‘I forgive the girl and boy for what they’ve done. If I didn’t, the hate would eat away at me’: Esther Ghey on life after the murder of her daughter Brianna

Transgender teenager Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds. The killers had been radicalised on the dark web, while the victim was trapped in an online world of her own. Now her mother has become friends with the parent of one of the murderers.

The first thing I notice about Esther Ghey is a blossom tree trailing down her left arm to her hand. There is one pink flower on the tattoo. Pink was her daughter Brianna’s favourite colour. If Brianna had got her way, the whole world would have been pink. And just after she was murdered by two teenage schoolchildren in February 2023, Ghey says, the world did briefly turn pink. The local blossom trees filled with the blossomiest blossom she had ever seen. “It really felt she was with us and that she was sending us a sign she was OK,” she says.

Now Ghey has written a book, Under a Pink Sky. It’s a memoir of her and Brianna’s lives, and a manifesto of sorts; a shocking exploration of how deadly smartphones and online spaces can be. It’s also one of the most unflinching, inspirational autobiographies I’ve read, a remarkable cry of hope from the depths of despair.

Brianna, a transgender girl of 16, was groomed by another teenage girl, who was desperate to kill. It could have been anybody; she just wanted the experience of cold-blooded murder. But the girl became obsessed with Brianna – partly because she was trans. The girl and her male friend lured Brianna out with the promise of taking cocaine, which Brianna had never tried, then stabbed her multiple times. In Under a Pink Sky, Ghey doesn’t mention the killers by name, so I won’t. But she does name the mother of the girl, for a good reason. They have become friends.

Ghey emerged from the horror of Brianna’s murder as a hero. She appeared on television and talked movingly about the need for forgiveness. This young mother from Warrington, still only in her late 30s and going through the worst of the worst, came across as extraordinarily together. But the truth, for much of her life, couldn’t have been more different. As a young woman, Ghey was a drug-addled wreck who struggled so much as a mum that her own mother called social services because she was worried for her daughter and her two young grandchildren.

We meet in a hotel in Warrington, close to where she lives. Her warmth shines through immediately. As does the trauma. It’s the first lengthy interview she’s given about the book, and she warns me she’s going to find it tough. She apologises for her tears in advance.

In a way, Under a Pink Sky is the story of two troubled kids – only one of whom survived to tell their story. Ghey says there are so many parallels between her early life and Brianna’s. As a teenager, Esther Ghey was caught in a web of self-loathing. She had body dysmorphia, was desperate to be thinner, and told herself that nobody would ever love her the way she was. At times she was bullied; sometimes she picked on other children. Then she found drugs. She left school at 16 with no qualifications. “I had no self-worth because of that. I had no respect for myself, no respect for my body, no respect for my life, and that is such a sad, tragic, horrific place to be.”.

Brianna would go on to struggle with many of the same things: self-belief, school attendance, bullying. And while she was never hooked on drugs, Brianna was addicted to her smartphone and social media. By the age of 20, Ghey was a single parent to two young children. She managed to get a house, hoped to make it a “safe haven” for her and her children, and failed miserably. She remembers buying a load of teal paint and telling herself she was going to make her home perfect. “It turned out to be one of the worst times of my life. I beat myself up about it a lot because I had become addicted to drugs and my house never got finished. That teal paint just turned into sludge.”.

How serious was her drug problem? “It was a really serious addiction. I hit rock bottom.” What was her drug of choice? “Amphetamines. Yeah.” She pauses. “And everything I could get my hands on, really. My life was absolute turmoil. A mess. People might look at me and think, ‘She’s got her head screwed on’, but it’s not always been like that.”.

Then her mother, a teacher and foster carer at the time, called social services. “My mum helped as much as possible, but she had five foster children and felt completely helpless. Fortunately for me, social services came in and we had all the basic things we needed.” And she really is talking about basics – bread, milk, light and heat. “And they decided they weren’t going to take the children. That for me was a massive wake-up call.”.

Esther Ghey did turn her life around. And how. In her late 20s, now clean and a devoted mother, she started with a job as a cleaner at a car dealership before going back to college, initially doing an English GCSE. She did an access to health professions course, because at the time she wanted to be a nurse, completed a degree in nutrition at Liverpool Hope University, and eventually became a senior product development technologist for a food company.