Outside, even through the white window pane, the world looked cold. The weather took on a pale-shining colour, setting little eddies of newspapers spinning in oddly manoeuvred spirals to the sky. In a somewhat peculiar manner Pete stared out to the slush on the streets, remainders of the Hate Week the Party had initiated few days earlier. The war against Eurasia had led to an enormous but still vague impression of fear on every member of the Party. This might be the end, Pete thought while the stream of thinking seemed strangely decelerated. Doublethink tried to stop him from realizing the truth. The end of Anja, his wife. But he should have anticipated it, he should have known it from the start. She has been too smart and too bright a person to just slip through the strict controlling web of the Ministry of Truth.
The telescreens were flickering behind his back, babbling and spieling about the government raising the supply of onions when in fact they were cutting them down. It were certainly those never-silent telescreens that had recorded some mindless comment or a dizzy mumbling in her sleep for which she was found guilty. In this moment, Pete would have wanted to burst out of the house and call after her in the muddy streets. But suddenly he was absolutely certain she had vanished. Just one more beloved dead person who Pete had had to let go, one more smart Party member vaporized by the Ministry of Love in its dark rooms of cruelty and disgust. But she was not a dead person, far worse than that — she was an unperson.