‘I don’t think she knew how much danger she was in’: the life and death of Annabel Rook

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:11Today, how do you carry on after your best friend is murdered?

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0:57Just before we start, today's episode contains some upsetting descriptions of violence, but please do stick with us if you can because it's also a really powerful story of love and friendship. So on the Monday morning she went off to a meeting round the corner from here, actually, round the corner from my house. The last day of Annabelle Rook's life started like any other. We had been planning this project with this Afghan women's community that live just quite near me and they're very isolated and we were going to run a women's group for them. This is Catherine Milne. She and Annabelle ran a charity together, Mama Suze, supporting some of London's most vulnerable women.

1:45But they were more than co-workers. They'd been best friends since they were eight years old. she left me like a voice note afterwards telling me all about the meeting and how productive and good it had been and how excited she was maybe we should say like we can deliver a package of six sessions to you know see what your community likes and enjoys and I think after that she then went to her brother's house and was working there for the because Clifton, her partner, had been away for the whole weekend in Barcelona at some sort of festival, drinking all weekend. And he was back and at home and being a bit of a dick.

2:33And she'd messaged me saying she was going to give him a wide berth and not talk to him about anything to do with them and all the difficulties they were having until he got over the hangover, as she put it. Catherine knew the relationship was breaking down, and she was relieved when Annabelle told her she was ready to leave him. And then I think they'd been arguing all evening, and at some point around 7pm, he killed her. This is Annabelle's story, told by those who loved her. But it's also a story about femicide in the UK. Last year, Annabelle was just one of more than 100 women killed by men, often in their own homes.

3:21I mean, I loved her so much. I even said to her, like, six months before she was killed, that my worst fear of something happening to her. And she laughed and said, don't worry, nothing's going to happen to me. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus, the life and death of Annabelle Rook.

3:47How old were you guys here? So I think that was when we were about 16. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sunny morning in May and I've come to Catherine's home in North London to talk about Annabelle. And that was at a friend's 40th. That's sort of really quite funny ones. And although this time I've brought recording kit and producer Eli with me, I've been here many times before because Catherine's one of my closest friends. And actually this is a fancy dress party we went to, I think about 21 or something. This is also not the first time we've talked about Annabelle. Catherine and I have spoken about her almost every day of the last year.

4:31What is your earliest memory of you and Annabelle together? Can you remember when you met her or what's your kind of earliest memory of your friendship? Well, we met when we were eight and we were at this funny little school in Tufnel Park called the Village School. And we were both basically bottom of the class. So we kind of bonded over that because we just knew that we were sort of different to everybody else. We were both quite sort of popular and had lots of friends, but we basically failed academically. and I think that really gelled us together and she always sort of tried really hard even though we were just shit at everything whereas I'd sort of give up and be quite kind of morose and grumpy about stuff and she'd always be like, no, you have to persevere.

5:20I remember her saying to me when we were about nine and me thinking, God, seriously? But she just had this incredible attitude to everything and she was always laughing and jolly and a real gift to be around somebody like that. She's what my mum used to say. She's got the happy gene, that girl. When she was little, my mum used to say that, and it's true, she did have the happy gene. We always just had this quite deep understanding of each other. Yeah, I don't really know where it came from, but it was just always there. And like all wonderful old friendships, we kind of grew up and had our own mates and went to different universities and stuff like that.

6:01But then we ended up living on the same road in our 20s, had quite different groups of friends always, but would always end up coming back together and had our friendship as our sort of special place where we could both feel really seen and tell each other stuff that we probably wouldn't tell anyone else and just somebody I could truly be myself with who knew like the innermost parts of me that I wouldn't necessarily share with everybody and I had a deep understanding of me and my family and my worldview and who I really am deep down, you know? It just really made me laugh because I'd just been telling you how I'm going to really take it easy and then I get a message saying I was the most energetic person in the room.

6:49It's like Annabelle. Anyway, I'm going to take it slow for the rest of the day. Okay, bye. The first time I met Annabelle was at a crowded party at Catherine's house and I spotted her across the room shrieking with laughter and just having the best time. I went over to introduce myself and we chatted for ages about her work, our kids, funny stories about Catherine and she had this incredible energy and she was so warm and funny and it was no surprise to me at all why Catherine loved her so much. She had a very wild dress sense. It was becoming increasingly out there actually the older she got.

7:31Sort of colourful, crazy, you know, blousy sort of dresses and skirts and jackets and like these funny little green boots she started wearing which were just hilarious. and she always had this trademark incredible beautiful black eye makeup that she wore every single day without fail this beautiful kind of lustrous long hair she'd wear these dangly earrings and she seemed to have a permanent suntan and freckles and had this kind of fierce intelligence that she was quite understated about and this real kind of compassion yeah she was just beautiful and sort of buxom and gorgeous and she just looked like somebody who enjoyed her life.

