Other contributors to the Great Meat Debate website received less attention. Anna had recorded earnest videos about how it wasn’t meat as such that was an environmental disaster but the quantities consumed and the way it was currently produced, in low-welfare systems where animals were fed grain instead of grass and straw and other foods which didn’t compete with humans. Gary had a few videos in which he showed off his muscles, Daniel explained the design of the abattoir, and Kirsty Nightingale, Tony Nightingale’s daughter, talked rather provocatively about the high carbon footprint of free-range farming methods.

I went through everything carefully. Gary did indeed make snide jokes about weedy vegans, and there was a spirited debate in the comments, in which the words game changers cropped up with some frequency. Kirsty also came in for plenty of criticism. Anna’s videos and posts were thoughtful, scientific and detailed, and nobody commented on them, which pretty much summed up the internet.

Daniel talked about the curved walkways and rubber matting in the abattoir with great passion. Having read the comments – If anyone ever slits your throat, let’s hope they do it on rubber matting – I understood his nervousness.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Was this really about meat? Bad stuff was usually more personal, the culprit a family member or boyfriend. Or the person herself. I of all people knew that.

But recently, tempers had been rising. People were angry. About appalling animal welfare in farms and abattoirs. About carpets of pig manure from intensively kept pigs being spread over the countryside (it being particularly tragic when an animal’s waste products saw more daylight than it did). About rainforests being incinerated to provide grazing for cattle. People were asking questions. Why should your desire to eat meat every day jeopardise my child’s right to a planet that’s not an uninhabitable fireball? Meat producers had become fair game. Could one of those angry activists have decided to make an example of Violet Armstrong?

I sighed. My money would still be on a boyfriend or family member. I navigated through to Violet’s personal website and clicked on a video that looked different from the rest. Violet was fully clothed. She spoke to the camera like a professional. ‘In the village of Gritton in the Peak District, there have been strange sightings over the last thirty years. Of a mysterious girl …’