CHARACTER
How to Kill Your Familyby Bella Mackie

Kelly McIntosh

Kelly McIntosh

Quick Facts

  • Role: Cellmate-turned-secret antagonist to the protagonist
  • First appearance: Prologue
  • Setting: Limehouse prison
  • Known for: A chatty, “moronic” facade that conceals shrewd manipulation
  • Crimes: Online extortion of married men; later, covertly documents Grace’s confession
  • Key relationships: Grace Bernard (target and “trophy cellmate”); Harry Hawthorne (off-page collaborator)
  • Status at the end: Holds evidentiary leverage over Grace and effectively wins

Who They Are

At first glance, Kelly McIntosh is the prison chatterbox who adopts Grace on sight and won’t stop prying. That surface is intentional camouflage. Beneath the cloying nicknames and coral toenail polish is a hungry opportunist who recognizes the value of information—and how to weaponize it. By the time the novel closes, Kelly has reframed the entire story: she’s the one person who reads Grace clearly and then beats her at her own game.

Kelly’s victory also punctures Grace’s class snobbery. The woman Grace dismisses as “common” is the one who outplays her, inverting the power structure and embodying Class Warfare and Social Inequality from the other side. Kelly’s triumph is not moral so much as tactical: she understands the economy of status, secrets, and proof—and she cashes out at exactly the right moment.

Personality & Traits

Kelly’s persona is split between the obvious and the obscured: a performative friendliness that invites underestimation, and a calculating instinct that thrives on being underestimated.

  • Incessantly talkative and nosy: From the start, Grace notes she “likes to ‘chat’” (Prologue). The constant questions aren’t idle; they’re reconnaissance disguised as gossip.
  • Opportunistic: She clocks Grace’s notoriety as social currency—“leverage and respect from the other girls” (Prologue)—and later converts it into financial and legal leverage against Grace.
  • Superficially friendly: Her “roomie”/“Gracie” routine is cover. The warmth oils the hinges on doors she means to open.
  • Underestimated intelligence: Though branded a “moron,” Kelly is street-smart. Her pre-prison MO—extorting married men online (Chapter 6)—demonstrates a practiced understanding of shame, proof, and pressure.
  • Cunning and deceptive: The fool’s mask is her sharpest tool. She secures a contraband phone, photographs Grace’s written confession, and even preserves physical evidence (the spoon), anticipating its future value.
  • Appearance notes (as filtered through Grace’s contempt): “Horribly long fingernails” (Prologue); “big pouty lips” likely from cheap filler and “lots of red hair” (Chapter 6); base that’s “slightly too dark” and “coat after coat of spidery mascara” (Chapter 14). Grace’s fixation on these details telegraphs her class disdain—precisely the blind spot Kelly exploits.

Character Journey

Kelly begins as comic relief and a social barnacle stuck to Grace’s hull. But every intrusion doubles as data collection: the cheerfulness keeps Grace off guard, the nosiness builds a dossier, and the sycophancy secures proximity. Small moments—catching a tossed wooden spoon with carved initials, pocketing a contraband phone—quietly accrue into leverage. The endgame reveals that she’s been coordinated with Harry all along, turning Grace’s solitary mastermind narrative into a two-player trap she never saw. In retrospect, the arc isn’t Kelly “changing”; it’s the reader’s angle widening until her strategy snaps into focus. The twist reorders the book’s power map: Kelly converts chatter into control and Grace’s arrogance into evidence.

Key Relationships

  • Grace Bernard: Kelly enforces a one-sided friendship, sensing both Grace’s status and her ego. Grace’s contempt—rooted in class judgments—lets Kelly operate invisibly, collecting stories, texts, and finally written pages. For Kelly, Grace is first a status upgrade, then a payday, and ultimately the mark in a blackmail scheme that flips the novel’s hierarchy.

  • Harry Hawthorne: Though off-page, their alliance anchors the reversal. Harry pays for intel; Kelly supplies photographs of the confession and pages for fingerprints. It’s a cold transaction—no loyalty, just mutual utility—yet Kelly’s execution (“very helpful”) suggests she’s more than a messenger: she’s the one who knows how to get what matters and keep it safe.

Defining Moments

Kelly’s power comes from treating throwaway moments like investments—small deposits of proof that mature into dominance.

  • First meeting (Prologue): She sits on Grace’s bunk, adopts her instantly, and courts clout by proximity. Why it matters: The “trophy cellmate” posture looks silly, but it grants continuous access—the precondition for surveillance.
  • The spoon (Chapter 6): Grace carves her victims’ initials into a wooden spoon and tosses it to Kelly. Why it matters: Kelly keeps it. A trinket becomes corroboration—concrete, portable, incriminating.
  • Acquiring a phone (Chapter 13): Kelly secures a contraband mobile. Why it matters: What Grace reads as boyfriend drama is actually the tool that captures and transmits the confession to Harry.
  • The final text (Postscript): Kelly messages Grace after her release, casually confirming she has the confession and the spoon. Why it matters: It’s the mask dropping—she’s the book’s last antagonist, holding all the cards, and she knows it.

Essential Quotes

She wants leverage and respect from the other girls, and if anyone can provide her with it, the Morton murderer can. It is immensely tiresome.
— Grace’s initial assessment of Kelly’s motives (Prologue)

This line captures Grace’s early read: Kelly as a clout-chaser. Ironically, Grace identifies the motive but not the method. She notices the social angle yet misses that “leverage” will harden into literal evidence.

Besides the fact that Kelly is an undeniable moron, I think talking is overrated.
— Grace’s dismissal of Kelly’s intelligence (Chapter 2)

Grace’s contempt is the engine of her blindness. By equating talkativeness with stupidity, she misses how Kelly weaponizes conversation—extracting facts, testing boundaries, and mapping Grace’s vulnerabilities.

‘Isn’t it mad,’ she says as she starts painting her toenails a lurid shade of coral, ‘how I’ve done so much bad shit and nobody knows my name, and you ended up, like, a celebrity for something you didn’t even do?’
— Kelly on Grace’s notoriety (Chapter 11)

Here, envy and strategy meet. Kelly articulates the asymmetry of fame and guilt, while her grooming routine distracts from the acuity of the observation. The line foreshadows her solution: if you can’t have notoriety, secure control over the notorious.

Hey roomie! It’s Kel. Hope the outside world is treating you well. Call me, there’s things we need to discuss. Don’t even think about ignoring this, I know where u live, LOL. PS – my mum loved the spoon but she was confused by the marks on it. I wasn’t though! I’ll keep it safe. Miss u! Xxx
— Kelly’s final, triumphant text message to Grace (Postscript)

The chirpy tone remains, but the subtext is steel. Kelly announces possession of proof (confession, spoon) and stakes out power with a threat wrapped in friendliness. It’s the perfect capstone: the same performance that made Grace underestimate her now makes the blackmail sting.