Ellen Dorrington is a writer born and raised in east London. Her work has been published in anthologies and magazines, including Litro, Mslexia, and the Royal Society of Literature’s website. She has also been listed as a special mention in the Spread The Word Life Writing Prize 2020. Ellen is currently working on a fiction novel focusing on the impact of male violence and grief on young women’s lives. The below is an extract from the first chapters.

Email: ellendorrington1@gmail.com

Twitter: EllenDorrington

 

Liberty

 

September 2018

The mourning women interrupt us. We’re on our way to the pub, but we’re blocked by the crowd and their paraphernalia on the corner of the main road. We stop walking to stare.

They don’t say her name, but they carry signs with that instruction. Women in jeans and jumpers, standing over a picture of a smiling girl. You can see the wave of paper where there’s too much glue. The picture of her is stretched, her skin pixelates, blue eyes blurred. It’s a beautiful, deep night, the sky blue and black. She’s surrounded by candles, a glow which flickers onto her face. Dropped bouquets, anemones, lilies. Bulbous sunflowers.

‘Oh, this is for that girl,’ Bunny says, craning her neck to get a better view. She’s dressed as an angel, in a white satin dress and fake wings, a halo that catches the light and sparkles. Too on the nose, but then I would be a bitch for saying it.

‘The one who was attacked,’ Bunny finishes.

‘So sad,’ Manisha says, her voice hushed. She looks slightly more appropriate, in a black dress, her shoulders bare, dangled emeralds in her ears.

I see her name on another cardboard marker, MEGAN SIMMONS. I try to get clues from her picture to tell me what she was like; the pose, head tilted to the side, lips pursed, eyebrows waxed thin. Common, like me, like the girls I went to school with. In this way her death was her fault. She was stupid to trust a man when she shouldn’t have. It would not happen to me.

‘She was run over,’ Manisha says, to our shoulders.

‘By her boyfriend?’ Bunny asks.

I felt her nod.

‘It’s always the men you know,’ Bunny starts. She shifts, rolls her shoulders backwards.

‘It’s not,’ I say, can’t help myself, ‘sometimes it’s the men you don’t.’

‘Like that other woman who was walking home, you know the one,’ Manisha says. ‘Oh no, what was her name?’

‘But statistically, it’s more likely to be someone you do know,’ Bunny argues, ‘so.’

I don’t know what to say to that. We fall silent. My phone screen flashes with messages from the group chat we’re lumped into with Bunny’s friends.

I need to go on a diet I am huge

Shut up you’re the skinniest here

Love YOself

Angels are supposed to be skinny !!!!!

The streetlights are like stars. Even the buses have extra magical light, a redness that is almost luminous as they drive past. I want to be out in the night, not here, reckoning with Megan. I feel her ghost smile cajoling me onwards, to enjoy the time I have while I still have it. She could be any one of us. That’s the point. That’s why we stand, transfixed, instead of continuing on to the pub. To laugh with our friends, to the grips of strange men, their snake arms pulling us deeper into romance.

Her name is like poetry, the longer I look: Megan Simmons. Like a spell, whispering it as revenge for her death, a way to bring her back to life. I have practice doing that, of course.

Manisha wipes her eyes. I have to steel myself, look straight ahead. To not roll my eyes or to snap at her.

‘It’s so sad,’ she says, with baby tears in her eyes, ‘she had her whole life ahead of her.’

‘This is why we should castrate rapists,’ Bunny says, her voice a little too loud, at risk of disturbing the women.

I shush her. ‘He was in a car. What’s that going to solve?’

‘It’ll teach them to respect us.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about her,’ Manisha says. The lights change, a green man.

‘Come on,’ I say. I pull gently at Manisha’s arm and we turn our backs on Megan, crossing the road. I feel lighter as I step away from her death, the place of it. Megan. who was killed right here. Her body crushed under metal, wheels, the heaviness of a man.

‘It makes me so angry,’ Bunny says. She looks right at me as we walk. ‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’

‘No,’ I say, and then have to recover quickly, ‘if I get angry then I’ll never stop being angry.’

‘I agree with Allie,’ Manisha says. ‘I’m not angry, just devastated.’

‘I’m not devastated either,’ I say, and both of them are quiet, and I’ve fucked it now, Megan, haven’t I? Seeing your face at the side of the road has unsettled me. I can’t catch my thoughts in the same way, analyse my words before I say them. To weigh the impact, the little manipulations, in the way I had been taught.

‘We have to have the courage to go out there and still live,’ I say, as confidently as I can. ‘We can’t stop men, but we don’t have to hide ourselves away from the world because we may get hurt.’

 Manisha nods. Bunny doesn’t say anything. We walk on.

‘But I do feel sorry for her,’ I say.

‘For Megan,’ Bunny reminds me, her eyes sharp and clear. Watching me. She says Megan in the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. The g sharp, weapon of a sound, the vowels elongated.

