50 pages • 1 hour read
Bella MackieHow to Kill Your Family
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 14-PostscriptChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Grace is killing Simon’s family for herself as much as for her mother, because Marie never sought to right the Artemis family’s wrongs. She feels they “both suffered because [Marie] was too weak to demand what was fair” (279). Now Jim won’t talk to her, having told the police he thinks she murdered Caro. Grace blames herself for being so “possessed” by her plan for revenge that she failed to build a life she could return to when finished. Grace is confident her appeal will be successful, especially after her lawyer got hold of a video from a camera in a neighboring flat that shows Caro’s balcony on the night of her death. Grace was nowhere near her when she fell. Grace is too excited not to share the news with Kelly, thinking it can’t do any harm. Her conviction is overturned, and Jim gets in touch right away, apologizing and asking for Grace’s forgiveness. When she is released, she plans to wait a little while and then reach out to Lara Artemis, present herself as a “grieving daughter,” and approach her lawyer to figure out how to get her hands on the Artemis fortune.
Chapter 15 Summary
Grace recounts how her sense of urgency diminished after Bryony’s death. She read in the paper about Simon’s friends’ concern for his mental health; he believed Bryony was murdered and became reclusive and paranoid. To Grace, this was “glorious” news, though it immediately preceded the beginning of Jim and Caro’s relationship and her realization of how “deliberately small” she had made her life by focusing solely on the Artemises for so long. As time passed, Grace had to acknowledge a “looming sense of doom” as she realized that she might not be able to finish the job (305-06). Three days after Grace was arrested, Simon was reported missing. According to his assistant, he drowned after falling out of his speedboat while drunk. Grace cried for days over having lost the opportunity to kill him herself, an act that would give meaning to her life.
Chapter 16 Summary
This chapter is printed in a different font than the preceding 15, and the writer immediately introduces himself as “Harry,” Simon’s son and Grace’s half-brother. He didn’t learn of his father’s identity until he was 23, when Christopher, the man who raised him, died and a family friend revealed that Christopher wasn’t Harry’s biological father. Harry knows a lot about Grace’s life, and he claims he even borrowed her lighter once at a pub. He asks if Grace’s mother was weak like his mom, Charlotte. When he confronted Charlotte to learn his father’s identity, she told him about meeting Simon at a nightclub after he sent her champagne. Harry knows Charlotte’s story will be familiar to Grace; Charlotte got pregnant, and Simon lost interest. When Christopher, a friend of Charlotte’s, proposed, she accepted.
When Charlotte eventually revealed Simon’s identity to Harry, he researched Simon and learned that he had attained a level of respectability that he hadn’t earned. Harry doesn’t judge Simon’s morals, and he feels the freedom to be blunt because he assumes Grace can’t reveal his identity to anyone without revealing her own. He judges Simon for being “tacky” and “new money,” contrary to the way Harry was raised, in a family where etiquette and taste felt innate. “Class matters,” he says, when he claims that learning of his father’s life was worse for him than it was for Grace: Learning about Simon’s gauche social climbing was harder for him because, unlike Grace, he was raised in an aristocratic family that disdains such behavior. After Christopher’s death, money got tight, so Harry decided to approach Simon. Harry went to Simon’s office and explained who he was, and Simon canceled his next meeting so they could talk. He and Simon settled on a six-figure sum to help Harry’s family, pending a DNA test, and they continued to meet for several weeks after. Simon enjoyed having a son, and Harry enjoyed the respect he was afforded at Simon’s side. Simon would not allow a clean break, though, and soon, Simon began treating Harry with the same entitlement with which he treats everyone. On the day Harry finally decided to end their relationship, Simon learned his parents had been killed in a car crash. Harry felt he couldn’t abandon the grieving man, and while he consoled Simon, Simon told him about Grace. Harry began to research her and even went to her office. He began tailing her after that, hoping to feel “more in control” by gaining knowledge of her and her life (334).
Harry followed Grace the night she pushed Andrew into the marsh, though at the time he didn’t know who Andrew was. He couldn’t call the police because he had no way to explain his presence there, and, two days later, Simon revealed that it was his nephew who had died. Harry “became a man slightly possessed” (337) and he claims to have been near Grace for months while she plotted Lee’s murder. Harry was the other runner she spotted on the steps of St. Paul’s, the one she thought wanted to date her. It was Harry who brushed her hand as she left Mile End. When he found Lee’s dead body, he figured out that Grace was picking off Simon’s family one by one. He realized, he says, that he could sit back and let her kill them all, and then he could inherit the family fortune. Simon, he says, really began to unravel once Bryony died. He became even more unbearable, and Harry started to worry that Simon’s paranoia would make it too difficult for Grace to kill him. When Simon offered Harry more money to accompany him to St Tropez, Harry couldn’t turn it down.
Chapter 17 Summary
At noon, Grace is released from Limehouse prison, and Kelly offers to make her a spoon in her next class. By 4 pm, she is home. She takes a long bath and plans to meet Jim for dinner.
Chapter 18 Summary
Harry narrates again, saying he learned of Grace’s arrest while he was in France with Simon, and he believed she’d never get to kill Simon now. On his yacht, Simon got drunker and meaner, forcing Harry out on the speedboat with him. When Simon insulted Harry’s mother, Harry smashed a bottle over Simon’s head and Simon fell overboard. Harry let Simon drown, and, after making sure he wouldn’t resurface, Harry returned to the yacht and told the captain Simon had fallen. No one was surprised. Harry then revealed his real identity to Lara. Harry wants Grace to know how Simon really died and hopes “it might help [her] feel less of a failure” to know that Harry finished the job she started (351). He congratulates her on the murders she committed but claims she wouldn’t have been able to get to Simon.
