Opening
Grace Bernard sets out to annihilate the Artemis dynasty that abandoned her and broke her mother. The story splices her present—28, imprisoned, and writing—with the methodical killings that begin when, at 24, she engineers her grandparents’ deaths in Marbella. Wealth, status, and cruelty collide with hunger, grief, and calculation as Grace turns her life into a ledger of debts to be settled.
What Happens
Chapter 1: The Grandparents
Grace arrives in Marbella under an alias, rents a tiny overpriced flat off the books, and starts surveillance on Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis. At Villa Bianca, wig on and posture perfected, she sits close enough to absorb their lazy snobbery and Thursday-night plan to visit the Dinero casino. Kathleen’s sharp red nails match Grace’s own—an accidental inheritance Grace refuses to share in spirit.
She scouts the gated villa, rehearses the cliffside route to the casino, and clocks the perfect blind bend for an “accident.” To secure a suitable battering ram, she charms an oafish gym god, Amir, into lending her a Hummer after a day of tolerating his beach-club entourage. On Thursday night, she tails her grandparents from the casino onto the dark coastal road and slams the Hummer into their Mercedes, sending it over the edge.
Clambering down the cliff, Grace finds Kathleen decapitated by a branch. Jeremy is unconscious but alive. She wakes him, tells him who she is—the granddaughter he disowned—and promises she will kill his entire family. She cinches his Regency Club tie until he stops breathing, pockets the tie as a “souvenir,” spritzes the wreck with flammable perfume, lights a match, and disappears into the night.
Chapter 2: Prison and a Potted History
The narrative shifts. Grace writes from prison, 28 and waiting on a final appeal. The routines are grey and airless, her cellmate Kelly McIntosh guileless and slow, and the food barely food. Grace frames her memoir as a project—precision where the system supplies chaos.
She rewinds to childhood with her mother, Marie Bernard, in a studio above a Holloway chicken shop. Their lives run on counting coins, improvising dinner, and sharing warmth—a daily lesson in Class Warfare and Social Inequality. Marie, a striking French transplant who once chased modeling jobs and told glittering stories of 1990s London, raises Grace alone and romanticizes the past to keep hope alive.
Into this fairy tale slides the prince who never stays: Grace’s father, whispered about as a powerful man who will one day come through. The myth keeps loneliness at bay until reality shatters it.
Chapter 3: The Father
Marie meets Simon Artemis in a club: he’s two decades older, relentless, and choreographs a weekday-only romance with private jets, hotel suites, and declarations of love. He never spends the night, citing work and an elderly mother. The real reason—marriage and an infant at home—arrives later like an indictment.
As a child, Grace absorbs her mother’s fairy tale: a late, great love delayed by duty. One day Marie takes her to gape at Simon’s Hampstead mansion, promising a future bedroom Grace knows is fantasy. Their poverty tightens; Marie’s parents in France withhold help and disapproval hardens into silence.
Grace’s certainty crystallizes when she finds a letter Marie wrote begging Simon to meet his daughter—along with his full name. He isn’t just wealthy; he’s one of the world’s richest men. The gulf between their chicken-shop flat and his empire becomes the architecture of Grace’s rage.
Chapter 4: The Discovery
Grace remembers joy: Marie’s laughter, small treats, the safety of being loved. She finds her only friend in Jimmy Latimer, whose liberal, comfortable parents reveal the life she’ll never have. At thirteen, Grace watches Marie collapse at work; a diagnosis of terminal cancer follows. Six weeks later, Marie is gone.
Helene, Marie’s friend, takes Grace in. Searching for hair straighteners, Grace finds a box under the bed labeled “Grace/Simon.” Inside: photos of Simon never looking at Marie, articles chronicling his businesses, his wife Janine, and his daughter Bryony (older than Grace by little more than a year), and two letters—the first Marie’s plea from her deathbed, the second Simon’s response. He denies paternity, reduces Grace to the “product of a six-week fling,” and encloses a £5,000 check as a cleanup fee.
