Simon Artemis

Quick Facts

A billionaire tycoon and CEO of Artemis Holdings, Simon Artemis is the estranged father of Grace Bernard and former lover of Marie Bernard. He later acknowledges his illegitimate son Harry Hawthorne as an adult. First encountered through photographs, stories, and a letter, he appears in person as the novel’s looming antagonist—flashy, feared, and firmly in control until his power begins to crack.

Who They Are

Simon is the novel’s cold center of gravity: a remorseless patriarch whose abandonment of Marie and Grace effectively writes the script for Grace’s life of Revenge and Vengeance. He is not merely “rich”; he performs wealth—swaggering through rooms, buying loyalty, and treating people as leverage. His presence embodies the book’s critique of Class Warfare and Social Inequality: he believes laws, promises, and even paternity submit to him. Crucially, the novel doesn’t track his growth; it exposes his consistency. What deepens is not Simon but our view of the rot he represents.

Personality & Traits

Simon’s character is built from a ruthless core and an attention-seeking surface. He is most dangerous when he’s charming; seduction and intimidation are interchangeable tools. Even his aesthetic—tan, tailored, ostentatious—works as propaganda for his power, signaling a man who expects to be seen and obeyed.

• Arrogant and entitled: Parks his sports car in the middle of the road; sends back champagne after a romantic rebuff; moves through the world with a “swagger” and “confidence that overwhelmed others,” assuming rules are for other people.
• Manipulative and controlling: Courts Marie with gifts before discarding her; later dangles money and status to bend Harry into a malleable heir, escalating to emotional blackmail when charm fails.
• Callous and irresponsible: Denies paternity, refuses Marie’s dying plea to acknowledge Grace, and treats his illegitimate children as administrative problems rather than human beings.
• Nouveau riche, performative power: Personalized number plates, a DIY coat of arms, and a wine label called “Chic Chablis” reveal bad taste as moral diagnosis—showboating as a way to drown out conscience.
• Vain and attention-seeking: In photos he is always front and center, “mugging for the camera,” determined to claim the spotlight in both family scenes and boardrooms.
• Appearance as strategy: From youth—“permanently bronzed face… jet-black hair, slicked down,” “horrible flashy clothes” and buckled belts—to old age—“tanned, gym fit… steel grey suit… gold watch”—his look is a billboard for dominance. Even Grace’s loathed “Artemis nose” turns her own face into a reminder of his control.

Character Journey

Simon’s arc is the story of a fortress that never learns to open its gates. He begins as a philandering showman and ends a paranoid recluse, but the shift is situational, not moral—fear replaces swagger only when the family he values instrumentally begins to vanish. The deaths of Janine and Bryony snap his illusion of invulnerability; he retreats rather than reflects. He remains incapable of empathy or accountability, even in extremis, reducing his final days to a petty contest of humiliation and control. In a novel obsessed with Family, Betrayal, and Belonging, Simon is the betrayal that births the plot—and the absence that shapes every character orbiting him.

Key Relationships

• Grace Bernard: Grace is the living ledger of Simon’s denial—a daughter he erased and thus created as his judge, jury, and executioner. His refusal to acknowledge her turns paternity into war; every step of Grace’s campaign traces back to the void where fatherhood should have been.
• Marie Bernard: With Marie, Simon’s charm is revealed as strategy: gifts and glamour as prelude to cruelty. His letter to her—cold, legalistic, accusatory—reframes a love affair as liability management, confirming him as the book’s moral villain in Grace’s eyes.
• Harry Hawthorne: Simon mistakes recognition for ownership. His late-in-life “acceptance” of Harry is transactional, a project to mold a loyal extension of himself. The dynamic curdles into open hostility, and Simon’s contempt for Harry’s mother becomes the spark that ignites his own death.
• Janine Artemis: Their marriage reads as a merger—status for stability, appearances for access. Simon performs husbandhood when useful but meets Janine’s death with inconvenience rather than grief, revealing how shallow his attachments run.
• Bryony Artemis: Bryony is the exception that proves the rule: the one person Simon seems to love. Her death doesn’t humanize him so much as unravel the illusion of control that kept his fear at bay.

Defining Moments

The plot’s most chilling beats are not when Simon acts, but when he refuses to—moments where absence becomes violence.

• The rejection letter to Marie: A bureaucratic severing of ties—he denies paternity, offers £5,000 for silence, and refuses even a dying woman’s request. Why it matters: It weaponizes power as paperwork and becomes the founding document of Grace’s vendetta.
• Meeting and “managing” Harry: He stages fatherhood as coaching, with money as the playbook and obedience the only acceptable outcome. Why it matters: It shows how Simon confuses care with control—and sets up the resentment that ends him.
• Descent into paranoia: After Janine and Bryony’s deaths, Simon barricades himself against an unseen enemy. Why it matters: The first time we see him stripped of swagger, fear exposing how brittle his authority always was.
• Death by drowning: Drunk on a speedboat, he goads Harry by insulting his mother until Harry snaps. Why it matters: Simon dies as he lived—provoking, belittling, refusing accountability—his own cruelty the final accomplice.

Essential Quotes

Marie, thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you are ill, but what you suggest is impossible. As I have told you many times before, your decision to have your child was yours alone. You had no right to imagine that I’d risk my family and reputation for the product of a six-week fling. Instead, you chose to have the baby (which I have no proof is mine anyway), and then try to entice me into seeing her. This delusion has to stop. Your daughter is not, nor ever will be, a part of my family. This letter is Simon distilled: legalistic, contemptuous, and obsessed with reputation. He recasts love and responsibility as delusion, proving that for him, people exist to be managed—not loved or acknowledged.

There was a swagger to our dear old dad. Not exactly charm, but a teeth-baring grin, a confidence that overwhelmed others, a feeling that things could go well for you but only if he wanted them to. From Harry’s vantage point, Simon’s magnetism is conditional power: proximity promises benefits, but only at the cost of autonomy. It’s charisma as leverage, clarifying why genuine relationships are impossible for him.

‘You’re just like your mother. She pretended to be all pure of heart too, but she was just looking for some rich mark to spread her legs for.’ In this drunken sneer, misogyny and class contempt fuse into an attack designed to humiliate. The insult doesn’t just degrade Harry’s mother—it asserts Simon’s right to define everyone else’s motives, a final provocation that triggers his downfall.