Harry confesses that he paid an investigator to learn the identity of Grace’s cellmate and that he then met with Kelly and gave her the phone. Kelly watched Grace more closely than Grace realized and took pictures of every single page of Grace’s notebook, texting them to Harry and even ripping out a few pages so he’d have her fingerprints on them. He tells Grace she “underestimated” Kelly. Harry advises Grace to move on with her life now, assuring her that Harry just had more luck, “better cards” than she did. He is certain Kelly will leave Grace alone because he paid her off.
Postscript Summary
The postscript contains a short message from Kelly to Grace. Kelly tells Grace to call her because they have “things” to discuss and warns Grace not to ignore the note. She says that her mom loves the spoon Grace made, and though her mom is “confused” by the marks on it, Kelly isn’t. She promises to keep it “safe.”
Chapter 14-Postscript Analysis
Grace’s uneasy sense that she’s losing control grows even before Harry reveals his existence, describes how he murdered Simon, and admits that he enlisted Kelly to entrap Grace, proving—once and for all—that Grace only ever had The Illusion of Control. Grace looks back on the last few years of her life, realizing that by the time she killed Simon’s parents, Harry was already part of Simon’s life and quickly tiring of his father’s entitlement and gauche habits. In fact, had she not murdered Simon’s parents, Harry would actually have broken off his relationship with Simon altogether, making their continued father-son relationship a completely unplanned effect of her actions. When Jim fell for Caro, Grace realized how “possessed” she was by her plans, that she’d lost control of her life by focusing solely on revenge. By the time Caro and Jim got engaged, she felt “as if things were rushing ahead of [her], already out of [her] grasp” (306). She is struck by her lack of control—over her relationship with Jim and over her plans for vengeance, as she slips into complacency after Bryony’s death. Then, after Grace learns that Simon has died, she feels a deeper sorrow than she did when her mother died. Her sadness is “[n]ot for Simon but for all [she] had pinned on killing him [her]self. That it would make [her] life mean something” (307). Losing control of her revenge—especially after being incarcerated—drives her into an eight-month depression. Grace eventually consoles herself with the idea that she will be able to pursue the Artemis fortune upon her release from Limehouse, but this hope is dashed by Harry’s revelations. Mackie never shows readers Grace’s response to Harry’s emails, and this is the biggest indicator that Grace has lost control of her own story, a loss even more significant than her missed opportunities to kill Simon. The last time we hear from Grace is when she’s back in her flat, preparing to meet Jim for dinner. Her fears about losing control, despite her confidence upon being released from prison, come to fruition after Harry reveals how he has manipulated her, a move that effectively silences Grace and converts her story to his. This outcome also highlights The Unsatisfying Nature of Revenge. Because control is so illusory, and exacting revenge without detection requires such a high level of planning, cunning, and control, it simply cannot be accomplished without setbacks, disappointments, and perhaps failure. Simon’s death—which Grace believes to be accidental—robs her of the big finish she’s dreamed of: revealing to him her role in the deaths of his family and watching the light leave his eyes by her hand, something that would give her the ultimate feeling of control, something she’s coveted since childhood.
However, Harry—who is every bit as proud as Grace—is not immune to error either. The link between Pride and Miscalculation is emphasized by Kelly’s deception of Grace and, ultimately, of Harry, and the half-siblings’ underestimation of Kelly further highlights The Illusion of Control. Harry sought to learn all he could about Grace, believing it “would help [him] be more in control, something [he’d] not really felt since Christopher died” (334). When he meets Simon, he experiences the man’s brash personality and “new money” as a threat to his precarious sense of identity, and he claims that learning about Simon was far worse for him than it was for Grace. He writes, “It’s always worse for those of us who are teetering precariously between the categories—at least you knew where you were in the order” (321). Harry’s self-esteem depends on his belief that he comes from a noble pedigree and has impeccable taste passed down to him through generations. Learning that he is the son of someone as gauche as Simon threatens to undo that self-image, already on shaky ground due to his family’s relatively straitened circumstances.
Spying on Grace partially restores Harry’s sense of control, and he revels in recounting to her all the times he watched her without her knowledge: at a pub near her office, on the steps of St. Paul’s, in a hallway at Mile End, in the British Museum café, and even at the marsh project center. He proudly tells Grace how she “underestimated” Kelly, who “watched [Grace] much more closely than [she] probably imagined” (353). His smugness makes it clear that he believes he has not made the same mistake. Harry warns Grace about becoming embittered by her “failure” when she learns that he “finished off what [she] started,” especially because, he claims, she “never would have managed” Simon’s murder anyway (351). Thus, he is proud of having done what Grace couldn’t. He witnessed her stagnation after Bryony’s death and saw the heightened Simon put in place, concluding that he would have to do what Grace could not. He condescendingly tells Grace that “[m]oney isn’t everything” and that he “just had better cards” than she did (354). His pride is as overwhelming as her own has been. However, Harry has underestimated Kelly just as much as Grace has. He claims that Grace needn’t worry about Kelly now because he paid her off, “so [he’s] confident she’ll leave [Grace] alone” (354). Just as Grace believes her intelligence makes her invulnerable, Harry believes the same about his relative wealth. Despite his confidence, though, Kelly gets the final word. She reminds Grace that she still has the spoon and that she knows what its odd markings mean. Her ominous assurance that she will “keep it safe” suggests that Kelly could use it to blackmail Grace, and her thinly veiled threat about “know[ing] where [Grace] live[s]” indicates that Kelly has no intention of failing to benefit further from her knowledge of Grace’s crimes (354). She also knows a lot about Harry and the Artemises. If Harry can be wrong about Kelly’s actions in regard to Grace, then he can be wrong about her actions in regard to himself too, and the fact that Kelly gets the final say hints that neither Grace nor Harry has heard the last of her.
