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In Yomi Adegoke’s debut novel The List, British journalist Ola Olajide has everything she ever thought she wanted. She’s built a successful career, holds a coveted staff position at a popular woman’s lifestyle publication, and is almost ready for her upcoming wedding to her boyfriend Michael Koranteng. But when an anonymous list of abusers goes viral online — one naming Michael — Ola finds her life, and belief system, on shaky ground. There’s 26 days before their wedding and amid a personal firestorm, Ola is forced to reckon with the persona she’s built and the relationship she thinks she has with Michael. The internet made her career — could it be what shatters her life?
Already a Sunday Times Bestseller, The List is an offering from Adegoke that unpacks the power of anonymity, the post #MeToo internet, and when public branding collides with real-life convictions. The List isn’t about who you believe — it’s about what truth you’re looking for in the first place.
“All too often the hardest conversations are being had by the wrong people,” Adegoke says. “It is of crucial importance that we wrestle back difficult conversations from those who seek to sow division… My primary hope for ‘The List’ is that it will make people think — deeply, empathetically, critically. And then talk.”
In this excerpt from the novel, which will be published Oct. 3, we meet Ola, just as the ground is ripped from beneath her feet.
***
Ola had slipped into work that morning and burrowed behind her desk, seemingly unnoticed. Frankie wasn’t in yet and in a second stroke of luck, Sophie was in the kitchen area with her back to her as she poured boiling water into a mug of green tea. Kiran was hunched over her laptop, typing furiously and nodding her head rhythmically to whatever was coming out of her AirPods. Ola silently thanked the universe for these small mercies as she replied to Celie’s message — R u okay, Ola? She was fine, thanks for asking, but what the fuck was going on? A minute hadn’t passed before Celie tried to call her, twice. Ola quickly texted her back:
Can’t talk, at work. Message me
Her friend’s response came instantaneously — a link to a tweet followed by: “Call me as soon as you can.”
Once she opened it, Ola squared her eyes at her phone to focus. Her head was spinning thanks to her hangover, so the significance of the post was slow to register as she read the text above the list of names.
This database will serve as a temporary tool to highlight the severity of abuse in the U.K. entertainment and creative scenes. We hope that this will lend a voice to survivors and inspire those within the industry to be more proactive in prevention. A * means that the allegation was made by more than one individual.
As Ola read through The List, she felt a profound sense of dejection but also satisfaction. Fuck these men for what they’d done and fuck yes to these women for refusing to stay silent. Just a few lines in, there were so many different forms of abuse recorded that it made her feel sick: everything from unsolicited dick pictures, to sexual intimidation, to rape.
A feeling of foreboding came over her, her skin prickling at the familiarity of the allegations. Flashbacks to the handsy hug from Womxxxn’s director Martin Frost at the Netty Awards a while back. The same night, he’d made a bigoted quip about the Kama Sutra to Kiran and asked if, since she was pansexual, he was in with a better chance “since they fancied everyone.” “Is it just an excuse to have lots of orgies, then?” he’d breathed into her ear, his face reddening with drunkenness. “Because if so, count me in!” And how could she forget her first ever internship? Why she had left two weeks earlier than she was supposed to, forfeiting a paycheck she couldn’t afford to pass up in the process . . .
Ola began to consider how she’d been made aware of The List this morning. Celie had sent it to her, frantically, asking if she was okay. Ruth had begged her to call, asking her in all caps if she’d seen it. But why? What did this have to do with Ola? What — or rather, who — had they seen on it? Her mind started racing. She scanned the names, over sixty of them, in search of someone she recognized. Was Martin on there? Had he finally been outed? Soon enough, a flicker of recognition sparked as she made her way down the spreadsheet: Papi Danks, Afroswing up-and-comer. She and Celie had attended a party thrown by his label a few years ago and though Ola remembered little about him, it was still a relative shock to see his name on The List. His family had gone to Celie’s church.
