Dark Chapter

  Highly Commended for the CWA Debut Dagger 2015

  SI Leeds Literary Prize 2016 Runner-up

  Shortlisted for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize 2015

  Shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize 2015

  ‘Deftly written, pacey and unflinching, I could not put it down. Winnie Li is a rare talent with an explosive and timely story. Do not miss it.’

  Marti Leimbach, New York Times bestselling author of Dying Young and Daniel Isn’t Talking

  ‘I was totally gripped from the start. Dark Chapter is a brave book, and heart-wrenching in places but essential in helping to break down the silence that surrounds rape in our society. Not only a beautiful book, but a very important one too.’

  Madeleine Black, author of Unbroken

  ‘An important and moving book about rape and the long process of recovery.’

  Cathy Rentzenbrink, bestselling author of The Last Act of Love

  ‘Dark Chapter is a fascinating book, which takes an unflinching look at reality of sexual violence. I found myself asking hard questions about society and relationships, but above all I was gripped by the brilliant and complex narrative. I have never found myself rooting for a heroine with more urgency than in Dark Chapter.’

  Kate Rhodes, author of the Alice Quentin series

  ‘Lyrical, haunting and hypnotic. Winnie Li yanks us into the abyss, luring us to confront the complexities of our humanity before expertly pulling us out. An important novel from a ballsy new literary heroine. A must-read.’

  Irenosen Okojie, Betty Trask Award-winning author of Butterfly Fish

  ‘Complex and rewarding.’

  Stylist

  ‘…fresh and original. The writing is direct, assured and compelling.’

  CWA Debut Dagger 2015 Judges

  ‘An Engrossing read, well written… an engaging and important story.’

  SI Leeds Literary Prize 2016 Judges

  ‘I found it to be an accomplished debut, an honest and unsparing story, at times almost unbearably harrowing.’

  Cath Staincliffe, CWA Short Story Dagger-winning author of Witness

  ‘A powerful story, compassionately told.’ Ros Barber, Desmond Elliott Prize-winning author of

  The Marlowe Papers

  ‘An authentic, courageous debut, told with unflinching honesty and exceptional insight.’

  A. D. Garrett, author of the Fennimore and Simms series

  ‘Dark Chapter is a must-read. It’s gripping, compelling and all the more authentic for inhabiting both voices so completely. Stunning.’

  Erin Kelly, author of The Poison Tree

  ‘Dark Chapter had me gripped from page one and I was with its heroine, Vivian, every step of the way. The threat to her is conveyed with nerve-shredding tension, then with vivid horror. Extremely well written and inspired by real events, this is an impressive and powerful debut.’

  Isabel Wolff, author of Ghostwritten

  ‘This is a book about survival. Dark Chapter should be seen as a beacon of hope, as well as a tale of how sadistic and destructive male violence really is.’

  Julie Bindel, feminist, journalist and political activist

  ‘A brave and unflinching novel… taut with suspense and drama and while shocking and deeply disturbing, it ultimately speaks to the power and triumph of the human spirit.’

  Bernardine Evaristo, author of Mr. Loverman and Blonde Roots

  ‘Writing about rape is never easy, yet Winnie Li handles it with sensitivity and without over-sentimentality… an engrossing story.’

  Kadija Sesay, SI Leeds Literary Prize Chair of Judges

  ‘While the story centres around a horrific crime, it’s the exploration of the aftermath and the cruelty of the justice system that sets this book apart. A fine debut from an exceptional talent.’

  Stuart Neville, Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author of The Ghosts of Belfast

  ‘It may be the author’s bravery and honesty that people will (with reason) focus on, but it is her skill as a writer finally that sets Dark Chapter apart. This is not just an important book, it is a very, very good one, and the first, you feel, of many from Winnie M Li.’

  Glenn Patterson, Betty Trask Award-winning author of Burning Your Own and The International

  ‘Winnie M Li handles alternate points-of-view seamlessly in Dark Chapter, an unflinching lens on the sexual assault landscape and one that should be applauded.’

  Ali Land, Sunday Times bestselling author of Good Me Bad Me

  ‘Winnie Li’s debut novel is a shocking yet thought-provoking insight into the impact of rape on both victim and perpetrator. The fact that it’s based on real events makes it especially challenging. There are important lessons to be learnt from Dark Chapter – a book to be read and discussed.’

  Canon Dr Edmund Newell, Anglican priest, writer, speaker

  ‘Gripping, intense and exhilarating. This book should find its way to the hands of every man who has ever downplayed the magnitude of such a matter.’

  J. J. Bola, author of No Place to Call Home

  ‘A tour de force not just of writing, but of the human spirit. A definitive novel about trauma after violence – and the ability to recover and to empathise. Both suspenseful and inspiring.’

  Trina Vargo, founder of the US-Ireland Alliance and the George J. Mitchell Scholarship Program

  ‘Winnie Li’s novel, like those by Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, and Jessica Knoll, is an important addition to the literary landscape… a unique and unflinching story about sexual violence… It is not easy to read, nor could it have been easy to write, but every page proves how essential it is that none of us look away.’