The evidence rewrites Grace’s history in acid. Love becomes negligence; charm becomes cruelty; wealth becomes a weapon. She commits to a five-year plan to erase the Artemis name family member by family member.
Chapter 5: The Cousin
Grace’s next target is Simon’s nephew, Andrew Artemis. He’s difficult to trace because he has severed ties with the family. She finds him at a Walthamstow wetland, gentle and anti-capitalist, tending reeds and birds as if purifying himself. Grace invents “Lara,” a burnt-out estate agent, and volunteers for weeks, handpicking trash and mirroring his politics until he trusts her.
Andrew breeds frogs at home and extols Kambo, a psychedelic secretion he believes can heal depression. Grace claims panic attacks and coaxes him into a guided session. On a Saturday night, she brings two bottles of wine, spikes his with vodka, listens to him unpack his toxic relatives, and then joins him in applying Kambo. As it takes hold and he weakens, she pushes him into a deep pond and holds him under.
She stages an accident: wiped fingerprints, deleted texts, his wooden necklace tucked away as another “souvenir.” An Uber whisks her off while the marsh returns to silence.
Character Development
Grace’s voice—cold, funny, relentless—drives the narrative as she assembles a moral universe where revenge is order and love is evidence. Each murder is both performance and proof.
- Grace Bernard: Precision planner and caustic observer; her Marbella double homicide shows nerve and logistics, while Andrew’s killing confirms that no “good” Artemis earns clemency.
- Marie Bernard: Loving, romantic, and vulnerable; her hope curdles into tragedy, and her letters become the sacred text of Grace’s mission.
- Simon Artemis: Polished, calculating narcissist; his weekday romance and dismissive letter transform him into the story’s central target.
- Jeremy & Kathleen Artemis: Smug gatekeepers of wealth; their complicity in rejecting Marie and Grace makes them the opening sacrifice.
- Andrew Artemis: Gentle outlier; his ideals and estrangement complicate the ethics, underscoring the absoluteness of Grace’s vendetta.
Themes & Symbols
Powering the narrative is Revenge and Vengeance: Grace organizes her life around payback, turning grief into strategy. The murders are not frenzied eruptions but curated punishments tailored to the sins of her targets—public status destroyed by private justice.
Class Warfare and Social Inequality anchors Grace’s worldview. The Holloway flat above a chicken shop and the Hampstead mansion aren’t just settings; they’re opposing philosophies. Grace’s crimes double as a savage critique of entitlement, exposing how money insulates cruelty. At the same time, Family, Betrayal, and Belonging shapes every choice: she can’t join the family that disowned her, so she defines her belonging by erasing them.
Symbols
- Souvenirs (the Regency Club tie, Andrew’s wooden necklace): tangible trophies that convert erasure into presence—proof that Grace exists and prevails.
- The Letters: material record of betrayal and denial; they authorize Grace’s mission in her own moral court.
- The Marsh: a sanctuary of restoration corrupted into a crime scene, showing how Grace bends even places of healing to her war.
Key Quotes
“Not for me, you see, but for my mother.” Grace’s confession to Jeremy reframes murder as filial duty. It clarifies motive, turning each killing into a ritual of reparation rather than mere violence.
“Product of a six-week fling.” Simon’s phrasing collapses a life into an inconvenience. The cruelty of the language gives Grace the irrefutable artifact that converts resentment into resolve.
“Grace/Simon.” The label on Helene’s box signals a concealed family archive. Naming the link materializes the truth Marie could never force Simon to recognize—and hands Grace her blueprint.
“Souvenir.” Grace’s word for trophies exposes the theatricality of her process. She curates memory like evidence, ensuring each act leaves a relic that cannot be denied.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters lock in the novel’s engine: a first-person confession where humor slices through horror, and structure—moving between prison and past—builds both suspense and empathy. Beginning with a spectacular double homicide before unveiling the letters and the chicken-shop childhood ensures readers judge Grace’s acts only after understanding their origin. By pairing the cliffside inferno with the quiet drowning of a gentle cousin, the book announces its range and its rules: nothing about the Artemis family is innocent, and nothing about Grace’s mission is negotiable.