Sitting at his thin metal desk in his study, twelve floors above Shoreditch, Simon glanced at the sleety afternoon rain, dirtying the windows. He wondered how late Polly might be: she’d taken Grace to see her nan: and must, by now, be fighting her way home via London’s snowed-up, ice-fouled, slowly grinding-to-a-stop buses and trains.
The flat, therefore, was Simon’s. And his worries needed the space. To work it out.
Calling up his inbox, he reread the email he’d received from Jo this morning. It was a three-page screed of contempt and hatred, detailing his inadequacies as a lover, his congenital inability to properly succeed at work, his ‘loathsomely stupid marriage to that dolt, Polly Henderson, that dull breeding heifer, I wonder did she actually moo when you two conceived? There must have been farmyard noises, I bet there were farmyard noises.’
It was successfully nasty; and yet, as Simon read and reread the email, which he had been doing virtually all day, it struck him that this didn’t sound like Jo Ferguson. The syntax was wrong, the grammar was not quite her style. Over the years, as friend, lover, husband, he’d read enough of Jo’s writing, formal and informal, even love letters from when they were young, and her prose was always more delicate, double-edged, wry, and – perhaps most significant – her punctuation was different. She loved semicolons.
There were no semicolons in this email. Nor were there any in the section of an email Gul had showed him in the pub yesterday – the email was, of course, another howl of contempt from Jo: this time directed at Gul.
Gul’s conclusion was that Jo was either revealing her true self, or she was going mad. Either way, the email was so nasty he wanted nothing more to do with her, the snooping bitch, never really liked her anyway – that fucking lunatic piece about Big Tech, fuck her, used to think she was funny, you know she sent the same kind of crap to Anna, Jenny told me all about hers, everyone is getting these revolting messages …
Standing in the crowded King’s Cross pub last night with his bottle of Camden Hells IPA, Simon had nodded along, acceptant of Gul’s theatrical tirade, trying to calm him down: Yes, Gul, it’s shocking, I wonder what’s got into her, she’s alienating every friend, every acquaintance, it’s quite bizarre.
But now, sitting here, he was much less certain. Turning on his swivel chair, he looked out of the window at the towers of EC1, the further towers of the City. Under the luridly grey, ominously wintry sky, the skyline of London looked awesomely messy, hysterically unplanned and exaggerated. Out of control. Schizoid.
Like Jo Ferguson?
No.
Simon couldn’t believe it. Or, at least, he didn’t want to believe it.
Not Jo. She was always the most go-getting, the most extrovertly organized. She was the one who went to King’s College and got a First, not a shoddy 2:2 like him. Jo Ferguson. Jo the Go. The wittiest girl in his sixth-form year, one of the prettiest girls who went to uni, the girl clearly out of his league, the girl he’d loved since he was fifteen, the girl who, to everyone’s surprise, suddenly announced she was going to be a journalist: and then went ahead and did just that. Working full-time for national magazines and newspapers within a year: regular bylines, her own photo by her name. And after that going freelance and sometimes taking two or three pages all to herself, like, yes, that infamous longform piece on Big Tech.
Simon had been deeply irritated by that article, and Jo’s heedless, casual alienation of powerful people, and yet at the same time he had been admiring – envious even – of Jo’s courage, smarts, and her forensic skill in finding the links and the networks, no matter how well hidden from view. He’d also admired the way she had duped or charmed some very clever people into giving her some very telling quotes. People like Arlo, and Gul.
The sleet was grittier on the window. Hardening into hail, maybe. Simon rested his chin on praying hands and stared at nothing. The blur of his screen. Seeking the answer to that other unanswerable question: why would Jo send these self-harming messages? Was it to provoke reaction, could she be doing something to prove her thesis about the malignance of the tech industry, its invasion of our lives? Perhaps she was hoping the industry, his colleagues, would react, and then she’d have another famous article.
Was that likely?
The brace of alternatives weren’t much better: one, she was being forced. Two, she was going mad.
