It was true: I had seen something. But was it really Anne appearing at the instant of her death? If it was, I had to admit that it would have been completely in character: she could never resist the whiff of greasepaint, the flamboyant gesture, the dramatic exit. But that wasn’t enough, on its own, to convince me. Much more likely, surely, that it had been a genuine coincidence, the outcome of a bizarre—but ultimately explicable—motorway collision between a number of unconnected vehicles? Or else simply a random hallucination completely out of the blue?
I reached for my laptop. I hadn’t checked my emails for three days—telling myself that I needed to concentrate on the job in hand, and there wouldn’t be anything that couldn’t wait. Now I opened my account and searched for messages from Anne Grainger.
There were seven. The most recent had been sent only yesterday morning:
Rob, Rob, why don’t you answer my calls? I’m being threatened. Email isn’t safe. I need to talk to you. PLEASE phone.
I hit myself, chest, thighs, temple, until my knuckles hurt. The pain relieved the unbearableness of it, gave me a temporary semblance of self-control. I grabbed the phone and called Graham back. He’d left the office, but I managed to reach him on his mobile.
“What actually happened? Can you tell me?”
“Brian—her, you know—he found her in her study. She’d taken a lot of pills. And most of a bottle of Macallan.”
He paused. I knew why: he was wrestling with the urge to add, Only the best for Anne. Even when she’s killing herself. But it was too soon. Give him a couple of weeks.
“It might have been an accident,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like it.”
“Had anything happened? Anything more, I mean? After I left?”
“Yes. Didn’t you hear? No, I suppose you didn’t. It wasn’t just the tweets. The bastards managed to hack into her emails.”
“Oh, God.”
“And then blazoned the most unflattering bits all over Twitter. Cue shit-storm. Bigot. Bitch. Homophobe. Imagine: all the stupidest things you’ve said over the years, mercilessly laid out for everyone to see. It’s no wonder she topped herself, poor love. I’d have probably done the same.”
After we’d rung off, I lay on the bed. The moment I closed my eyes, my mind became a kind of dovecote, full of the flutter of arriving and departing memories. Virginal Anne in my room at university, maneuvering her inexperienced body closer, her foot against mine telling me what she still couldn’t bring herself to say. Anne beating me to the editorship of the student paper, It’s probably just because I’m a woman, but the pride in her face inextinguishable. Anne the professional, the long cavalcade of scoops and awards.
So you were jealous of me, is that it?
Anne on her wedding day, emerging from the church on the arm of film-star-handsome Brian Grainger. The moment, as she ducked the confetti, that her eye caught mine, as if to say, Look what I’ve got, and an arctic blast went through me.
Or is it just that you’re a coward? Thought it wouldn’t do your career any good to be associated with a pariah like me?
Anne reinvented in middle-age: rediscovering her childhood Anglicanism, transforming herself into the champion of traditional values—all those angry columns; all those bare-knuckle grudge-matches on Newsnight and Channel 4—against the progressive tide. Anne fighting the takeover of the paper. And then Anne the wounded animal, cornered by the mob.
Yes, OK: jealousy was part of it. Mixed with my concern for her—I can’t deny it—there was a splinter of schadenfreude. It was awful, what she’d been through—but hadn’t she at least partly brought it on herself? Her over-confidence, her conviction that people admired her outspokenness, had made her too strident. You can’t publicly go on the attack like that, and not expect a backlash. It’s the equivalent of lobbing lighted matches at a petrol-soaked rag.
Over the past few weeks, I had to admit, I’d found the whole gruesome spectacle too painful to follow. Now I opened my laptop again and forced myself to look, starting with Anne’s original article from nine months ago:
Colleagues have warned me that this will be the longest suicide note in history. They’re wrong, at least, about the longest bit. Because—in a striking example of the very thing I shall be talking about—I’ve been given just 450 words to explain my objections to the sale of this newspaper to Evan Bone.
The Daily Post was founded 183 years ago. Since then, it has been an essential part of our national life. On some issues it has taken an editorial position that, in hindsight, turned out to be wrong. But it has always had a position, reached after serious consideration of all the facts. It has always upheld the values of truthfulness, free speech, and reasoned debate. The list of its contributors reads like a roll-call of the finest writers and thinkers of the past two centuries.
But even the Post is not immune to the effects of the technological revolution. Like other newspapers, it has suffered a sharp decline in circulation and advertising revenue. So it is to be sold. And who is the buyer? A man who, apart from his deep pockets, has absolutely no qualifications for the job. Indeed, he is part of the problem that brought us to this crisis in the first place. Selling him the Post is like handing over a wounded wildebeest to the lion that inflicted the fatal injury.
Evan Bone is known for one thing, and one thing only: founding the social media platform Global Village. A cursory glance at a Global Village news feed will tell you how interested he is in truthfulness. So how about free speech? He claims his company is committed to “being an inclusive environment where people with alternative views feel safe sharing their opinions.” But that doesn’t appear to include people like me, who dissent from the company’s modish progressive party line. Two years ago Bone fired one of his Vice-Presidents for opposing the legalization of gay marriage in California. So the rule seems to be: You can believe whatever you like, as long as it’s what I believe.
And, don’t forget, a company like Global Village is not just one voice among many. It is a window through which its members view the world. What they see—for all the corporate flimflam about democracy and openness—is ultimately determined by Evan Bone and his lackeys. Their policy is not to argue, but to silence. So a view they deem unacceptable will—for the billions of Global Villagers, and the readers of Bone’s growing stable of newspapers—simply cease to exist.
And what about the high-quality writing? Global Village is pouring millions of dollars into developing a piece of AI that mimics our ability to tell stories. So you can look forward to a newspaper written entirely by a computer.
It’s still not too late, if enough people create enough of a fuss, for the owners to re-think. If they don’t, and the sale goes ahead, you will never read a critical article like this in The Daily Post again.
And I see I’ve gone over my word limit. Under the new Stalinist regime, that, I’m sure, won’t be allowed either.
Corporate flimflam. Lackeys. Stalinist regime. Yes, that kind of language was a fatal miscalculation. How would I have done it? “No one can fail to admire Evan Bone’s extraordinary vision and enterprise. But the qualities that have made Global Village one of the most successful companies on the planet are not necessarily the same as those required to run a newspaper . . .”
Except you didn’t say even that, did you? You were too scared you might get the treatment I got.
I steeled myself to search Twitter for #AGrainger.
@Pugwash #toxichate Now we see @AGrainger in her true colors. This isn’t about free speech, it’s about hate and homophobia pure and simple
@Cuff17 #toxichate @AGrainger you are a bigot no other word for it. this is 21st century no place