I am grappling to make sense of his words. My heart is beating in my throat. ‘Is she all right?’ I say. I know she’s not. I can hear it in the way his breath comes so rapidly and I know that if she was all right he’d have said that first. Still, we are hardwired to hope.
‘I think they’ve killed her.’ He is crying.
Killed! ‘Call the police,’ I say. I think of this instead of what he’s told me. I don’t want to think about that. I cannot. It’s not possible, it can’t be true. I set it aside as too much to handle. Preposterous anyway. Easier to focus on something else. ‘Call the police,’ I repeat.
‘I have, they’re coming.’
My thoughts won’t be stifled. They rear up shrieking in my mind. Killed! Broderick Litton. Lizzie’s stalker. He’s obsessed with her. The police never did anything, not even when he turned up at her house. All they said was they would talk to him. Stalking wasn’t a crime back then. He frightened her; he was a big man, over six feet tall, and soft-spoken. He sent her gifts and watched her performances. At first she thought it was funny but a bit sad. It quickly became oppressive. Then scary. She carried pepper spray and a personal alarm. He threatened her at the end, wrote letters saying she’d be sorry, he’d make her pay. Lizzie took them to the police. Then it all went quiet. Over a year since she’s heard anything, so long enough for her to relax again, to lower her guard. And now this. Oh God, we should have been vigilant. We should have insisted. Echoes bang in my head, other stories, other people’s daughters, inquiries into police negligence, failure to act, ensuing tragedies. All the cases where harassment turned to murder. We didn’t do enough, and now this.
‘Broderick Litton,’ I say to Jack.
‘I’ll tell them,’ he says.
‘Where are you? At home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Florence?’
‘She’s fine. She was fast asleep.’
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
I’m still dressed, so it’s a matter of moments to get my car keys and pull on shoes. It’s not far to Jack and Lizzie’s, a ten-minute walk, a two-minute drive. I arrive just before the ambulance. I see it coming from the other direction and it turns in to Lizzie’s street seconds after I do. An ambulance gives me faith. They will save her, they can do all sorts these days. There are bubbles in my chest, hysteria.
In my hurry to get out of the car, I trip and fall, scramble up. Jack is at the gate, Florence in his arms. His expression is drawn, harrowed in the street light. His teeth are chattering. The little girl has her face buried in his neck. I clutch his arm and he leans in towards me. When I stroke Florence’s head, she shrugs me off, her narrow shoulders moving under her pyjamas.