Whatever the answer, Simon had to help her. Because he still loved her, and he always would. He loved her so much he sometimes fantasized about her, having sex, with that guy, Liam: it turned him on even as it made him jealous. He kept photos of Liam that he knew Jo admired, exactly for that reason: sexual fantasy. And yet all this made him shameful and guilty: because he loved Polly as well, and he adored the baby. Yet Polly would never understand.
Simon lifted his face from his daydream of guilt, and puzzlement: hearing a noise from the corridor outside. Perhaps it was Polly back already, little Grace burbling and giggling as Mummy keyed the door?
No, it was neighbours. The block was full of young families. Polly had said in a text this could take a while.
Simon had time to think it through.
Perhaps there was some clue in the email itself, as to why and how Jo was sending these things, or whether she was sending them of her own volition. Tapping at his keyboard, he dug into the entrails, the routing, the history. The email address was definitely Jo’s. As for timing: yes, that checked out too. Return path? Yes, that made sense. Jo Ferguson was the source. Simon’s practised eye scanned the rest of the information: received: from mac.com ([10.13.11.252]) by ms031.mac.com (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-8.04.700) …
It all panned out. Authentication. DomainKeys. Mime. Filtered Bulk. Everything. All the clotted digits and letters and numbers. They all made sense: everything fitted together.
Jo Ferguson sent this email. She sent all the emails. He was struggling very hard to conclude otherwise.
Simon felt a surge of sorrow. A long shadow of darkness was sweeping the last timid grey light from the sky. Snow was falling on the City. Down there, the chaos of traffic struggled under the stormy cold. Car lights glowed anew.
He was at a loss. Nothing to go on, aside from a slightly unusual prose style and a lack of semicolons. It was pathetic, but maybe he could Sherlock the shit out of that? Why not try: give it one last go.
Stiffening himself with a sour gulp of tepid green tea, he paged through the names and numbers on his phone. It was Sunday afternoon, surely everyone would be hunkered at home in this brutal weather. He could catch them at the right moment. Able to talk.
He keyed the first number.
Gul Foxton.
Voicemail.
Second – and here he hesitated – Jenny Lansman. He’d heard that her email from Jo had been particularly bad. Anna had told him. It contained stuff about her parents, allegations about her childhood, her father, sexual abuse. Stuff bad enough to make Jenny cry. And clever, witty Jenny never cried.
With a deep sense of foreboding he dialled her number, and with a cowardly sense of relief, he heard Jenny’s recorded voice. Sorry. Busy! Leave a message.
Who else could he try? Simon picked up his phone and went through all his contacts A to Z. He got to T for Tabitha and considered the fact that Tabitha was one of the few people close to Jo, apart from her brother and mother, that hadn’t received one of these disgusting messages. Tabitha … and Arlo. Yet there was an explanation for that. Tabitha basically housed Jo. Therefore Jo could not afford to annoy Tabitha. As Tabitha’s fiancé, and the father of her expected child, Arlo was untouchable for the same reason.
Jo – or whoever was pretending to be Jo, via her laptop, her tablet, her phone, her digital self – was only lashing out at people who could do no immediate harm to Jo, other than unfriend her, block her, ghost her.
After a final sip of disgustingly cold tea, Simon scrolled in reverse from Z to A. And he stopped at F.
Fitz.
Could he talk to Fitz? Fitz and Simon had never got on: Simon had always suspected that Fitz considered him a boring geek, a techno nerd, the artless husband Jo foolishly accepted when she was too young. And Simon was always a little uncomfortable and inarticulate in Fitz’s presence – but that was because Fitz was funny in that sulphurously camp way: able to pluck cruelly amusing remarks and biting quotes from nowhere, witticisms that somehow made you feel dull in comparison, even as they made you laugh.
But what did it matter now?
Jo might be going crazy. Jo, his one-time true love. The girl he’d always wanted, even as he divorced her, because he knew deep down she didn’t love him back. And the humiliation was too much.