  Sarah Knight, bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*

  ‘Dark Chapter is equal parts terrifying and gripping, confronting and illuminating, shocking and insightful. It had me in a welter of emotions, I couldn’t put it down – and it is also, above all, a brave and brilliant piece of writing.’

  Bidisha, broadcaster and journalist

  ‘Affecting and powerful, Winnie Li’s work as both a writer and activist shows incredible depth and passion. An important story, beautiful and brutal in equal measure, which addresses a vital topic from a rarely told female perspective.’

  Tiff Stevenson, award-winning comedian, actor, and writer

  DARK

  CHAPTER

  Winnie M Li

  Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB

  info@legend-paperbooks.co.uk | www.legendpress.co.uk

  Dark Chapter © by Winnie M Li, 2017

  By Agreement with Pontas Literary & Film Agency

  The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  Hardback ISBN 978-1-7850790-4-7

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-7850790-6-1

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-7850790-5-4

  Set in Times. Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International.

  Cover design by Simon Levy www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Winnie M Li is a writer and produce
r, who has worked in the creative industries on three continents. A Harvard graduate, she has written for travel guide books, produced independent feature films, programmed for film festivals, and developed eco-tourism projects. After completing her MA with Distinction in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, she now writes and speaks across a range of media, runs arts festivals, and is a PhD researcher in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She was Highly Commended for the CWA Debut Dagger 2015 and won 2nd place in the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2016. She lives in London yet is somewhat addicted to travel. Dark Chapter is her first novel.

  Visit Winnie at

  winniemli.com

  or on Twitter

  @winniemli

  This is a work of fiction.

  Although the novel was inspired by the author’s own rape in similar circumstances, and while the two main characters are therefore loosely based on the author and her impressions of that rapist, this book is the product of the author’s imagination. The specific details of the characters’ lives independently of that crime are fictional.

  Save for the supportive friends and advocates mentioned in the Acknowledgements, details of the friends and family members of the two main characters, in particular of all of Johnny’s friends and family and their lives and deeds, are completely made up.

  The trial never happened, because the real-life defendant pleaded guilty, and so it has been imagined. Any resemblance of any fictional character or organisation to real persons (living or dead) or organisations throughout the novel is coincidental.

  For all the victims and all the survivors – and most of us, who are somewhere in between.

  PROLOGUE

  They say events like this change your life forever. That your life will never be the same as it was the day before it happened. Or even two hours before it happened, when I stood waiting for that bus out of Belfast, along the Falls Road to the west of the city.

  Is it melodramatic to think of life like that? Of a clean split struck straight down the breadth of your existence, severing your first twenty-nine years from all the years that come after? I look across that gap now, an unexpected rift in the contour of my life, and I long to shout across that ravine to the younger me who stands on the opposite edge, oblivious to what lies ahead. She is a distant speck. She seems lost from my perspective, but in her mind she thinks she knows where she’s going. There is a hiking guidebook in her hand and a path that she is following: it will lead here, up this slope, and then along the edge of a plateau to gain the higher ground merging with the hills above the city. She does not know who follows her. She is only thinking of the path ahead. But some things she cannot anticipate.

  I stand now on this side of the ravine, desperate to warn my earlier self of the person trailing her, skulking from bush to tree in her wake. Stop! I want to shout. It’s not worth it! Just give up the trail and go home. But she wouldn’t listen anyway. She’s too stubborn, too determined to hike this trail on a day this crisp and clear. And now, it’s too late. She is in isolated country, and even if she were to turn back, she would inevitably encounter him, because he is behind her. Watching her.

  By now, she has traversed the slope and found the trail that runs between a sunlit pasture and the steep incline of the glen. She pauses for a moment, breathing in the beauty of this green track, the tree branches arching over the path, the bright field that stretches to her left. She has escaped the city. This is where the countryside really begins. It seems like a little bit of heaven, for one last, peaceful moment. But she is perched on the edge, and to her right, the ground plunges sharply into the ravine.

  The river below is a distant roar. The air up here smells of manure and sun and warm grass, and lazy insects drift in the filtered light beneath the trees. And then, glancing down the wooded chasm to her right, she sees a figure coming up the slope, trying to hide in the brush of the forest. Something skips unnaturally in the beat of her heart. Only then, does she realize she is being followed.

  Now, years later, it is as if I am the one following my earlier self. Haunting her every step, like some guardian angel arrived too late. She parts the branches in front of her, and I do it too, invisibly. She quickens her pace to lengthen the distance between them, and I fall in step. She instinctively knows she must reach the open ground before he catches her, so she tries to cover the last few yards of the path as it clears a ridge. With an invisible hand, I want to hold back the little bastard, lock him into position like a rugby player, while shouting to her to keep on going, to reach the meadow and then abandon the trail, forget about the hike, just head straight to the busy road and go home. But I am powerless to stop it. Events must unfold as they already have.