Samson Mackay was on it too but she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t expected that. Stories about him had swirled for years, older female journalists warning her to give him a wide berth. Next, she spotted Lewis Hale, football legend, regular on The One Show. Hadn’t he been a runner-up on Strictly Come Dancing last year? Ola had no interest in sport but Lewis was a household name. He’d been a fixture in the public eye as a TV personality and pundit for as long as she could remember. The sort of guy you hoped was as nice in person as he came across on telly. He didn’t seem the type. But she knew better than to think there was ever a “type.”
She continued to read and then her stomach lurched violently as her eyes landed on entry number 42.
Micheal, CuRated, Harassment and threatening behavior/Physical assault at office Christmas party (Restraining order)
Nothing could have prepared her. Her hands began to shake as her phone buzzed nonstop with messages. How could Michael be on there? Her Michael? She felt dizzy as she considered the words that followed his name. Harassment. Threatening behavior. Physical assault; it was like she was dreaming. Head hot, she tried to process what she’d read but it made less and less sense with each second that passed.
The office walls began to cave in as she rose from her seat. As briskly as she had walked in, she turned around and walked out, running up the flight of stairs to the toilets of the vegan candle start-up above. Once inside, she nudged each cubicle door with a pointy elbow to ensure she was alone, sat on the lid of the toilet, took out her phone, and scrolled.
The number of likes and retweets on the post crept up every time she tapped refresh but it was the multiplying comments that she couldn’t take her eyes off. Shock and skepticism, anger and praise; all the messages screamed at her silently.
Who raised these people? Solidarity with those who were brave enough to speak their truth.
How has @_Matt_Plummer been able to keep his post at @ITVNews when he’s been outed as a sex offender?
You guys know this is potentially libel, right?
#WeStandWithSurvivors #SilentNoMore #BelieveWomen #TheList
Some users went back and forth about the definition of defamation. Many eschewed words for raised-fist emojis and multicolored hearts. The majority were simply tagging other users, no doubt saving their commentary for private chats, setting her imagination ablaze with what else was being said. She returned to the original post, pinched her fingers together over The List text, then pulled them apart to zoom in until Michael’s name filled the screen. She stared at it, as if by doing so it would miraculously start to shapeshift into someone else’s. There it was in black and white, “Micheal,” sans the surname that would soon be hers. Small mercies, she supposed.
Ola felt embarrassed. And after a while, she felt more embarrassed that her initial, overriding reaction was one of embarrassment. It was such a self-centered response but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes filled with tears and her ears flooded with the imagined sneers taking place behind her back, the fervent Twitter DMs being exchanged at her expense:
Ola’s man’s on here you know. Mad ting
As in Womxxxn Ola???
WOMXXXN OLA. CEO of “mxn are trxsh” twitter! She’s with the “trxshest nxgga” of all
Skskskssk! No fucking wayyyy . . . British Obama’s are dun outchea!!!
Could she really blame anyone for thinking like that? That’s pretty much what she’d have been saying if this had happened to anyone else. But she had dedicated the best part of a decade to rallying against patriarchy, rape culture, and toxic masculinity. Ola had attended more protests, panels, and demos for Women’s Rights than she could count. She’d founded her university’s Black Feminist Society when she was a fresher for goodness’ sake, back when the conversation around feminism was unsexy and unInstagrammable. All the times she’d braved the backlash and trolling on her old Tumblr blog by sexists who hadn’t liked what she was saying; it had been her beliefs that kept her going. She wasn’t the type of person to miss the red flags and make the mistake of being with someone capable of that behavior.
She thought to herself, Michael couldn’t possibly be . . . but quickly pulled herself up. That’s how it starts. “He couldn’t possibly” was exactly what was said about men who most certainly could and did. When her #MCsToo investigative piece went live at Womxxxn, exposing abuse allegations against men in the music industry, hundreds of fans suggested their “fave” was incapable of the crimes she reported. Finding her voice among a chorus of deniers only a few years later was something she couldn’t bear. All those women who had written to her after #MCsToo went viral, with their thanks, with their horror stories . . . what would they think of her?
