17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX
Did you think you’d got away with it, that first night? What were you feeling? Elation? Terror? Some sexual frisson? It’s the same physiological response, isn’t it – fight, flight, fuck. Violence, fear, sex. It’s on my list of questions. And did you replay events in your head or try to shut them out? Were you racked with guilt or full of exhilaration?
While I wait for someone to come, to break the spell, me and my granddaughter and the cat cocooned in the bubble, I try to imagine you. Broderick Litton, who I never met, never saw. Like a bodyguard, Lizzie said you were; smart, though, a military type, clipped and polished. Always very pleasant except when you were being a vicious bully. At the time you were stalking her, I grew more panicky than Lizzie. When the police did so little, I wanted her to move. Suggested we swap houses.
The questions swoop through my head like bats in the dark, to and fro, silent, quick and shadowy. Why wasn’t Lizzie more careful? Why did she open the door? Why did she let you in? Why? Why? Why?
Where are you? Scurrying through night-black streets smelling of blood, or lurking in some lair, drinking and gloating, or slipping into bed beside your drowsy wife?
It is hard to sit still and Milky senses my agitation, echoes it with repeated sorties out of the cat flap and back. My skin is cold; I am frozen to the marrow, despite the heating being on, and I’m itchy. I can’t stop scratching: my arms, my neck, my calves. As if I am shedding a skin, or trying to claw it off and make my body raw like the rest of me.
Lizzie’s photographs – Lizzie as a baby, as a child, with Jack, with Florence – clutter my walls. I am standing in the corner, staring at one: her graduation day, Lizzie flanked by Tony and me. Her eyes alive with happiness, ours too. Delight and pride. I rub at my shoulder. Tony – I must ring Tony. Should I? Or wait? Make completely sure? If there’s been a horrible mistake and I tell him now… that she is… A wave of nausea breaks through me, coating me in clammy sweat, shrivelling my stomach, forcing bile into the back of my throat. In the kitchen I spit it out and drink a little water.
A knocking at the door makes me jump. It is the family liaison officer. A beanpole of a woman with short greying hair and a weather-beaten face. Kind eyes. Stupid thing to say really, but they are not brash or judgemental, or even overtly emotional, but accepting. The sort of eyes you can stare into and not feel impelled to look away. (Or maybe that’s hindsight. Those early days, Kay, that was her name, was a sort of calm anchor for us all.)