  The past is our past. So I am stranded here on this side of the ravine, watching as he catches up to her. I don’t want to see the rest of it. I have replayed it enough times already. If I could just freeze it there – in that final moment, perched between the sunlit pasture and the plunging abyss – then everything would still be fine. Only then, it would not be my life. It would be someone else’s pleasant stroll through the Irish countryside on a spring afternoon. But my journey turned out to be a little different.

  PART

  ONE

  She sits in the office, waiting for her psychologist to finish fiddling with a video camera. It is a small room, fairly cramped in an academic, state-funded way, and tall bookshelves yawn above her, filled with no-nonsense fare about trauma recovery, patient monitoring, cognitive behavior therapy methods. On the cork board to her right, Doctor Greene has pinned handwritten thank-you notes from past patients and one postcard image of a lone palm tree on a white sand beach.

  She turns her gaze to the grey skies outside the window. South London in November. The arc of the London Eye visible in the distance, astride miles of council estate blocks that seem to run in an uninterrupted forest of concrete down Denmark Hill, past Elephant and Castle, all the way to the Thames.

  Satisfied with the blinking red light on the video camera, Doctor Greene sits down, smooths her corn-blonde hair, faces her patient.

  “So, talk me through it one more time. In as much detail as possible.”

  She tries not to sigh, she has been expecting this, but a note of exasperation escapes. “Really? One more time?”

  “I know it’s exhausting for you. But it’s an essential part of the therapy. You can do it as slowly as you want.”

  “No emotion?”

  “Focus just on the facts. The details. The emotions will be there, but that’s fine.”

  Doctor Greene is patient, non-judgmental, and that’s what she likes about her. That and her librarian sense of fashion and dowdy obsession with cats, so unexpected in a slim, blonde thirty-something. Normally she might feel intimidated, but here she only senses tacit support from the psychologist, a certain nerdish-ness, and a guarded dedication to understanding her patients.

  She looks at the video camera, exhausted. The last thing she wants is to talk through it one more time. She has been talking through it for months now, to the police, to her doctors, to the Crisis Response Centre, to the Mental Health Board who assessed if she needed treatment, and now – multiple times – to her psychologist. Always slightly different versions. Some focusing more on the medical details: where she’d been hit, what she’d been forced to do. Some more on her attacker: what did he look like, how did he speak. But always the same scene rises to the surface: the bright spring morning, the sunlight filtering through the trees, the figure with the white jumper coming up the slope.

  She could probably recite it in her sleep by now, and in fact, that’s what her mind does every night these days, concocting myriad adaptations in her dreams. Sometimes the dreams are with people she once knew, forgotten faces of grown-up jocks from middle school. Sometimes it is in an imaginary place – a science-fiction landscape, half-absorbed from a film she’s seen. But there is always the meeting point between forest and field, that liminal space hovering like some safe, il
luminated refuge beyond the trees. Only it isn’t safe, because the bright field had offered no refuge, and it continues to tease her in her sleep, gleaming on the edges of her consciousness.

  The red light on the video camera blinks. The palm tree beckons from its rectangle of postcard.

  She clears her throat and starts again.

  An hour later, she walks down Denmark Hill towards Camberwell Green, in the last hour of daylight that afternoon. It is a familiar routine now. Tuesday afternoons: take the bus to Camberwell, have your session with Doctor Greene, maybe stop at the Chinese grocery store on the way back before catching the bus home.

  She feels constantly drained of energy these days. A three-hour outing is the limit of her abilities. That weird, debilitating agoraphobia, which had plagued her in the weeks immediately after the incident, always threatens to come back. The sun can be too bright, the wind too sharp, the masses of people on the street too loud and incomprehensible. Why risk being outdoors?

  There is always the safety of her apartment, her bedroom, her bed.

  On this afternoon, her bed seems particularly welcoming as she draws away from the Maudsley Hospital, down the hill, into the real world.

  Focus just on the facts. The emotions will be there, but that’s fine.

  But the thing is the emotions aren’t there. For months now, she has felt stripped of any feeling whatsoever. Parties come and go, friends get engaged, her mother nags her on the phone – and she feels nothing. Just a strange sort of detachment from the world, a ghost floating through the land of the real people: observing, noting how the living live their lives and then drifting away. She can’t even bring herself to feel sad or angry about her lack of feeling. There is just a blank void of sensation. No emotions, no reaction from this one. Noted.

  She drifts into the Chinese grocery store. Wang’s Supermarket. She can’t read the labels on the products, or talk to the staff in Mandarin or Cantonese, but there is a certain comfort in being amid grocery store aisles that remind her of her childhood. Stacks of ramen packages for 30p each, glistening in their plastic wrappers and promising flavors of Curry Prawn, Spicy Beef, Imperial Chicken. Hefty cans of water chestnuts, straw mushrooms, lotus root. Ingredients she wouldn’t think of buying a year ago, but which she had grown up on, stir-fried in her mother’s wok or stewed in a winter broth.