It was hard to settle on one clear emotion from her overwhelming smorgasbord. She wanted to cry, that she knew, but wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or anguish. She wasn’t even sure what she was most afraid of, or for whom she was most upset. There was rage in there, for sure, a touch of preemptive regret. The only thing she knew for certain was that everything about her life had changed, in an instant. She felt herself doubling over as if sucker-punched in the gut, tears blurring her vision. She shook as she sobbed silently into her shirt, grieving both the blissful ignorance of moments ago and the future she had been planning with Michael. With a long exhalation, Ola tapped the direct message button on the account and shakily wrote a message.
I know someone on here . . . I don’t know what to do. Can you help me?
Send. Now what? Her legs felt like they would give way at any moment but she walked to the sink and opened the tap, cupping her hands beneath it. She splashed her face with the icy cold water, but still felt clammy. In a month’s time, she was getting married to a man who she apparently didn’t know. Her chest became tight. “Ola, breathe,” she said aloud. She closed her eyes, searching her memory for the easiest of the breathing exercises Fola had shown her for anxiety. Suddenly, her sister’s voice was in her ears. “Exhale chaos; inhale peace.” She placed her thumb over her right nostril and breathed in slowly through the left. Then took her index finger and repeated on the other side, exhaling through the right. After three rounds, her breathing eased.
Ola shook herself. She checked her eyes weren’t bloodshot in the mirror and then checked her phone for a response from the account. There wasn’t one. She took a final deep breath and made her way back to the office.
As she reached her chair, still trembling, she noticed a notification in the corner of her screen on Slack, her workplace’s messaging platform of choice. It was a message from Frankie, who was now in her office squinting at her computer. Ola’s stomach did not sink — there wasn’t much further it could go.
Can we have a quick chat? — FW xxx
Before, her morning bollocking courtesy of Frankie had felt like a life-or-death matter — now, it was merely something she needed to get out of the way.
Yeah I’ll be down in five
She read back Frankie’s message and glanced over her own once more. Eyes rolling, she signed off with “xx” and clicked send.
The walls of Frankie’s office were glass — representative of Womxxxn’s literal and figurative commitment to transparency, or something, she guessed. Ola felt that the by-product of surveillance was perhaps genuinely unintentional, since the team could see Frankie as well as she could see them: when she was reinstating crossed boundaries between gritted teeth to her ex-husband on a call, when she was wolfing down her first meal of the day at 3:30 p.m., Wasabi straight from the box.
Like the rest of Womxxxn, Frankie’s office was various shades of pastel — peach walls, a baby-blue table light, lilac coasters. Her desk was in disarray, with papers strewn across it. On it stood a potted aloe vera plant, a framed photograph of her nuzzling a very blonde child, and a rose-gold ceramic vulva in which she kept her stationery. On the wall behind there was a blown-up version of Womxxxn’s September 2017 digital cover. It showed American model and activist Jada Smalls breastfeeding her then one-month-old son; that year, Elle made history by featuring the magazine’s first burns survivor cover girl, so Frankie booked Jada, the first person with albinism to be the cover star of any women’s publication.
“Tell her to bring Zion—let’s capture her breastfeeding,” she’d told Kiran at the time. “Is Free the Nipple still a thing?”
“Pretty sure it hasn’t been since 2014,” Kiran had replied.
“Well, pretty sure we can make it, if that nipple is an albino one? Black is the new white, is the new black, or something?”
Ola could see Frankie’s furrowed brow over the top of her screen as she opened the door. In her late forties, Frankie looked amazing for her age, a prolific albeit private user of the noninvasive beauty treatments she often rallied against in op-eds. Even so, her commitment to ripping outfits directly off an Urban Outfitters mannequin—oversize boyfriend jeans, fisherman hats, and chunky sneakers—aged her. She reminded Ola of the mother in Freaky Friday post-body switch, dressed as her own teenage daughter. Something she felt was too ageist to articulate aloud but couldn’t unsee. Today she was in a yellow denim boiler suit Ola had been eyeing online and a pair of white Vans.