8:21I hope you're okay. Did you howl at the moon last night? I didn't, but I should have done. You always had this feeling when you were with her of wanting more of her. She was always rushing off to do something else and it's not that she made you feel like you weren't important. You always felt like you were the most important person in the room when she was chatting to you or you were with her. but she did always have somewhere to rush off to. Let me know what you think. I'm just going to go to a fucking spin class and then I'll be around after that. All right, bye. When they were in their 20s, Catherine and Annabelle went to Ghana together to work in a refugee camp and it was there that they made a pact together to set up their own charity one day.

9:04By the time Mama Su's opened in 2021, Annabelle had decades of experience running community arts projects, supporting some of London's most vulnerable women, many of them survivors of male violence. What do you think pulled her towards working with that group that you work with, which are obviously women, a lot of trafficked and asylum-seeking women? Yeah, no, many of the women who come to our group are survivors of trafficking, of sexual exploitation, of domestic servitude, of forced displacement. In fact, every single woman that comes has some story of male violence, unfortunately. We both felt that having become mothers and struggled ourselves with kind of the vortex of work and childcare and the rest of it, that there was really a massive, massive gap for women who had very little, who had no hope in hell of ever paying for a nursery or going to a sort of mother and baby group.

10:05So we wanted to provide something that was creating a space where women could feel supported on their own terms. But there was also a creche provision. There was travel money, so there were no barriers to participation. And we were providing creative workshops that were run by really kind of exceptional experts in their field who kind of really raised the bar so that the women who came felt they were taking part in something really special. And this was all her sort of idea, really. I mean, we were co-founders, but she was very much the leader.

10:55By the time they started Mama Suze, Annabel was living with her longtime partner Clifton and their two young kids in her house in East London. I mean they weren't happy by any stretch but they were settled I mean she used to always say to me work and the kids were her favorite thing she always wanted to be a mother they were her absolute her world she just absolutely adored them and yes work was her other major kind of life force that's what got her up in the morning and she was completely committed what was her relationship like what space was that in when you started working together there were always difficulties there were always you know many many things that weren't working um I mean one of the first arguments Annabelle and I had had like in our adult lives was about when she moved him into her house and I said this isn't going to end well so yeah it was not it was not a particularly healthy relationship but I think what's tricky about it now and I remember at the time also finding this quite hard he sort of managed to keep this baseline level of keeping things together you know he always held down a job he was meticulously tidy he did his own washing he'd cook for the family once or twice a week he didn't like lie on the sofa drinking all day being physically abusive do you know what I mean so he sort of managed to kind of hold a line which I think lulled everybody including her into a false sense of security that he was functioning and much more normal than he actually was what did you think of him I didn't really actually know him very well this is what's so weird.

12:51I wasn't part of her sort of friendship group in terms of like the kind of parents and friends that all kind of live nearby because we obviously had our own separate friendship. So yeah, no, I didn't really actually know him very well at all. I don't really think anybody did. I don't think he really knew himself. I think he was a very blank person that she poured all her hopes and dreams into. That's how I see him now in my head. A blank person. Yeah, I think, I mean, he had suffered some horrendous childhood traumas. And I think he was, you know, deeply damaged. But we didn't really see that because he just sort of went through the motions of acting like a reasonably normal person.

13:42But actually beneath all of that was, I don't know, somebody who was incredibly angry, felt that the world owed him a favour, had a massive chip on his shoulder, an unbelievable sense of entitlement and felt that she owed him something and she should pay. And what would he have thought that she owed him? I think it all kind of boiled down to him feeling that she should pay for his shitty upbringing and his crap early life. She'd had it easy. Yeah, there was an unequal power dynamic there because she had had a wonderful upbringing, a beautiful childhood. She owned the house they lived in and her parents were successful and things like that.

14:30And I think looking back, she didn't stand up to him enough. I don't think she had the confidence, interestingly, in intimate relationships that one would imagine somebody of her sort of stature and charisma to have. She just didn't have that deep confidence. I remember saying to her a couple of times, I would never let somebody speak to me like that, Annabelle, or I would never let a man treat me like that. You know, he once drove her to some event we were doing for Mama Susan, made her pay him like he was a taxi driver. I mean he just would do these things that sometimes I'd just say to her that is just so weird and not okay and she'd just sort of just look ashamed really.

