I’ve gotten into the habit of constantly refreshing news pages to be able to follow what’s going on and as it happens, it’s not been particularly good for my mental health. But much like the breadcrumbs scattered in the dark forest in Hansel and Gretel, it helps me to find my way home, or rather it helps me piece together stories as they unfold. It also gives me invaluable insight into the way other people are reacting to news as it is being released.

This week marked what should have been a milestone in starting to clean the country of the rot which has festered in it for quite some time, but instead of feeling relief, I just felt anger.

Anger that the arrests came years too late and that God knows how much of the possible evidence has been washed, burnt or shredded away; angry that the people who were arrested have been perpetually protected by those elected to serve the country and its people; angry that anyone who had followed the aforementioned breadcrumbs to begin with has been called a liar and fantasist; angry that a life was violently taken and that her family needs to continue to sit through this pantomime every single day and then get up in the morning and start fighting all over again.

But most of all, I’m angry at the deafening silence of the public. Do you seriously have nothing to say in light of what has been uncovered these months? Nothing to think about? Nothing to reflect on? Nothing to apologise for?

I suppose that it’s in times like this that we should write even more. Ask more. Expect more- Anna Marie Galea

And then the cherry on the proverbial cake: Matthew Caruana Galizia goes on Lovin Malta to speak about Keith Schembri’s arrest and the vitriol starts all over again. It literally doesn’t seem to matter at all to any of these people that the people they voted for are being trotted into the police headquarters one by one, but say one word in English in front of a camera and you might as well have filmed yourself burning the national flag.

I often sit and wonder how it’s possible that on such a small spit of land two Maltas could exist side by side, but in moments like this, the cracks deepen. Why would anyone want to think they have anything in common with people whose answer to murder is silence?

Of course, I didn’t have enough time for that anger to be transformed into anything else because less than 24 hours later, our disgraced former prime minister’s former chief of staff was running around as free as a mountain goat again, free to lose more phones and possibly even manage to dispose of anything else he might need to dispose of.

The sky is the limit till apparently mid-October, because when you’re a bigwig in this country you are even given a check-in time to go back inside. Of course, then you will be told that we are all equal in the eyes of the law, only some people clearly more equal than others.

It’s on days like this that I wonder why I still write when it seems so futile and when I feel so bereft of hope, yet I suppose that it’s in times like this that we should write even more. Ask more. Expect more. And maybe the very fact of continuing to write is because we continue to hope.

Hope that things will change. Hope that our anger would have been worth something. If we are able to light up just one candle, it will not have been in vain.