“You wanted to see me?” Ola said in lieu of a greeting as she opened Frankie’s office door. Her head poked around the corner as if she didn’t actually intend to enter. Frankie forced the thin variety of smile someone gives to a naughty child that isn’t theirs to discipline.
“Ah, Ola, yes, fab! I did want us to have a chat,” she said, tucking a strand of glossy, light-brown hair behind her ear. “Take a seat. Were you having phone issues this morning?”
They had danced this dance many times before. Instead of saying “Why are you late?” Frankie would say things like “Was there traffic in Tooting today, then?” Instead of asking her why she still hadn’t filed an article yet, she’d say something like “Just checking how you’re getting on? Do let me know if you’re having trouble managing . . .” At first, Ola hadn’t realized there were intended actionables behind the doublespeak, but she had quickly learned the steps to this routine. Sometimes, in a power play she’d never openly admit to, Ola would act like she couldn’t read between the lines, forcing Frankie to spell things out plainly, which she failed to do without flushing a satisfying shade of maroon. Passive aggression was the lingua franca of the Womxxxn offices.
“Yeah, my bad,” Ola said, too fast, plonking herself in the chair opposite. “I downloaded this app on my phone that locks me out of everything until nine-thirty, so I couldn’t answer your calls.” She put her arms around herself, physically trying to stop floating away.
“I see! Clever clogs!” Frankie said, voice chirpy, face still tight. “For future reference, can you make sure you loop me in with things like that? I do wish we didn’t have to worry about work before nine and after five, but you know how it is with such a small team. It’s really important all of us are on the same page.”
“Don’t worry, I’m uninstalling it asap,” Ola said, trying to keep her voice even.
“Great!” Ola felt a “but” coming. “But I wouldn’t necessarily say you should get rid of it altogether. Do you think it could be set for during work hours only? It’s great you took the initiative to curb your time on your phone and I think it could be useful, you know, to make sure you’re totally focused when you’re in.”
“Noted,” said Ola. She adjusted herself in her seat and tried to guess the magic words to end this portion of their conversation. “I’m not on my phone when I need to be, but I am on my phone quite a lot when I shouldn’t be?”
Especially when I’m at home, sitting through your latest neurotic, bullshit, work-related crisis after hours, Ola thought. Frankie’s smile finally began to creep into her green eyes. Her boss had won this battle with little resistance, a rarity that should have made her suspicious. Ola watched her shoulders finally drop, satisfied that the naughty child was now richer with a lesson learned. She was a cool boss, not a regular boss. A cool girl-boss.
She leaned forward. “No worries, Ola. Listen, I get it. Striking a work-life balance is never easy. It takes time. I’m probably worse than you,” she said, half whispering. “I’d have to download it myself, if I wasn’t in charge!” She winked as she sat back again.
Frankie Webb was so casually audacious, you almost had to respect it. Ola begrudgingly found her scrappy, adaptable energy, her air of someone who’d just missed out on winning The Apprentice (making them all the more ambitious, vengeful even), weirdly admirable. Despite her moneyed background she could graft like a market trader on Petticoat Lane, had impeccable taste and a keen eye for branding. Her biggest rebrand project was herself; having edited a slew of women’s magazines that peddled eating disorders for the best part of her career, she was an early adopter of “brand feminism” online, when it became clear print was dying and self-loathing was becoming harder to shift. By the time half the women’s magazine industry as she’d known it had collapsed, she was already preparing to launch the antidote to the disease she’d helped spread. This coincided with an uptick in the use of words like “empowerment,” “intersectional,” and constantly referring to white men as “white men,” a move that did little to distract readers from the fact that she herself was white.
