Phoebe Mull is the novel’s antagonist and a secondary narrator, functioning as a complex and round character whose actions are fueled by a potent mix of artistic ambition and deep-seated generational animosity. As a television writer on the cusp of success, Phoebe is sharp, cynical, and fiercely protective of her self-made identity. She embodies a millennial worldview steeped in financial precarity and resentment toward the perceived ease and wealth of the baby boomer generation, represented by Kate and Jack. This sense of Economic Resentment Across Generational Divides is inherited from her mother, Sarah Hadling, whose university heartbreak at the hands of Kate and Jack has become the foundational myth of Phoebe’s family, casting them as the villains who ruined her mother’s life and, by extension, her own. This grants Phoebe a level of pathos that informs the novel’s moralistic turn: while Phoebe is positioned as the novel’s antagonist, her motivations for basing her television show on the Hittlestones and the disproportionate revenge Kate exacts on Phoebe for it begs the question of who might be considered the true villain in this story. By the novel’s end, Phoebe is the tragic figure of Kate’s relentless persecution.

Phoebe’s primary motivation is a form of vicarious revenge, and her chosen weapon is her art. She orchestrates an elaborate scheme to gain access to the Hittlestones’ private conversations via their smart home system, mining their intimate lives for the material to create her show, Cheating. This act is central to the novel’s exploration of The Ethics of Publicizing Private Lives in Art. Phoebe sees her actions as a legitimate artistic process, transmuting real-life pain into commercially viable entertainment. Her agent, Aloysius, encourages her to lean into the show’s “amorality” (52), validating her belief that personal history is raw material to be exploited for narrative effect. She feels little to no empathy for her subjects, viewing them less as people than as symbols of a privileged, complacent class that deserves to be taken down.

Despite her hard exterior, Phoebe is revealed to be emotionally isolated and vulnerable. Her relationship with her partner, Tony, is marked by a controlling and often dismissive attitude, and her bond with her twin brother, Tristan, is the only one in which she shows genuine feeling, though it is strained by distance and their shared trauma. Her carefully constructed world begins to unravel when Kate retaliates, and it collapses completely when Kate delivers the fabricated, destructive revelation that Jack may have been her father. This lie shatters Phoebe’s sense of self and purpose, leaving her as lost in life as her mother once was. Her quest for revenge ultimately backfires, destroying her partner’s life, as well as her own, proving that the pain she sought to inflict on others was ultimately turned back upon herself.

Jack Hittlestone is a key character whose presence looms over the narrative despite his death at the beginning of the novel. He is primarily characterized through the conflicting perspectives of his wife, Kate, and his depiction on the television show Cheating, which Phoebe writes to get back at him for ruining her mother’s life many years earlier. To Kate, Jack is an ideal husband: charming, intelligent, and a partner in a deeply intimate marriage defined by its own secret codes and inside jokes. He is an affluent architect with a penchant for gadgets, epitomized by his installation of the smart home system that controls their house. This system, a symbol of modern convenience and security, ironically becomes the very instrument of his and Kate’s violation, allowing Phoebe to eavesdrop on their lives. Kate’s initial narrative portrays him as a fundamentally good man whose private persona is known only to her.

This loving portrait is posthumously shattered by the revelations in Phoebe’s TV show, Cheating. The show recasts Jack as a calculating adulterer who shared the most sacred elements of his marital “private language” (3) with another woman. This dual portrayal creates a central ambiguity around his true nature. He is simultaneously the man Kate loved and a duplicitous figure whose betrayal poisons her memories and ignites her quest for revenge. His death prevents him from ever defending himself, leaving his character to be defined entirely by the two women whose lives he deeply shaped and, in different ways, damaged. He is the catalyst for the entire conflict, his past actions creating the ripples that escalate into a tidal wave of retribution.

Tony Mull, Phoebe’s partner, is a significant minor character who functions as the primary collateral damage in the feud between Kate and Phoebe. A handsome and gentle primary school teacher with aspirations as a folk musician, Tony is presented as a kind, supportive, and largely passive figure in contrast to the cynical and ambitious Phoebe. Their relationship appears to be one where Phoebe is the dominant force, with Tony often receding into the background. He is unaware of the true, invasive origins of Phoebe’s screenplay and is blindsided by the campaign of harassment that Kate unleashes against them.

Tony’s role in the narrative is primarily that of a tragic figure. His innocence is never in serious doubt, which makes his fate particularly tragic. Kate’s revenge escalates from targeting Phoebe to destroying Tony, first by spreading false rumors that he is a pedophile and ultimately by framing him for cryptocurrency theft. His arrest, trial, and conviction represent the horrifying culmination of Kate’s moral collapse and serve as an illustration of The Escalating Cost of Revenge. He is a pawn in a game he does not even know is being played, and his life is destroyed simply because of his association with Phoebe, demonstrating how the pursuit of vengeance inevitably harms the innocent.

Sarah Hadling, Phoebe’s mother, is the ghost in the narrative machine, a character whose past trauma serves as the inciting incident for the entire plot. Though she only appears briefly in flashbacks and as an ornery presence in the present, her story is the origin of Phoebe’s vendetta against the Hittlestones. 

As a university student, Sarah was involved with Jack Hittlestone before he left her for her new friend, Kate. This youthful heartbreak is magnified in her retelling into a life-defining betrayal by her privileged, ruthless peers, which she passes down to her daughter. She becomes a “born victim” (140), cultivating a persona of grievance that shapes Phoebe’s entire worldview and fuels her desire for retribution against the people who supposedly ruined her mother’s life. Sarah embodies the idea that personal histories, whether true or embellished, can become toxic legacies.

Conor is a former incarcerated man whom Kate mentored through a prison visiting charity. He is a key accomplice in Kate’s transformation into an avenger. Having been unjustly imprisoned himself, he is sympathetic to Kate’s desire for retribution and possesses the technical skills and amoral perspective necessary to help her achieve it. He provides Kate with the digital tools to harass Phoebe, including the malicious USB drive that she ultimately uses to frame Tony. While Conor enjoys a clever, limited revenge against his own enemy, he grows uneasy with the sheer ruthlessness of Kate’s campaign. While he enables Kate’s desire for revenge, his eventual hesitation highlights just how far beyond conventional morality Kate is willing to go.

Tristan is Phoebe’s twin brother, functioning as her closest confidant and a foil to her intense, isolated nature. As the only other person who truly understands their mother’s toxic influence, he provides an important, albeit distant source of support for Phoebe. His decision to move to Australia is a form of escape from their family trauma, but it also leaves Phoebe to bear the full weight of their mother’s narcissism alone. His presence in the story, mostly via phone calls until the end, highlights Phoebe’s loneliness and emphasizes the familial pain at the root of her actions. He is sympathetic and understands Phoebe’s motivations, but his physical and emotional distance renders him a passive observer rather than an active participant in her life.

Daphne is Kate’s oldest and closest friend, a senior civil servant who is organized, loyal, and kindly, if somewhat bossy. She represents Kate’s stable, conventional social world before and after Jack’s death. Daphne is a source of immense comfort for Kate during her initial period of grief, rallying her friends and ensuring she is never alone. She is a static character, remaining a constant, supportive presence throughout the narrative. However, her conventionality also means she is kept in the dark about Kate’s secret campaign of revenge. She serves to highlight Kate’s increasing isolation, as Kate can no longer confide in her oldest friend about the dark turn her life has taken.