Carol Last

Quick Facts

• Role: Antagonist; mother of Aled Last and Carys Last; parent governor at the local school
• First appearance: At Aled’s house, when Frances first visits and meets Aled’s “helpful” mum
• Key relationships: Aled Last (son), Carys Last (daughter), Frances Janvier (Aled’s friend)

Who They Are

Behind a polished, “involved parent” persona, Carol Last is the novel’s primary engine of harm—an abuser whose need for control masquerades as care. She wields respectability to discredit and isolate her children, making her a chilling embodiment of Abusive Family Dynamics. Carol’s character shows how a parent can weaponize ambition and appearances to erase their child’s identity and agency, turning love into a conditional contract. In contrast to the book’s celebration of chosen community and self-expression, she stands as the antagonist to Finding Your Voice and Pursuing Passion.

Frances’s description captures the split between image and intent:

She looked terrifying, in that classic white, middle-class mum sort of way. Dyed cropped hair, slightly round physique, a smile that said ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ and eyes that said ‘I will burn everything you love’.

Personality & Traits

Carol’s cruelty is systemic, not impulsive. She couches commands as “concern,” reframes punishments as “improvements,” and performs sociability for adults who might intervene. Her obsession with conventional prestige—good grades, elite university—feeds a rigid worldview where anything creative is suspect, aligning her with the novel’s critique of The Pressure of Academia and the Education System.

• Controlling and manipulative: Cuts Aled’s hair with kitchen scissors in front of Frances, calling him “unkempt” and a “drug addict.” The public humiliation shows she expects obedience even under witness.
• Obsessed with academia: Dismisses Aled’s Universe City as “silly little projects” and “useless stuff,” revealing a value system where only measurable academic output “counts.”
• Emotionally abusive: Calls Carys a “hateful child,” burns Carys’s clothes, destroys Aled’s bedroom, and later has the family dog put down. Each act escalates from belittling to total erasure of identity and comfort.
• Deceptive respectability: Chatty and “normal” to outsiders like Frances’s mum, she keeps abuse deniable. As Carys notes, “She doesn’t do anything illegal… That’s how she gets away with it.”
• Aesthetic control as moral superiority: Replaces Aled’s galaxy ceiling and posters with a blank, white “clean” room—an aesthetic metaphor for the void she demands inside him.

Character Journey

Carol is a static character whose rigidity sharpens as others grow. Early, she corrals Carys’s “failure” with humiliation and destruction; once Carys escapes, Carol concentrates her efforts on Aled, whose creative life threatens her narrative of academic perfection. When Aled leaves for university, her control tactics intensify: she erases his room, eliminates his sources of comfort, and finally tracks him down to drag him home. Because she never changes, the plot’s movement comes from Aled and his friends learning to see through her tactics, resist them, and choose independence over compliance.

Key Relationships

• Aled Last: To Carol, Aled is valuable only insofar as he fulfills her academic script. The moment his passion and personhood (Universe City, friendships, autonomy) compete with grades, she reframes him as “distracted” and punishes him—culminating in the destruction of his room and the killing of Brian. Her behavior seeds Aled’s anxiety and self-loathing, making recovery inseparable from breaking her control.
• Carys Last: Carys is Carol’s first scapegoat: “bad” grades justify constant derision and the spectacular cruelty of burning her clothes. Carys’s flight from home proves that survival may require disappearance—her absence later becomes a threat Carol holds over Aled, a warning of what “happens” to children who disobey.
• Frances Janvier: Initially approved as head girl and a good influence, Frances becomes a “distraction” once she amplifies Aled’s creative life. Carol’s condescension reduces Frances to a tool for Aled’s grades; when Frances supports Aled’s autonomy, Carol turns openly hostile.

Defining Moments

Carol’s arc is a staircase of escalation—each step removes more of Aled’s self until there’s nothing left but compliance.

• The hair-cutting incident: She slices off Aled’s hair with kitchen scissors, mocking his appearance.
  • Why it matters: A public assertion that his body is not his own; it normalizes violation as “parenting.”
• Destroying Aled’s room: She paints over his galaxy ceiling, bins his posters, and installs sterile white furnishings, insisting a “cleaner, emptier space” produces a “sharper mind.”
  • Why it matters: It’s an architectural rewrite of Aled’s identity; home is converted from sanctuary to surveillance.
• Killing Brian: She has the family dog put down, calling him a “burden.”
  • Why it matters: Removes unconditional comfort to break Aled’s resolve and coerce return; it’s cruelty calculated as strategy.
• The final confrontation at university: She tries to physically force Aled onto a train home.
  • Why it matters: Her overreach exposes the abuse to witnesses and catalyzes Aled’s refusal, turning private terror into a public boundary.

Essential Quotes

He’s always distracted by his silly little projects and whatnot. Useless stuff. Did you know he used to spend all his time writing some ridiculous story and reading it out on his computer?
This frames creativity as negligence, revealing Carol’s zero-sum logic: time spent on self-expression is time stolen from achievement. By belittling Universe City, she redefines joy as failure, making shame the tool that keeps Aled compliant.

Oh, come on, darling, it’s much too long, isn’t it? You’ll be a social reject if you turn up to university like that!
Cloaked in faux affection, Carol’s insult polices Aled’s image to match her social ambitions. The threat of “social rejection” weaponizes stigma—she leverages external judgment to enforce internal conformity.

A cleaner, emptier space makes a cleaner, sharper mind.
Presented as wisdom, this credo justifies erasing Aled’s room and, symbolically, his inner world. The aphorism converts control into “care,” allowing her to rebrand psychological harm as academic optimization.

That dog was a burden and a nuisance and its life was miserable.
The clinical language—“burden,” “nuisance”—recasts a loved companion as an obstacle. Carol’s euphemistic rationale exposes her ends-justify-the-means morality: anything that anchors Aled to himself must be removed.

I’m not here to see you and, frankly, I don’t want to. I want to talk to my real child.
By excluding Frances and elevating Aled as “real” only when compliant, Carol defines relationships as transactional. The line crystallizes her worldview: people have value only if they further her script—a belief that makes intimacy impossible.