In 2014, she launched Womxxxn, a women’s sexual health platform turned lifestyle brand that released “an agenda-setting digital issue” every quarter. Frankie hadn’t even thought of how it would be pronounced offline, in real life — she chose the name after seeing “women” spelt “womxn” on Twitter and wrongly assuming the “x” had been for aesthetic purposes. But even that oversight she managed to spin into insight, declaring it was pronounced “Wo-minx” in a bid to encourage women to embrace their “inner minx.” What Womxxxn offered, thanks to a whip-smart team, was genuinely refreshing and purpose-driven, even if the flagrant hypocrisy often made Ola’s head spin. For every ground-breaking story they broke on smear tests, there was an advertorial from a brand that had just made headlines for making a woman redundant four months into maternity leave.
“So,” Frankie said. “You can probably guess why I’ve pulled you in for a chat this morning—”
“Yes, and again I’m really sorry about the delay,” Ola cut in and tried to adopt a more apologetic tone, desperate for the conversation to conclude. She shuffled in her chair. “I promise I’ll have it to you for tomorrow.”
Frankie looked confused for a moment, and then howled with sudden realization.
“Kalmte Kut! Oh, no no no, that’s a conversation for another day. As in, yesterday. Forget about the Dutch dildos, woman—The List, we need to report on The List!”
Ola discovered the pit of her stomach was indeed lower than she had initially thought. She stared at Frankie dumbstruck, wondering how someone could look quite so upbeat about a feature that depressing, even without your fiancé being accused of physical assault in it.
“Ola!” Frankie clucked. She never did understand why her boss still pronounced her name Oh-lah, yet wittered on about her nephew “Ollie” with no trouble. “You mean to tell me you spend all that time on your phone instead of working and I’m still more in the know than you?” Ola simply gawked as Frankie continued, voice low as if gossiping.
“Okay, so, this thing called The List went live this morning. Apparently, it started out as a Google Doc, put together by loads of badass anonymous female journalists, activists, feminists, et cetera—all the good kinds of ‘ists.’ And now it’s a Twitter account that’s put all these media bastards on blast. Rapists, sexists—the bad ‘ists.’ Sleazeballs and predators, all outed. I know this is very much up your street, so I’m putting you on it.”
Her boss continued to talk excitedly without pause, seemingly nonplussed by Ola’s spooked expression. “We need to go beyond the bare-bones news story; we need women who are willing to go on the record. You did such a great job with MCs Too, I’m sure you’ll have no problem with getting survivors to tell their stories. And we have to act fast—people are definitely expecting us to break this and we’re best poised to! If you could send me a rough pitch by this afternoon, that would be ah-mazing.”
Frankie waited, finally thrown off by Ola’s silence.
“Does that sound good to you, Ola?”
At times, Ola felt bad about how little she divulged about her personal life at work. She avoided after-work drinks politely, but like the plague, utilizing her gift for storytelling to spin a line on some other, imagined post-work commitment she had. Other than with Kiran, she was evasive and vague about everything bar content, and when her colleagues attempted to segue from business into her business, aggressively beaming at the prospect of more than acquaintanceship, guilt would pool in the pit of her belly as she firmly declined. Even with her engagement, she wouldn’t have broached it at work if Sophie from the Fashion and Beauty desk hadn’t; she reluctantly showed off the small, marquise-cut diamond sat atop a thin platinum band for all of six minutes before snapping back to her usual reticence.
But in this moment, Ola was reassured that she had been right in maintaining her distance. Her lack of meaningful dialogue with Womxxxn staff combined with Frankie’s inability to retain information that didn’t directly affect her meant, Ola now realized, she didn’t have a clue that Michael had been named. She probably didn’t even remember the name of her fiancé, let alone know where he’d landed his new job. Shakily, Ola found a smile for her. “Sure thing,” she said, nodding. “I’ll send you an outline by two.”
As she left Frankie’s office and made her way to her desk, Ola attempted to fix her expression into something less wounded. Her cheeks were prickling with heat but she managed to remain straightfaced. Darting past her distracted coworkers, she could slowly feel a sense of clarity cutting through her disorientation. She had to keep it together, just for now, and then she would call Michael. She needed to make sense of this. She needed to find out the truth.
Excerpted from the book THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke. Copyright © 2023 by God’s Favourite Limited. From William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