15:15She didn't appear to have the confidence to stand up to him and I think that that became more and more of an issue. So I got home after my nice relaxing morning and Clifton was home, you know, unexpectedly, just at home because he's something to do with his bike and he's taking the afternoon off. But it's just so annoying because I can't have therapy in my house. There's nowhere to go in my house and like speak, feel like I can speak freely. So I've had to like lie about where I was going leave the house um at her birthday party which was two months before she was killed she had this lovely garden party and we'd bought her this um like camellia plant to put in her garden because she got really into gardening and I was just watching him as we gave it to her and I was thinking what is that face he's making I don't really understand where he's coming from He was being quite weird and frosty.

16:16And as we were going home on the bus, I was thinking, what was that face that he was making at her? And it suddenly popped into my head, oh, it was contempt. He was looking at her with contempt. Before her death, you were telling me that she was starting to share her concerns with you. Oh, yeah. I mean, she'd always shared her concerns with me. But I always had to tread a line between telling her what I really thought but not being so, what's the word, sort of vociferous or so pushy about my real true thoughts that she would stop talking to me because I really wanted her to know that she could tell me anything and that I wouldn't judge her because I wanted to know what was going on so that I could keep an eye on her and I could look after her so she didn't feel isolated and she didn't tip into a complete kind of shame spiral.

17:12And I don't know whether that was the right thing or not, looking back. I don't know whether I should have been much firmer with her from the onset, but I don't think it would have helped. I think she would have stopped talking to me because she was trapped. She was completely trapped with him after a certain point. But she was trying to leave him, wasn't she? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. She'd said maybe we should have a trial separation. I mean, she was so scared of him. That's how she tried to introduce the idea of leaving. he was just so cruel to her. I've just had a series of really unpleasant messages from Clifton.

17:53It's unbelievable that he is expecting me to sell the house. I mean, he's just so selfish. It's unbelievable. I mean, I have said categorically I'm not selling the house and we both need to speak to solicitors. but yeah it's pretty terrifying because he's obviously going to be a complete shit bag about this you know and probably take me to court so sad yeah there were plenty of signs in the last month that things were really coming to a head and going terribly terribly wrong and I mean I've got messages from her saying she's scared of him I've got messages from her saying you know I'm worried for myself.

18:37But I've also got messages from her saying, I'm going to be fine. I've got this. I'm going to keep out of his way. I'm not going to mention anything about XYZ. I'm not going to fire up his temper. She was always reassuring. And the problem is, is that I believed her because I think she believed it too. I don't think she knew how much danger she was in. It's just weird. Anyway, just weird.

19:05The week before he killed her, I tried to go round there on a Sunday morning because I just wanted to see him. I wanted to kind of sense the atmosphere in the house because I felt something dark was happening and she basically wouldn't let me come.

19:32It was only a year ago but it feels like a million it just feels like forever since it happened I think the longest year of my life This is Annabelle's mother Susanna a former special educational needs teacher and her husband Peter a retired Old Bailey judge We're sitting in their kitchen surrounded by all the evidence of their busy family life There are piles of toys for the grandkids to play with and photos of Annabelle with that huge smile everywhere From the word go she was hilarious You could tell even as a six-month, nine-month, she just had this personality and she laughed when she was very small and she just thought everything was funny.

20:30No, she was very independent-minded and very... Well, she was a nonjudgmental person. Yeah, gregarious and fun-loving and just warm. I don't remember any falling outs we had. And could you tell us about your relationship with Clifton and when he joined the family? Well, it was obviously difficult for him. Becoming a member of another family, I can see, was quite daunting. And so we didn't impose any obligations on him, but we embraced him in every way we could as a member of the family. I thought we had a pretty easy relationship, really. How long were they together? They were together quite a long time.

21:28Ten years, yeah. Yeah, they started in about 2013, 14. Yeah. And she loved having children, didn't she? Oh, absolutely. They were her raison d 'etre. She absolutely adored them. and everything, you know, all her playfulness and everything came out in abundance. And they're doing well, aren't they, Catherine is saying? They're doing really well and we see them fairly regularly and obviously to see them now getting over this is wonderful. We worry about later on when they're going to ask questions and the danger of re-traumatisation, but they are doing incredibly well now. And they feel safe. And I also realised, looking back over the last few years, that they were not sleeping and they were scared.

22:25Right. Did you feel any concerns or did you...? We knew she had a short fuse. Yeah, of a silly thing. We didn't realise the extent of it. and we've heard many stories now of losing temper over such trivial things about not cleaning the knives properly or things like that and we knew that Clifton did the amendment he very much carried on the life of a single man we knew that he did the silent he would give her the silent He'd give her the silence. Yes. And he'd come, if he was annoyed about something, he'd just come in and behave as though they were not there. We'd spent a week in Norfolk. Clifton had been there the first two days, and then he went to work.

