It’s the summer of 2005, and we’re staying on the sunny shores of Busua, a coastal town in Ghana. The sand is made of crushed pink shells. Annabel and I scoop up handfuls and scrub our dirty feet in the shallow water. We’ve been wearing flip-flops for months, walking through the thick red dust at the refugee camp where we work. The Atlantic Ocean is rough and full of life. The rolling waves and the wind make me feel on top of the world. Annabel is smiling to herself too, jumping in and out of the waves.
“Mori,” she shouts, “it’s like getting beaten up by an old friend!”
That afternoon in Ghana, her eyes sparkle turquoise. She has a deep tan, freckles on her nose, and her hair is bleached gold at the ends. We feel so free. So connected. To what we’re doing. To each other. We’re lucky, privileged young women who want to make our precious lives matter.
I didn’t know then that I was storing up memories I’d need to get through the rest of my life. Because 12 months ago, Annabel was stabbed to death in her own living room by her partner, and the light of my life went out.
I might one day be able to accept that she’s gone. But I’ll never accept how it happened.
I wake up shocked every morning, reliving the moment I first heard the news. Losing someone you love to senseless violence is the rawest part of being human, and sometimes it feels too painful for everyday life to handle. She was my first love. My life partner since I was eight years old. We’re so tangled up together that I feel like part of me has been erased. I used to call her Joybell, because she made me so happy. She always called me Mori. I can’t remember why. On the day she died, my husband said, “I feel like you’ve lost your spouse.”
The cold, hard facts spin around in my head all day, every day, as I desperately try to make sense of them. But there are no answers. Not in the evening when I look up at the sky for the brightest star. Not in the freezing water of London’s Hampstead ladies’ pond, where I jump in every week to feel brave. Not in the dream where she leans into my ear and whispers over and over, in disbelief: “He killed me, Mori. He actually killed me.”
I might one day be able to accept that she’s gone. But I’ll never accept how it happened.
We met when we were eight years old at a small private primary school above a bookshop in Tufnell Park, north London. We were both a bit different from the other confident kids with successful parents. We were late bloomers, dyslexic, creative, and unsure of ourselves. We found each other and felt stronger together.
We used to pull shiny pink ballet leotards over our woolly blue school tights and “ice skate” around her parents’ living room, pretending to be Torvill and Dean. She always wanted to be Dean so she could lead. That was fine by me—she always led anyway. Later on, we had a great routine like in Dirty Dancing to Jennifer Rush’s The Power of Love. Now, I wish she had never heard that song. I don’t want her younger self to believe that her love is worth any kind of sacrifice.
We became wild teenagers—staying out all night in the park, taking magic mushrooms, riding skateboards, having boyfriends, dancing at the London club Whirl-Y-Gig, swimming in the Thames in nightdresses, jumping fences, and waking up at Glastonbury festival when we were 15 with giant beads in our hair. It was a wild and beautiful young life. We were so lucky.
In our mid-20s in Ghana, we worked at the Buduburam refugee camp with 42,000 people displaced by the Liberian war, for an African NGO called Children Better Way in partnership with the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
One weekend, all the other workers had left, so it was just the two of us in what Annabel called the gingerbread house. We went to take our daily bucket bath.In the lean-to cubicles at the back, it was so hot that day. Since we didn’t have to share the water, I suggested we each get inside a water barrel instead of just standing and scooping like we usually did. It felt incredibly indulgent and soothing. We talked through the wooden slats about what mattered to us and the kind of lives we hoped for.
We both wanted to be able to look back when we were old and say we had lived a selfless, meaningful life full of love. To be creative and give something back. Joybell said it was wrong if people who truly cared about others did nothing about it. I remember thinking she had a clarity of purpose that was rare, especially in those so-called “selfish years” – our 20s.
That Sunday morning, we went to a run-down church near our house. Everyone was dressed in their best lappa-printed cloth, and babies bounced along to the singing and drums. We felt so embarrassed to be seen in our stained, old cotton shorts and T-shirts. Suddenly, all the women stood up and started dancing around the walls of the church. They grabbed our hands and made us join in. It brought us both to tears. The women were so accepting and welcoming, and so grateful for everything they had.
Our time in Ghana shaped us. Years later, we co-founded the London-based MamaSuze community together – a grassroots organization that supports women and mothers who have survived gender-based violence and displacement.
We both strongly believed that access to the arts and creativity is essential to being human and can reach places that therapy cannot. We wanted to create something inclusive and holistic that could support all aspects of women’s needs. Annabel put everything into it. By then, she was an experienced community leader, radiating warmth, playfulness, and compassion. Everyone who met her felt it, and everyone who came to the community wanted to return. We had good funding and received referrals from major refugee charities. We were unique, offering expert-led, trauma-informed creative workshops to marginalized women, along with a well-staffed crèche and travel money, so there were no barriers to attending. Women living in extreme poverty in asylum hotels, with no access to childcare, could join every week and start building a life beyond their daily struggles and trauma.
