Letters To My Daughter's Killer by Cath Staincliffe

Author:Cath Staincliffe [Staincliffe, Cath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: UK
ISBN: 9781780335728
Publisher: C & R Crime
Published: 2014-04-16T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Monday 4 January 2010

It’s good to be back at work, even though I feel light-headed and tense. Probably three-quarters of the library users know me, know about Lizzie. Some were at the funeral. Most of them now offer condolences. These range from ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘It’s good to see you’ to ‘They want to bring back hanging, bloody disgrace’. Which doesn’t really help me much.

I’ve come back part-time on earlies as agreed in my meeting with the area manager. Saturdays are difficult because Florence is at home. I plan to use my leave for the school holidays. Hopefully by summer things will be easier and she will be looked after by Tony and Denise or with her friends Ben or Paige. Ben’s mother has offered several times.

‘Ruth? I’m Stella.’ My new supervisor, a senior library assistant come from North area. She smiles and shakes my hand. ‘Sorry for your loss. I don’t know how you can . . . It must be so very difficult.’ She gives me a sympathetic smile, then carries on, ‘My cousin’s brother-in-law, his grandma was one of Harold Shipman’s victims. Awful.’

I am poleaxed by her clumsy attempt at – what? Empathy, solidarity?

‘If you need more time, if it all gets too much, you just say.’ She nods eagerly. ‘You can’t rush something like this.’ Flashing me another smile, her teeth whitened, almost neon. I must be twenty years older, but feel like a child, as if she’ll pat me on the head any moment.

‘We’re thinking of shaking things up a bit,’ Stella says.

I look at the display for New Year in the corner – charting the different ways it is celebrated around the world – and the books in translation in front of it for people who’d like to read about another place. Then there’s the frieze we did last summer to brighten up the children’s library, and the mobiles made by the Sure Start group. The new notices for the pensioners’ Young At Heart group. I scan the room, see the people busy on the computers, the group of Asian men gathered around the tables, talking over the news, and it all looks good to me.

‘Fine,’ I say. I’ll bide my time, see what she does.

‘What d’you think?’ Tracey says when Stella has disappeared. Tracey and I have worked together for nine years. She’s great, a bit lazy perhaps, reluctant to do the shelving, which some people would get brassed off about but it doesn’t really bother me. She has a tough time at home: her mother has dementia and sometimes goes walkabout but so far has been returned unscathed.

‘Seems friendly enough,’ I say.

Tracey arches an eyebrow.

‘I’ve only just met her,’ I add. ‘Bit patronizing maybe.’

Unfortunately Stella is in work when I get an urgent call from school. Florence is distressed and they think I should come and settle her or take her home.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I’ll have to go.’ My heart pattering too fast as I pull my coat on. Small upsets mushroom these days.

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