23:27He'd got into an argument on Sunday night. Sunday, yeah. Over a card game, he'd lost his temper. her and I'd actually said to him please come and say goodbye before you go tomorrow and hugged him went off because we wanted to keep up a good relationship and in the hope that it would help her and I said thanks for coming and spending time with us and hugged him and then we hadn't seen much of Annabelle during the next two weeks but during that time she spent a lot of time with her friends and she had decided that really this is the time that I really must separate. I spoke to her on the phone that Monday evening.

24:14She told me that she had been to see a sister and the sister had advised that the house was hers and she should could make a financial offer to try and set up Clifton somewhere nearby and she was working towards a co-parenting separation and one of the last things she said to me is I'm still very much hoping that we're going to go to this holiday together we can show a united front with the kids and she was dead within hours of that.

25:10Catherine, where were you when you heard what had happened? so I was in Crete in Hanya I went to Greece with a group of girlfriends for you know a few a jolly basically for a few days and we were about to drive to the beach so we just got into her little car and her dad called me and it was as if I knew what was coming it was really weird I answered the call and I immediately started talking like just rabbiting at him saying Peter I'm on it I've come away for a few days and we're about to go to the beach it's beautifully sunny here and it's like I knew something was coming I didn't want it to come and he sort of said Catherine I need to tell you something I remember that her dad was very clear about what had happened and then he just kept repeating she was just such a lovely person and then he burst into tears and and um and I just couldn't at that point I couldn't I couldn't talk to him anymore and I just had to say I'm really sorry Peter I can't can't talk to you anymore I'm gonna have to go and he said it's okay it's okay and I could just hear him sobbing as I hung up and yeah that was just the worst thing ever because obviously like he was like a second dad to me I've known him all my life and he's such a strong, capable, incredible person and yeah just to hear him being so composed but then crying was just very, very sad.

27:07This is what we know about what happened. On the evening of June 16th, 2025, Clifton George killed Annabelle Rook in the living room of her home. First, he punched and kicked her to the ground, and then he attempted to strangle her. He then left the living room and he went into the kitchen where he picked up two knives. he walked back to the living room and he stabbed Annabelle 22 times. After he killed her, at about 4am he took a gas canister from the barbecue, took it down to the basement below the living room where her body lay and set off an explosion that destroyed the front of the house.

27:50When the police arrived they found Clifton surrounded by debris in the garden. As a mother who made this person, every time I think about it, I feel, I can almost feel the weapons going into me. and I just keep hoping that it was a very, very short time between her realising what he was going to do and being killed. And that's the only way I can think about it. But it sounds also like it was just an enormous shock if you didn't ever imagine that this could have happened. Totally. How could you imagine that happening? Somebody who seemed to be enjoying being a father and having fun. And I keep thinking about how lucky we were.

29:03We had such a wonderful life with this family and everybody we thought getting on well. And then suddenly all that has gone. I mean, last night when I was trying to sleep, I had a perfectly OK evening. I'd like looked after myself. I'd had dinner with the kids and I'd had a nice bath. And and then I got into bed and as I was going to sleep, I just it just keeps popping into your head, you know, the amount of times and and. And just thinking about aspects of it, it's just always there. And then like I woke up in the middle of the night and it's the first thing that pops into your head. it's just horrible and it sort of sits in your body like a kind of weight and you have to try and get rid of it somehow like exercise it from yourself because you're just carrying it around and then I also had this weird thing after she was killed where I became obsessed with the idea that of whether he'd stabbed her in the heart or not and somehow this was a particularly horrific idea to me because obviously her heart, you know, the heart represents and how amazing her heart was.

30:16And so to read that he'd stabbed her in the heart was just, it was just like the worst thing. But then it was quickly followed by not the worst thing because to then read that he had actually tried to strangle her before he'd done any of that was just mortifying because it means that it all took much longer than I thought. I naively thought that maybe it had been very quick. It's just... it's just monstrous. It just seems so... inhuman.

30:54Coming up, what happened at the trial of Clifton George and the incredible legacy Annabelle left behind?

31:36We'll be right back. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com.

31:49After he killed Annabelle, Clifton George was charged with murder, an arson with the intent to harm. He pled guilty to the arson charge, but denied murder. Instead, he pled guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of loss of control, which meant there would be a trial. What was it like having not only to deal with the loss of Annabelle but also prepare yourselves for this trial? Because that must have been, well, I mean, one loss and then this enormous kind of thing that must have been looming for months. Well, it helped in a way, having Peter, because obviously he knows how courts work and he knows what the process is going to be.