Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis

Quick Facts

• Role: Paternal grandparents of Grace Bernard; first targets in her killing spree; embodiments of the Artemis family’s class rot
• First appearance: Recounted in Helene’s flashback; seen directly by Grace at the Villa Bianca restaurant in Marbella
• Home and status: Wealthy British expatriates living behind gates in Marbella, Spain
• Key relationships: Their son Simon Artemis; their granddaughter Grace Bernard; her mother Marie Bernard

Who They Are

As the elder gatekeepers of the Artemis dynasty, Jeremy and Kathleen are the hard, polished surface that hides the family’s moral decay. They aren’t merely indifferent to Grace’s existence; they actively erase her. Their calculated cruelty toward Marie and the child she carried reframes Grace’s revenge as not only personal but principled—their rejection becomes the seed and the sanction for everything Grace will do.

Physical Description

Grace’s gaze strips away their self-crafted veneer to reveal insecurity beneath luxury. What they wear and how they hold themselves is a performance of class—expensive, brittle, and anxious.

• Kathleen: A “pale blonde” helmet of hair—“a structure, not a style”—paired with cosmetic work that freezes her face into a “slightly startled look,” making her resemble “a very old toddler.” She drapes herself in beige and hauls an “obscenely large Chanel bag.” Her “pointed” nails, painted “pillar box red,” mirror Grace’s own—an unsettling, involuntary bond.
• Jeremy: The “proper English gentleman” costume—“carefully combed silver hair,” a Mayfair Regency Club tie—cracks when his accent slides from posh to “rough and hard,” outing the origins he loathes. The club tie isn’t heritage; it’s a receipt for pretend pedigree.

Personality & Traits

Static yet vivid, they embody the nouveau riche’s moral vacuum: performance over substance, status over kin, self-preservation over truth. Jeremy’s self-invention and Kathleen’s cosmetic shell signal the same impulse—polish away the past, even if it means erasing their own blood.

• Cruel and uncaring: They knew about Grace and Marie and pushed Simon to abandon them, not out of ignorance but intent.
• Bigoted and xenophobic: Marbella residents who “speak no Spanish” and bristle at “the amount of Spanish people living in Spain,” their expatriate life is a gated sneer.
• Shallow and materialistic: Days filled with golf, casinos, “hideous jewellery and gaudy watches,” and procedures; their dialogue is petty complaint and gossip.
• Status-obsessed: Designer accessories, sterile compounds, private clubs; Jeremy’s Regency Club tie is less achievement than talisman.
• Hypocritical: Jeremy disowns his Bethnal Green roots with an affected accent and wardrobe. Grace recognizes the irony—she too is escaping poverty—but marks his self-hatred as a moral failure.

Character Journey

Jeremy and Kathleen don’t grow; they confirm. First, Helene’s story reveals their active role in cutting Grace out. Then, Grace’s surveillance in Marbella shows their smallness up close—the complaints, the costumes, the schedule that will doom them. Finally, their deaths on a cliff road inaugurate Grace’s method: cool observation, logistical precision, and ruthless follow-through. As characters, they are flint—unyielding, sparking the blaze that consumes the family.

Key Relationships

• Grace Bernard: To Grace, they are the origin of her exclusion and the proof that the Artemis name is a moral fiction. Killing them first is both strategy and statement—the ceremonial opening of her long project of Revenge and Vengeance.
• Simon Artemis: Their loyalty is to Simon’s wealth and reputation, not to truth or responsibility. They recast Marie as a threat and fatherhood as a liability, guiding Simon toward the most self-serving choice and laundering it as prudence.
• Marie Bernard: They label Marie a grasping opportunist and treat her pregnancy as an affront to class boundaries. Their contempt isn’t reactive; it’s ideological, and it hardens Grace’s abstract rage into a specific mission.

Themes & Symbolism

Jeremy and Kathleen personify the family’s original sin: protect wealth and image at the expense of blood. Their expat bubble and performative pedigree crystallize Class Warfare and Social Inequality: Jeremy’s bought accent and club tie prop up a hierarchy he once stood outside. Their choice to cast out Marie and Grace sharpens Family, Betrayal, and Belonging: they redraw “family” as a gated category, where belonging is transactional and betrayal is policy.

Defining Moments

Their story is brief but decisive; each appearance nails down the same thesis: these are not relatives who failed; they chose.

• Helene’s confrontation: Helene pleads for Marie and Grace; the grandparents admit they knew and boast they prevailed upon Simon to abandon them.
  • Why it matters: It converts them from passive bystanders to architects of harm, giving Grace moral clarity—and targets.
• The Marbella restaurant scene: Grace observes them at Villa Bianca, watching their complaints, their costumes, and their routine, including Thursday casino trips.
  • Why it matters: Confirms their smallness and gifts Grace the timetable she needs; observation becomes weaponry.
• The murder on the cliff road: Grace rams their car, then reveals herself to Jeremy as he dies.
  • Why it matters: The first execution sets the novel’s tone—cool, confrontational, and purposeful—proving Grace’s capacity to match their cruelty with her own agency.

Essential Quotes

They are old and disposable, and they live staggeringly useless lives. This line captures Grace’s disdain, but the extremity is diagnostic: she frames their age and idleness as moral bankruptcy. It’s a provocative justification that foreshadows how she will equate social “uselessness” with expendability.

‘That girl tried to ruin my son for money,’ shouted Kathleen, suddenly rising from her seat. ‘If you think your friend’s daughter is going to start all this nonsense up again, you’re as foolish as she was.’ Kathleen reduces Marie to a stereotype—gold-digger—so she can dismiss the pregnancy as a scam and absolve Simon. The outburst exposes fear beneath hauteur: if the story is “nonsense,” class order remains intact.

So they’re old, they’re mean and they take up precious space in the world. And all of this would be reason enough to help them meet their end... But if I’m totally honest, it’s mainly because they knew. They knew about my mother. They knew about me. And they didn’t just flap their hands and do nothing, they actively lobbied their son... They wanted it that way. And in the end, that’s what swung the decision. They die first. Grace punctures her own rhetoric to reveal the core motive: not misanthropy, but retribution for deliberate harm. The phrase “They wanted it that way” shifts agency decisively to Jeremy and Kathleen, sealing their fate in her moral calculus.

Pulling out the perfume bottle, I turn his head towards me as gently as I can, and look into a single grey eye. ‘I’m going to kill your whole family.’ The tenderness of the gesture—“as gently as I can”—collides with the chilling vow. By announcing her plan to Jeremy, Grace transforms a private vendetta into a declared campaign, reclaiming power in the very moment of his helplessness.