But perhaps you are the exception, the one in a million who won’t take their meds and who runs amok and kills a stranger. The attack on Lizzie was vicious, sustained. Were there voices in your head commanding you to strike? Again and again. Why Lizzie? Why stalk her? Why come and kill her? Are women the enemy? Do you hate all women, or just young, pretty ones?
The sun shines as I walk up to the park. I avoid the shops, haven’t been in to buy anything. No hurry.
I am at the duck pond when someone calls my name.
Squinting into the sun, I see him. Hoodie up, pants halfway down his bum showing his boxers, trainers in some bright electric blue. Doddsy, one of the lads from the basic skills group who used to meet at the library. In his early twenties now. School had failed him but he had enough nous to try a different route when given the opportunity.
‘Hello, Doddsy.’
‘Sorry about your daughter. It’s really… just…’ he says, flushing.
My chest tightens. ‘Thanks. How are you?’
‘Good. Got this mentor now and I’m doing a sound production course. Well good.’
‘That’s great,’ I say.
‘Yeah. If I can help, you know, if there’s anything…’
‘Thanks.’
‘Better go.’ He shrugs, and shuffles his feet. ‘See ya.’
I smile and nod, touched by his kindness.
Something shifts as I realize that not only have you taken Lizzie’s life and shattered ours, not only have you turned Lizzie from an ordinary person into a victim, but you have twisted my identity as well. Warped it. For ever more, for most people I will be Ruth, the woman whose daughter was killed. The mother of a murder victim. That’s what people will see first and above everything else; that’s how people will talk about me, will name me.
What is even more sickening is that it’s a role I’ve embraced in these last four years. Because of my hatred, my thirst for revenge, my greed to see you suffer. My obsession. I have allowed myself to disappear into the role of bereaved parent.
And that is partly why I’m writing to you. I want to be more than that. Break that typecasting.
They say no man is an island, they say we’re a construct of all the roles we play, but I am so very, very tired of this one.
You have brought such bitterness to my door. Filled my veins with such violent animosity and my heart with such hate that I can barely recognize myself any more. I want to find the old Ruth, the Ruth who cursed her screaming baby and rowed with her teenage daughter, the bibliophile who fell in love and copied out poems and learnt to grow vegetables and had a penchant for soul music and chocolate and liked cats.