Pausing, tensed, watching the blur of moon over the broken spear-tip of the Shard, Simon dialled a number he had probably dialled three times in his life, when he was looking for Jo and she was out on the town. With Fitz. Singing in a gay bar on Old Compton Street.
‘Yeah?’
Fitz was in.
Nervous, already flustered, Simon stammered his lines:
‘Hey. Fitz. It’s uh. Si. Simon. Simon Todd.’
A pause followed. A perfectly timed, I’m-a-West-End-theatre-director pause.
‘Simon … TODD.’
Simon could picture Fitz in his tall Islington house. Long windows uncurtained, Fitz lounging on a five-grand sofa, staring at the same endless sleet and snow. Simon pictured glittering awards on the shelves. BAFTAS, Tonys, whatever.
‘Ah.’ Fitz yawned, a little unconvincingly. ‘Jo’s ex. Simon. Simon TODD. Yes. How is that little baby of yours?’
Simon mumbled she’s fine, even as he wondered how, by merely repeating and emphasizing Simon’s unremarkable surname, Fitz managed to convey a kind of low-key sneering. Nothing too awful, of course, but a definite sense that Edward Amwell Fitzpatrick was indulging someone ten to fifteen IQ points lower than his normal caller.
Not for the first time, Simon asked himself why Jo was friends with this supercilious wanker. Could Fitz be the one behind all this? He was so casually, if amusingly, nasty. Seeing people as playthings. Bastard.
From deep in his guts, Simon felt the temptation to blurt some ugly homophobic insult, and crash the call, but he restrained himself.
He had to do this, for Jo.
‘Fitz, look, I know we’ve never been close, but we both care about Jo, right? That’s why I am ringing?’
The second pause was longer and more awkward. Fitz was either thinking what to say, or uncertain whether to agree. Was this a sign? Was Fitz the perpetrator, or another victim? Simon seized on it.
‘Fitz, I’m guessing you might know why I’m calling. Jo has been sending all these vicious emails, texts, Facebook messages, and they are seriously nasty. Deeply bloody insulting. She’s lost lots of friends – almost everyone. I want to know why she is doing it. Is she having a breakdown, or what? I’m worried.’
At the other end of the line, a mile away across snow-chilled London, Fitz said nothing. Simon went on, ‘Sure, you know Jo’s personal history, her father’s madness. So I’m worried. I want to make sure if Jo is really sending these.’
Fitz answered, ‘What do you mean, is she really sending them? Who do you think is sending them? Hitler’s less likeable brother?’
‘So you have got one as well? One of these emails?’
Fitz grunted. ‘Yes. A while ago.’
‘And?’
Fitz sighed. Without sarcasm. ‘It was absolutely vile, as you say. Projectile vomit turned into electronic messaging. She said some utterly unforgivable things – and Jo and I have forgiven each other quite a lot, over the years.’
Startled, Simon realized that Fitz – cynical, urbane, unfazeable Edward Fitzpatrick – was sounding sad. Simon had never heard Fitz sound sad before. Fitz continued:
‘If you want to know the truth, I haven’t spoken to her since. For the very good reason that I don’t know how to respond without forever ending our friendship. I am trying to let time pass. Perhaps it will do that healing thing? I rather doubt it.’
Simon felt the excitement of a mystery being partly revealed. He wasn’t sure why. Jo had hurt Fitz as well? One of her very best friends.
‘Fitz, do you have the email there?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘Do you mind looking at it for me? I want to make sure it was Jo. What did she say, how did she phrase it?’
Fitz languidly answered, ‘It was a series of well-fashioned and lucidly repulsive remarks about my sexuality, my promiscuity, my lack of morality. She also sent these emails and selfies to my boyfriend, enumerating my infidelities. That is to say: she copied him in, which was neat. My boyfriend and I have since broken up.’