Because we worked with vulnerable women, we knew that leaving a relationship was the most dangerous time. I used to meet Annabel before the group every Thursday at the coffee truck nearby. Flat white for her, latte for me. She always arrived first and would beam up at me as I approached. I loved watching her move through life, making people smile, making people feel warm. We used to communicate without words. One look was all it took.
I had just arrived in Crete with some friends for a three-day break from family life when it happened. Walking through the winding backstreets of Chania, stopping to take photos of old turquoise doors and pink bougainvillea petals scattered on doormats, I didn’t know that she was begging for her life 2,000 miles away. I woke up restless in the early hours and stumbled to the roof terrace to film the sunrise and the swifts dancing and shrieking as if with joy. By then, she was already dead.
How could I let this happen to her? Why did I believe her when she told me everything would be okay? Why did I go to Greece and leave her behind?
I had shared my worst fear – that her partner could physically harm her – with my husband. “That won’t happen,” he said firmly, reassuringly. Because Annabel and I worked closely with vulnerable women, we knew that leaving a relationship is statistically the most dangerous time. I was worried enough that I had brought it up with her, and we had discussed it on the phone. “I know that, Mori,” she said, tense and frustrated. But her voice was flat. She said her stomach was twisted with worry. I now think her body knew what her mind refused to accept: she was in danger.I will never forget the psychotherapist we work with describing it as “an attack from within.” I now believe that Annabel’s role as a respected leader of a women’s group made her partner even more determined to control and destroy her. He couldn’t stand how loved and admired she was. He couldn’t stand her independence, her success, or the fact that she didn’t need him. He hated women he couldn’t dominate.
Annabel’s death left me reeling—not just for myself, but for the women in our group, many of whom had already survived male violence. How could I keep providing a safe space for vulnerable women who had essentially been retraumatized by our organization, when I could barely stand on my own two feet? How could I keep MamaSuze alive when its co-founder was gone?
I will never forgive her murderer. But I also won’t hold onto the hate he spread and let it destroy me—or worse, let it spread further.
The answer, I’m learning, lies in taking small, curious steps forward and giving myself plenty of time to reflect. The act of coming back together again and again is a form of resistance. The women in the group all want to support me and Annabel’s mother, who comes to the group every week. It feels like a role reversal, but we now have more in common than ever before. One woman from Afghanistan told me she was used to stories like this from her homeland but never imagined it could happen in London. Most of the women knew someone who had been murdered in their home countries. We are facing the reality that no place is truly safe. At times, it’s been a struggle to keep the upbeat spirit of the organization alive and not let it turn into a bereavement support group. We’ve found that staying active and sometimes faking it a little helps. We sing, we dance, we laugh, we do clowning workshops. We create bright, colorful art. Our joy is real and lives right alongside our tears.
I’m well aware of the irony: I was supporting traumatized women, and then I became deeply traumatized myself. I now realize that, before her death, my ability to hold space for women came partly from my privilege and psychological strength—because I hadn’t really suffered before.
I will never forgive Annabel’s murderer. But I also won’t hold onto the hate he spread and let it destroy me—or worse, let it spread further. His contempt for women, his lack of respect for her right to live, for her children’s right to have a mother, for her parents’ right to keep their daughter, for all of us who loved her—it’s beyond comprehension. But he wasn’t born this way. Yes, he suffered abuse as a child, but he could have sought help and thought about the impact his life could have. He was encouraged by society and his peers. Of course, there are men who work hard not to let sexism or misogyny go unchecked. But there also seem to be plenty of men who lack the courage or emotional intelligence to question what’s around them—to stand up for women in small, everyday moments.
Men and boys also suffer greatly when women and girls are abused. Women can’t do this alone. What can we change in our society so that some men don’t feel so entitled, so arrogant, and so bitter that they kill us? How can we encourage men to explore these deep-rooted problems while still allowing them to feel like men? Annabel’s brother-in-law has started a men’s group. Her little brother sings his heart out in a choir set up for men affected by her death. More of this would be good.
Femicide affects women from all walks of life, across all backgrounds. Where is the collective outrage? These horrors happen every week in the UK. In the month it happened to us—June 2025—11 other women were killed by men across the country. A total of 113 women were killed by men in 2025. Violence against women and girls is now getting worse. We can’t change anything if we don’t first admit there’s a cultural problem.
His denial of what he so clearly did wasn’t just cowardice.It was harsh, really—it felt cruel, dragging us through the emotional turmoil of a long and costly trial. In court, Annabel’s younger sister and I searched his face for any sign of remorse, even a flicker of guilt for what he had done. But we couldn’t sense any regret. He seemed to have fully bought into his own story: that he was the victim and she was the perpetrator.