‘Yes. For Megan,’ I say, in my own way, Meggun. It’s a weapon of my own, and maybe she recognises it, for she smiles. We’ve turned the corner now. Couples and groups walk onwards, drunk and shouting, and it feels a little easier to leave her behind.

‘Third year,’ Bunny says, finally, ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Not as much going out for us,’ Manisha says with a small smile. 

The pub is full, a typical Wednesday. A crowd gathers close to the stage, and also at the bar. I watch Manisha as she enters the pub, her eyes scanning the room, looking out for someone. She came to Uni to get a degree but also something else, nameless, but there; flirtation, attention. I recognise the desire for her to be seen. I sometimes use it against her, just because. With compliments I don’t mean. I overegg men’s reactions to her, so when it falls through, she’s disappointed.

I too scan the room, looking for a good time. Men with good hair, nice smiles, a glint of need in their eyes. I am just as bad as Manisha.

And then I want to see Libby, and I make her there. Nineteen, wearing what she used to wear to drinks after work. Just before. A tight, ribbed jumper, cropped, showing her midriff. What would she have to say about Megan? I would want white roses laid out for me. 

Noise distracts me from her. Our friends come to meet us at the door. Mostly Bunny’s friends from cheerleading, girls with pointed faces and contoured cheekbones, sharp and cunning. They’re all dressed as angels with feathered wings. They’re gathered near the football boys. We go over there, sit perched on awkward chairs too high for the table. Bunny abandons us to go to the other end, sitting in the middle of the boys. Some ignore her, others crane their heads forward to listen to her. One of them brings tequila shots to the table, and I swallow the harsh liquid, warm in my throat. Manisha watches. She’s too weak for shots.

‘Did you guys see that girl?’ One cheerleader asks us. She swats away a boy, who creeps forward on the bench behind her, his hands on her thigh. She’s one of the most annoying of them; she wears a white dress so thin, I can see the outline of her thong.

‘Stop! I’m being important,’ she says to the guy. I recognise him, Jack, who slept with Bunny in first year. He buries his face into her side, close to her chest, and then straightens up. I could use this; this game of feigned reluctance between them.

‘The girl that died,’ she says, looking at us both intently.

‘We did see,’ Manisha says. ‘So sad, isn’t it?”

‘It makes you not want to be a woman anymore.’ Then she yelps, because Jack has poked her harshly in the side.

‘Stop!’

‘I want attention,’ he says, and then looks over at us. Grinning, his meaning clear: get out. I stay where I am.

She once again turns away from him, leaning forward to us, her bum sticking out towards him. A message of her own. I know she’s using me to delay him, a game played by all of us, without our consent. 

‘Do you remember her name?’ I ask her. I wait for it to land. She laughs.

‘Her name?’

‘On the signs. It says her name. Do you remember it?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘I’ve forgotten.’

But she can tell I’m lying. She looks away from us, back to Jack.

‘You’re always so serious,’ she says to me, ‘and clever. I forgot her name.’

But Jack has the last laugh, his finger back on her side. She abandons us entirely, turning her back. I smile, look at the bar, hoping the queue had gone down.

‘I don’t think I can go out tonight,’ Manisha says, her voice sober. ‘I do keep thinking about her. Megan.’

‘You just need a drink,’ I say, ‘I’ll get you one.’

‘Why did you do that?’ Manisha asks me, ‘With that girl?’

‘They piss me off,’ I whisper. 

I’m thinking of where else we could go to escape the ghost of Megan. Our other friends, girls from my class, are at another pub. They won’t be dressed like cheap angels. I search my phone for the Lit Lit Girls group chat, and there it is, a message from Libby, years ago, at the top. That’s why you did english lit a level lol you can read between the lines. 

‘It’s not that,’ Manisha says, interrupting me. ‘It’s that I’m scared. Aren’t you scared?’

Always. Never. It doesn’t matter if I’m scared. I want to grip her shoulders, shake her. Get a grip. Libby wouldn’t have been scared. I feel her blonde courage in me, a shining light. Her body, molten metal, godlike, and strong.

‘They want us to be scared, I refuse to,’ I say, lightly, and then stand up. She absorbs the words for a moment. I can’t work out whether she believes them. But she stands too, towards the bar, and then I know the night has safely begun.

 

February 2012

 

Valentine’s Day approached. Libby wore a pink ribbon tied around her wrist, a mark of love. I told her it looks like a shag band and she smiled at me, that’s the point. I tried to remember what pink meant, what sexual favour she could have done, to humiliate her. But nothing would stick to her. She would be enriched by it. The pink flash on her wrist, showing me where I fall short. 

Early in the morning, before registration, we stood on the concrete path by the field. We were with our new friend Diana, a plump girl with smooth brown skin, her hair woven tightly into cornrows, braids running down her back. We were newly fifteen.

