I Found You

Alice’s oldest child, Jasmine, is 16 years old. Alice had a short fling with Jasmine’s father while on vacation in Brazil and didn’t have a way to contact him after the trip. Jasmine is more skeptical of Frank than Alice and Romaine. She is a contrarian, but this quality helps give Alice perspective; Alice is too quick to trust—and become involved with—men, and Jasmine acts as a voice of reason to help Alice avoid another short-lived affair.

Kai is Alice’s 14-year-old child. He is “lanky and of Afro-Caribbean descent” (20). His father was Alice’s next-door neighbor and casual sex partner. Like Jasmine, Kai is skeptical of Frank at first. As the only son, he feels protective of his mother and feels pressure to be the male authority in the house. Kai eventually comes around to liking Frank, and telling Alice that he does, but Frank has to prove that he has good intentions.

Alice’s 6-year-old child. She has “white-blond curls” (20) and likes Frank right away. She is the one who give him the name “Frank.” Her father lives in Australia. He is not allowed to see Romaine because he kidnapped her when she was an infant. Romaine’s backstory hints that Alice does not always have the best judgment in choosing male partners, and that she could get involved with someone dangerous. This casts doubt on Frank and serves as a point of tension when he enters the story, before his identity and intentions become clear.

One of Alice’s three dogs, Hero is a Staffordshire bull terrier that belonged to Barry, the man “who rented her shed” (5) and Alice regretted sleeping with. Even though Hero was poorly trained and owned by a criminal, Alice has “no problem with animals owned by criminals” (223). How she saves dogs reflects how she saves Frank.

A greyhound that Alice adopted as a puppy, Griff is 18 when Alice meets Frank. While Griff generally doesn’t like people, she warms up to Frank, which Alice takes as a sign that Frank is a good person.

The first time this character appears in the novel, he has lost his memory, including his name. Alice thinks, “He looks lost” (5). He has a southern accent, brown hair and eyes, and stubble. When Alice invites the amnesiac to eat with her and her family, Romaine dubs him Frank, and he is referred to as such for most of the novel as his memory slowly returns. Alice is certain Frank is a good person, but he struggles to believe this. It turns out Frank’s real name is Graham, but he goes by Gray before meeting Alice.

Part 2 includes chapters from the perspective of Gray, who is 17 in 1993. Only near the end does she reveal that Gray is Frank. Gray is from Croydon and is rather innocent; he hasn’t done drugs or kissed anyone. He is protective of his little sister Kirsty, and dislikes Mark when he starts dating Kirsty. However, Mark facilitates Gray’s first kiss with Izzy, and Gray’s first experience with the drug ecstasy. After Mark imprisons Gray and Kirsty; assaults and kills Kirsty; and kills Gray’s father, Gray loses his memory. He remembers who he is a little while later but doesn’t remember these events until he sees Mark again as an adult.

Part 3 includes chapters from the perspective of Gray when he sees Mark again. At 39, Gray teaches math to teenagers, lives alone with a cat named Brenda, and drinks heavily. Gray and his mother were wrecked by the loss of Kirsty and Tony; Gray spends a lot of time looking after his mother. When he sees Mark, Gray’s trauma is uncovered and his anger takes over. Gray kidnaps Mark and questions him about Kirsty: “Every time he looks at Mark Tate he feels himself back in that room […] His head is flooded red and black with terror and disgust, with rage and loathing” (278). This rage causes Gray to strangle Mark, but not kill him. Afterwards, Gray loses his memory again.

At the end of the novel, when Frank remembers that he is Gray, he realizes he hates his life—and himself. He checks himself into a psychiatric ward to process his trauma, overcome any lingering violent tendencies, and forgive himself for what he has done. This process makes him change his name. He no longer goes by Gray, but goes by his birth name, Graham. This represents how he is changing himself to start a new life and become worthy of Alice’s love.

Gray’s sister, Kirsty, died at 15 in 1993. At the beginning of her family vacation of that year, she and Gray are “reasonably close” (47). She has brown hair and eyes, and she is more innocent than Gray. Kirsty is “gorgeous, stupid, never-been-kissed” (88). When they take ecstasy together, Gray and Kirsty tell each other about their platonic love; it temporarily deepens their relationship. Shortly thereafter, Kirsty’s death traumatizes Gray into a fugue state and he forgets about this bonding moment. The end of I Found You is Kirsty’s funeral. Finally laying her to rest and having answers about her death, Graham is able to close a chapter of his life.

