CHARACTER
After Youby Jojo Moyes

Katrina 'Treena' Clark

Katrina “Treena” Clark

Quick Facts

Katrina “Treena” Clark is the younger sister of Louisa Clark. A single mother to Thomas, she lives with her parents while attending college. First appearance in After You: Chapter 3 (a bracing phone call). Key relationships: Louisa; her son, Thomas; and her parents, Josie and Bernard.

Who They Are

Practical, impatient with self-pity, and allergic to vagueness, Treena is the Clark family’s reality check. She pushes Louisa to honor the promise she made to Will Traynor to “live boldly,” but her nagging is rooted in love and fear—fear that grief will calcify into stasis. As the book’s most grounded voice, she embodies the tug of Family and Responsibility: the unglamorous, daily choices that keep a family afloat while nudging its members toward growth. Treena’s presence throws Louisa’s Grief and Moving On into relief; where Lou drifts, Treena decides.

Treena is less defined by appearance than by action, but even her style underlines her ethos. In Chapter 3, Lou borrows Treena’s “uniform of jeans and a generic tee” to blend in—an emblem of Treena’s practicality and of the way her steadiness can be a shelter for others.

Personality & Traits

Treena’s defining quality is her no-nonsense pragmatism. She cuts through euphemism and delay, making hard calls so other people can move forward. Yet beneath the bluntness is deep loyalty. Her skepticism protects the family from scams and wishful thinking, while her ambition models the sober, step-by-step rebuilding that grief often requires.

  • Pragmatic and logical: After Lou’s accident, Treena combs through her bank statements and compiles a list of estate agents to rent out the London flat—swift, concrete steps that turn chaos into a plan.
  • Direct and blunt: Her early phone calls jolt Lou out of avoidance, repeatedly confronting her lack of direction and pushing her toward Finding a New Purpose and Identity.
  • Ambitious and intelligent: A single mom in college, she studies seriously and later steers her mother toward feminist writers—proof that Treena’s vision extends beyond budgeting to ideas and independence.
  • Protective and loyal: When Patrick profits from Will’s story, Treena tries to dig up how much he was paid, channeling her indignation into fact-finding that shields Lou.
  • Skeptical: Treena meets Lily Houghton-Miller with questions rather than sentiment, insisting on verification before the family reshapes itself around a stranger’s claims.

Character Journey

Treena begins as pressure personified—calling Lou to account when everyone else tiptoes around her pain. But as the novel widens, we see Treena’s own limits: she’s financially reliant on her parents, hemmed in by childcare, and painfully aware that ambition costs money and energy she doesn’t always have. Her advocacy for her mother’s feminist awakening (Chapter 15) strains the household, yet it reveals Treena’s north star: women in her family should get to want more. By the end, the sisters recalibrate. Treena’s move into Lou’s flat (Chapter 29) reframes her from nag to partner; instead of harrying Lou from the outside, she builds a shared future with her—practical, hopeful, and forward-looking.

Key Relationships

  • Louisa Clark: Treena is Louisa’s sharpest critic and safest person. She repeatedly invokes Will’s promise to push Lou into motion, even if it means tense, painful arguments. Their bond evolves from friction to collaboration, culminating in the London living arrangement that lets each woman pursue a fuller life.

  • Josie and Bernard Clark: Treena relies on her parents for childcare, but she resists the family’s old hierarchies. By championing her mother’s independence, she collides with her father’s expectations, exposing generational fault lines while nudging the Clarks toward a more equitable balance.

  • Thomas Clark: Motherhood anchors Treena’s choices. Every ambitious step—college, the move to London—is calibrated to give Thomas stability and opportunity, revealing that Treena’s drive is as tender as it is tough.

  • Lily Houghton-Miller: Treena’s initial suspicion of Lily serves the family, demanding proof before trust. Over time, her guarded stance helps define boundaries, proving care sometimes looks like asking hard questions.

Defining Moments

Treena’s most revealing scenes pair tough love with practical action, showing how she translates urgency into momentum.

  • Nagging Lou to Move On (Chapter 3): Her blunt phone call—figure out work, sort the flat—establishes her as the external engine for Lou’s stalled life. Why it matters: it reframes “nagging” as a survival strategy, not cruelty.
  • Confronting Patrick (Chapter 3): Trying to uncover his payout turns outrage into inquiry. Why it matters: Treena protects by getting facts, not just venting.
  • Encouraging Her Mother’s Feminism (Chapter 15): Treena seeds a household revolution with reading lists. Why it matters: she wants systemic change for the women she loves, not just short-term fixes.
  • The New York Job Argument (Chapter 20): She accuses Lou of self-sabotage when Lou hesitates. Why it matters: Treena names the pattern—fear masquerading as martyrdom—so the story can break it.
  • Moving to London (Chapter 29): Treena and Thomas prepare to share Lou’s flat. Why it matters: independence becomes a shared project, turning sisterly tension into a mutual support system.

Essential Quotes

“You’ve got to do something. You can’t sit around here on your backside for all eternity... You’ll have to sort out your head at some point. If you’re not going back to school, then you have to figure out what it is you’re actually going to do with your life. I’m just saying.”

Treena compresses compassion into a to-do list. The cadence—school, work, life—mirrors her belief that clarity grows out of action, not feelings, and sets the tone for her role as Lou’s reality check.

“Well, you know what Will would have said. You had a deal. You can’t back out of it.”

Invoking Will yokes memory to obligation. Treena refuses to let grief be purely elegiac; she turns the past into a contract that compels the living to move.

“You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.”

Here she diagnoses Lou’s moral overreach as avoidance. By calling out self-sacrifice as a dodge, Treena distinguishes kindness from self-erasure, urging a more sustainable form of care.

“Every time you get a chance to move forward, you just hijack your own future. It’s like—it’s like you don’t actually want to... His daughter is not your responsibility. Do you hear me? None of this is your responsibility.”

This is Treena at her rawest: naming self-sabotage and redrawing boundaries. Her insistence on what is and isn’t Lou’s responsibility is both protective and provocative, forcing Lou to choose growth over guilt.