It’s peculiar, but the facts and figures help. Lizzie’s murder is impossible to deal with, to frame, but numbers, names, procedures are something to hold on to. Crutches, or footholds in the rock we have to scale. Are we climbing up or climbing down? A peak or a pothole? It is bleak and unmapped, our journey, but these facts are like sparks of light, matches that flame for a second and then gutter out in the fierce wind.