Our breaths came out in soft puffs. I wasn’t wearing a coat, because Libby said I had copied hers and it started an argument, so now it lived at home. My mum was still annoyed at the waste of money and lack of explanation. I shivered in my blazer.

Our attention returned to boys. Diana made the cut because she had a boyfriend, an Egyptian boy that was taller than her, and she had knowledge of a relationship: holding hands, being asked out, his scruffy hands on her breasts. A breakup. She offered this to Libby in a way I couldn’t, rich with experience, and Libby absorbed her. We were trying to get him back.

‘Did you message him like I said?’ Libby asked Diana. She pulled her coat tighter against the cold. 

‘I did,’ Diana said, pulling out her Blackberry for us to see. ‘I said what you told me to say, Libby. That I deserve better.’

‘Read it.’

‘I said, it hurts me to see you when you’re walking with her. The reason we’re both upset is because we both love each other. I know you don’t love her but you love me. You’re an amazing person, seriously, I’ve never met anyone like you, and I think we’ll love each other forever.’

It went on for a long time. I listened with my hands in my pockets, tried to absorb the words. 

It ended. Libby said calmly, ‘you didn’t write what I said.’

‘I did, you said-’

‘No offence, but you sound like a beg in that message,’ she said, ‘You shouldn’t send them without me reading them first.’

Diana’s face fell. She looked at me, just once, but I said nothing. She would learn soon enough. Libby turned her attention to me.

‘Are you cold?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s go inside,’she said, and took my arm in hers. She looked over to Diana, smiled. ‘I think you can still get him back.’

‘He replied,’ Diana said quickly, ‘he said, I can read the rest.’

‘We’re going inside now. Send it to me, I’ll read it in form.’

She did as she was told, walking behind us as we stepped into the stairwell. There was a group of nerds sitting by the radiator. They looked up at us as we walked past, stood a little straighter. We opened the double doors into the corridor. Libby walked me to a radiator by the creative writing display, which we’ve read before and laughed at; horror stories that end with dolphins growing legs and walking out of the sea.  

‘I’m so sore,’ Libby said, as she dug in her bag, ‘I’ve been at dance all weekend.’

I stood with my legs pressed to the radiator. I tried to stand it as long as possible, before I felt the sting of the burn, and had to move. A pleasure pain, as they cooled. 

‘Wow,’ Diana said, for the third time, ‘I bet you’ll be amazing.’

Libby smiled at her, as if looking at a small dog. ‘Thank you.’

We talked about Libby’s dancing until the bell rang.

Diana hugged us goodbye and we walked into form. We sat together for years, ever since we were in year seven, our small bodies in big blazers, and I was the only one Libby knew. She stood her planner up on the table and hid her phone behind it, and together we read the message from Ahmad. She needed me for this, to read and decode the messages. I often found hidden meanings, things she wanted them to say. I whispered my findings to Libby. I had the nickname teen therapist. Friends came to me and said, I feel like this, I don’t know why. I said, here is where the pain is.

He said, I didn’t expect to hear it from u. He meant: I thought you were out of reach.  

He said, there was some things wrong with us. He meant: It is difficult to love a girl, but I want to do it.

Libby leant into the screen, glancing up occasionally at the teacher to make sure we were undetected. The intensity of her gaze was unfamiliar to me, searching for something in the words. I watched her as she read.

‘What do you think of him?’ I asked. She didn’t quite hear me, distracted by her reading. 

‘Of sweet tea.’ I said, his code name. Taken from a story Diana told us, where she went to his house and his mum made her sweet tea. Then he took her upstairs and kissed her nose, cheeks and eyelids. The story made us breathless.

‘I think he’s good for Diana.’

I left space, let her talk. Something I learned on the internet. But she didn’t take the bait. Back to the message: I think actually ur happier without me. Translation: I’ve seen you with those girls.

The pink ribbon fell down over her wrist. ‘You’ll get in trouble for that,’ I said.

She smiled instead, put her phone back in her inside pocket, and sat back in her seat.

‘Oh well. It’s a message.’

‘To who?’

‘Everyone. There’s romance in the air.’

‘Hm.’

She laughed, looked at me directly. ‘Don’t you want it?’

Of course I did. It, the imaginary plane, undiscovered. I felt like I was losing her to Diana, and to something else. The weeks that dragged on towards us. Losing her to dance friends, to dance itself, as an art, her body a vessel for it. Feelings we didn’t understand. Ballets with music that turned us both towards desire, a confusing swell of memories we didn’t have. I was losing her in my head, the sadness that settled there, that cut me off from her happy life.

She offered me some gum. I took it. I only broke the rules when she was there to do it with me. The day buzzed before me, lessons, gossip. Ahmad and his words, cut open by me. His raw heart on the table for us to prod. I was a needed villain. Libby rested her head on me, just for a moment. I felt her chewing jaw. I was pulled back into her world, tied with her ribbon, pulled forward into what she wanted for me.