Tony is Graham and Kirsty’s father. He is married to Pam. At first, he likes Mark, but changes his mind after seeing Mark react poorly to a rejection from Kirsty. Tony tries to save Kirsty when Mark drags her into the sea, but dies of a heart attack on the beach.

Liljana is from Ukraine and goes by Lily in the UK; she is referred to as Lily throughout the novel. She is 21 and looks “very young, with fine, dark hair” (252). Lily’s mother is a translator and got Lily a gig working at a financial services conference in Kiev. This is where Lily met her husband, Carl, whose real identity is Mark. Lily hopes to start a career in the UK and is studying accounting through “a correspondence course” (26). She is a happy newlywed in love with her husband and hopeful about the future. When Carl goes missing shortly after their honeymoon, Lily’s outlook begins to change.

While searching for Carl, Lily feels like she has to be “hard as steel” (61). She doesn’t want to break down crying while asking strangers about Carl. Since she is new to the country, and still a newlywed, she hasn’t made new friends yet. She is “Alone. With myself—there is no sunshine” (206). Realizing how isolated she is, Lily feels depressed. However, she projects a tough exterior. Her mother says she is “brave and foolish” (132) to look for Carl after learning his passport is fake. Lily, however, still loves Carl.

Once she learns the truth about Carl, that he is Mark, she no longer loves him. She can’t love a man who assaults and murders people, and she is young enough to have no doubt that she can start over and build a new life without Mark. Lily and Alice are foils; Alice worries she is too old to find love again if things don’t work out with Frank. Alice is also more forgiving than Lily. While Lily “does not want a child until she is thirty-five” (203), she becomes an au pair for Russ and Jo, friends of Mark’s, in Putney at the end of the novel. In this position, she has the freedom to make friends with other au pairs.

Mark is the antagonist of I Found You. In 1993, Mark is 19 and studying business. Gray immediately thinks Mark “looks like a creep” (58), but Kirsty is attracted to Mark because he is “good-looking and fit” (59). His upper-class background can immediately be heard in his “voice straight from a James Bond movie” (60). Mark didn’t get along with his adopted parents, or their biological daughter, and ended up living with his aunt, Kitty, in both Harrogate and Ridinghouse Bay. She enjoyed being around Mark until her husband died. Then, Mark became crueler towards her, and was generally a “bully […] He thought girls were just there to service his needs” (308). He assaulted multiple girls before meeting, assaulting, and killing Kirsty.

After Kirsty’s death and Graham’s memory loss, Mark creates a false identity: Carl John Robert Montrose. Under this name, he becomes successful in financial services, befriends Russ, and marries Lily. Mark had “been a handsome boy and now he was a handsome man” (268) at 40. As with Kirsty, Mark wins Lily over with his good looks. When he is arrested for his crimes, Mark is still “blaming the world for every wrong thing he has ever done, incapable of real love or empathy, damaged to his very deepest core” (340). The trauma he endured before being adopted is only hinted at but cited as a motivation for his crimes. Mark is a foil to Graham; Graham works to overcome his trauma through psychiatric care, while Mark never thinks he is responsible for his actions born of trauma.

Mark’s aunt is 62 in the present day. In 1993, when she meets the Ross family, she has a “slight ring of hysteria about her manner” (75). This is because she lost her husband and Mark frightens her. Kitty owns the grandest house in Ridinghouse Bay, as well as an impressive house in Harrogate. After Mark buries Kitty in the garden of the Harrogate house, Kitty spends most of her time in Ridinghouse Bay, but likes “to be invisible” (314). She tells Frank and Alice about Kirsty’s death. For her role in it, she is arrested, but is out on bail at the end of the novel.

Russ is Mark’s only friend when he is going by Carl. Russ lives in Putney and had a baby with his wife, Jo, shortly before Carl married Lily. Russ accurately describes himself as “Normal height. Normal build. Brown hair. Glasses” (92). He is an average guy. After helping Lily, she believes he is “braver than he looks” (193). At the end of the novel, Russ hires Lily to be his au pair.

Lesley is a journalist who works for the Ridinghouse Gazette, the local newspaper. She is a “very small brusque woman with cropped white hair and funky diamante-studded reading glasses” (270). Lesley reported on the death of Anthony Ross, Graham’s father, in 1993. Derry and Alice do an internet search for news of drownings and find Lesley’s story. She appears in Part 3, helps the others, and publishes a follow-up story about Mark.