Courtroom 1 at Snaresbrook is surprisingly small and intimate. When he gave evidence and mentioned me in relation to something Annabel had said, hearing my name come out of his mouth made me shudder—but it wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. For months before the trial, I thought I’d feel rage when I saw him; I wanted to look him in the eye and stare him down. But when I actually saw him, I just felt overwhelming sadness. There wasn’t even any satisfaction in watching him squirm under cross-examination. Just something close to pity. He must truly hate himself to have done what he did.
On the way to court to wait for the verdict, I was panicking. I counted twelve people in my train carriage and thought about how random it was that a group of the same number of strangers on the jury would decide the outcome of something so important to us.
I started preparing myself for the worst, because a not-guilty verdict would turn my world upside down, and I felt I’d never trust humanity again. When the jury came back after only a few hours of deliberation and the foreman declared him guilty, I looked him straight in the face. We all let out a collective breath in the public gallery and cried. But it felt like an empty victory. All I could think was, “Okay, that’s over, so can we have her back now, please?”
Compared to many of the women at MamaSuze, I feel lucky to live in a country where the criminal justice system can kick into action and many crimes against women don’t go unpunished. Our justice system isn’t perfect, of course, but it was there for us when we needed it, and it worked. Still, I wonder if the punishment for domestic homicides should be tougher. He got life with a minimum of 23 years because he killed her at home. That sentence would have been much longer if he had killed her on the street.
What I find most painful, when I think about that night, is that I can’t tell Annabel that everything turned out okay. As she died, she must have felt such anguish for her children and what would happen to them. Sometimes, I let myself imagine that I can reach her, hold her in my arms in that moment, and comfort her, telling her everything will be all right: because violence echoes, but love does so much more; because her wonderful kids are still here, her blood flowing through their veins; that they love their new family and have a good new life; that they still make us laugh and are as entertaining and warm as she was; that her parents and siblings are coping as best they can and trying to rebuild their lives; that MamaSuze is still going strong and the women who come still feel supported and joyful. So nothing she did, nothing she was, nothing she created, was ever or will ever be wasted. She lived a meaningful life full of love, and nobody can ever take that truth away.
I’m not a religious person, but I feel Annabel’s energy woven into the fabric of this beautiful universe: in the warmth she brought to rooms; in the chemical bonds of every breath she exhaled; in the memory-filled tapestries of every mind she touched. Energy persists. Nothing is lost, only transformed. Am I transforming too? Into what? I have to accept that I don’t know yet.
I look up at the full moon rising near my house. I’ve escaped my teenagers and climbed the hill to lie on a bench. The dog lies nearby, guarding me. Suddenly, I’m back in Camden Town, where I grew up, outside the tube station, around 1998. I’m waiting in the snow to meet her. The ground is sparkling. A Rasta man wearing a big, brown crocheted hat is beating a djembe drum.
“You are waiting for the moon lady?” he asks me.
“Yep,” I say. “I am.”
And then she comes, sweeping out of the station in a long patchwork skirt, her trademark black eye makeup twinkling.She wore big, dangly earrings, had shiny hair, and a glowing, moon-shaped face. She was pure Joybell.
“Here she is,” he says. “Moon Lady, meet Earth Girl.”
We both laugh along with him. It was just a Camden Town moment. But now, years later, maybe it makes sense. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the UK national helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit womensaid.org.uk. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via befrienders.org.
Catherine Milne is the co-founder of MamaSuze, a community organisation that supports women who are survivors of forced displacement and gender-based violence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the deeply personal and tragic story you shared The questions are written in a natural human tone and the answers are direct and empathetic
Frequently Asked Questions About I Called Her Joybell
1 Who is Joybell
A Joybell is the nickname for the woman the speaker loved She was his soulmate since he was eight years old
2 What happened to Joybell
A Her partner killed her and then blew up their home
3 Why do you call her Joybell
A It was a term of endearment that captured her joyful bright and ringing presence in the speakers life Its a private name for someone who brought him pure happiness
4 How did you know she was your soulmate at age eight
A Even as a child there was a deep instant and lasting connection It felt like recognizing a part of yourself you didnt know was missing
5 Did you stay in touch with her over the years
A The story implies a lifelong bond but it doesnt specify if they were always together The connection was permanent even if they werent a couple
6 Who was the partner Did you know them
A The story doesnt name the partner The focus is on the speakers loss and the violent act not the perpetrators identity
7 Why would someone do that
A There is no good answer It was a senseless violent act of rage control or despair The why is often impossible to understand and is a source of endless pain
8 How do you recover from something like this
A There is no full recovery only learning to carry the grief It involves therapy support groups allowing yourself to feel the pain and finding small ways to honor her memory
9 Is this a true story
A The language and raw emotion suggest it is based on a real traumatic event Whether its autobiographical or a powerful fictional story the pain is authentic
10 What can I do to help someone who has experienced this