‘Wow. I’m sorry.’ Simon was shocked, but couldn’t afford to take a long by-road into sympathy. ‘But did it sound like Jo? That’s what I mean, Fitz: the prose – do you think it was truly her? Or a mad version of her?’
A silence. Presumably Fitz was re-reading the email. He came back online.
‘I’m afraid it does, Simon. It sounds like her in a particular mood – but angry. You know? When she is at her most sardonic, acidic, uninhibited, perhaps after two gin martinis, but not drunk. Add in a wild dash of fury and, yes, it’s her.’
‘But—’
‘But what? The insults are well aimed and cleverly fashioned, designed to hurt where she knows it will hurt. There are also things in here, things I’d rather not discuss, that only she could know. She mentions a friend of mine who was murdered, and she references it in the most contemptuous and disturbing way. It’s almost … Satanic.’
Simon faltered over this fact. A murder? That was unsettling. He wanted to pursue it. But clearly Fitz was not going to say any more.
‘What about semicolons? Does she use any semicolons? You know how Jo always uses too many in her writing, she once told me how her editors had to weed them out, do you see any in this email?’
Fitz’s laughter was gently bitter.
‘Semicolons? Are you actually claiming that Jo didn’t write these emails because her punctuation is atypical?’
A hesitation. Simon said yes.
Fitz replied, ‘Well, I’m afraid there are a couple of semicolons, yes. So that’s your brilliant punctuation theory out of the window.’
They both fell quiet. Fitz made his goodbyes, trying to finish the conversation. Simon interrupted.
‘Wait, please—’
The evidence pointed firmly towards a mental breakdown: so he wanted to know when the email was produced. It might indicate how long Jo’s madness had been building. It was better than nothing.
‘Fitz, please, one last question, and I’ll go.’
‘If you insist.’
‘You said Jo sent this some time ago, this email? Can you tell me the day? Perhaps we can get a measure of this, sense the depth of her problem?’
Fitz hmm’d, in a bored way, as he checked. ‘Look I’ll forward it to you. You’re the expert.’ A pause. ‘OK. Done. Check it out. See for yourself. She sent the email on Tuesday twelfth, seven thirty-three p.m. Dinner time. Perhaps she destroyed my relationship as she ordered her starter.’
‘OK. Thanks, Fitz. Thank you. And I’m sorry for all this, making you rake over it.’
‘Sorry? Yes. So am I. And so is my ex-boyfriend. Goodbye.’
The call ended. The ensuing silence was brief. The sleet had turned to hail, not snow. It rattled on the window.
Simon put down his phone and gazed at the gelid darkness of the winter sky. He pondered Fitz’s revelation. Then he checked the email to Fitz, he checked the routing, the same process as before. It all confirmed that Jo sent this.
And she sent it Tuesday the twelfth, 7.33 p.m. Dinner time?
Why did that jar with him: that date?
He picked up his phone, and went to the calendar app. And this new excitement was real.
On Tuesday the twelfth at 7.33 p.m., Jo Ferguson was indeed having supper. Simon knew this because she was supping with Simon: that was the day they had met at Vinoteca. At 7.33 p.m. Jo had been staring at a steak bavette. And they had both turned their phones face down, on mute, and out of reach. As they always did.
In which case, she couldn’t have sent the email. Not even by proxy: there was none of the tell-tale evidence of special email-timing software in the routing. Zero. Simon did this shit for a living. He had proof. Here. He Had Proof: Unless she had developed some unheard-of ability to manipulate her laptop by telepathy, Jo had not sent the email to Fitz.
The hail rattled, maddeningly, on the windows. Big stones. Hard, as if they might break the glass.
Various explanations lined up to be counted. Perhaps someone was pretending to be Jo, and sending these emails to fuck her up, socially. Hacking her. That, however, raised the question: how could this person know so many facts about Jo? And her friends? Fitz, Jenny, Gul?
Whatever the answer: he had his proof.
Jo was innocent. She wasn’t mad. She was genuinely being attacked.