69 pages • 2 hours read
Clare MackintoshI Let You Go
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
Patrick remarks on the fact that Jenna’s door still doesn’t lock. He has brought dinner over—a blue lobster, which he cooks. Jenna is feeling comfortable and smiling, so he asks what she is thinking. She tells him, “I was thinking about us” (197). He says he has to know, and playfully flicks water at her. She screams, spins away, and puts her arms over her head in an instinctive reaction. “The air swirls around me and for a second I am transported to another time. Another place” (198).
She apologizes. Patrick tries to comfort her, but she pulls away. He says her name and asks softly, “What happened to you?” (198). They hear a door knock, and she thinks it’ll be Iestyn. Instead, it is Ray and Kate from Bristol CID. Kate says, “I’m arresting you for causing death by dangerous driving, and for failing to stop at the scene of an accident.” She gives her the usual police warning. And Jenna knows it is time to stop pretending.
Chapter 22 Summary
Starting Part 2, this chapter comes from the standpoint of a previously shadowy character, referenced once or twice but seen only briefly. It is Ian Peterson, Jenna’s husband, addressing Jenna in the second person, as “you,” in his narrative.
Ian, a guest lecturer at the university, first saw her at the student union and watched her talk with her art student friends. He is disappointed with her name, which isn’t classic enough, but is taken with her beauty and maturity compared to her brash and obvious friends. He notes, “You weren’t like them” (205). One day, he sees her crying, and asks if he can sit with her. They have a conversation that reveals how different they are. He tries to impress her with his job, guessing that she is an artist. He finds she has just read a letter from her father, and she reveals the contents of it to this stranger. He tells her, “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to see you” (208).
He offers to get her a coffee, but by the time he returns her friends have shown up, and he can’t make much progress with them there.
Two weeks later, he brings coffee to her, and they talk more. He tells her it was his last lecture that day and they won’t see each other again. After seeing her disappointment, she asks him out for a drink and he offers dinner at a French restaurant instead. She is delighted, which Ian contrasts with his previous lover, Marie. He picks her up at her residence hall. Readers learn more about Eve and Jenna’s pain after her father left in the ensuing dinner conversation. Ian lies that his parents are dead. Jenna tells him they have something in common: “We’re both missing our fathers” (212). She is wrong, but Ian does not tell her that.
At the end of the date, Ian walks Jenna to her door. She says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been taken out by a proper gentleman before” (213). He kisses her hand and tells her to sleep well. Ian believes she wants him, but not enough—yet.
Chapter 23 Summary
Ray wonders at Jenna Gray’s reaction. She seems emotionless; if anything, she appears relieved. She asks for a few minutes to gather her things and explain matters to Patrick, but they go in with her. She tells Patrick who the police are, says she must go with them: “Something terrible happened last year and I have to put it right” (215). Patrick offers to drive her to Swansea in the morning instead, but the police are impatient to get her away. Jenna asks Patrick to look after Beau. The detectives put handcuffs on her, seeing her scarred palm as they do. As they leave to go to the car, half a mile away, Patrick asks her to call and get a solicitor.
After they get into the car, Kate asks Ray if he thinks Jenna’s “all there.” Ray wonders if she is in shock. Kate asks, “How can anyone be so heartless?” (218). Ray says they should hear what she has to say. As they drive back, Jenna asks how they found her. Kate says she has a broadband account in his name, and they checked with her landlord. Ray sees her fists bunched in her lap, the only sign that she is not relaxed. Kate makes a defiant dig at Jenna; Ray admonishes her.
Chapter 24 Summary
Jenna cries in the car after Kate’s dig. She thinks, “It’s no less than I deserve, but even so it’s hard to take” (220). She never forgets Jacob’s mother’s loss. She wonders if the gossip in Penfach has already started, and remembers the betrayal on Patrick’s face. As they get close to Bristol, she also considers what will happen—the charge, court, the media. Kate opens the door for her, seemingly apologetic for the earlier harsh words. They take her to a custody area, passing another prisoner who makes obscene gestures, and explain the situation to a DI behind a desk.
Kate goes through her things while the custody sergeant tells her the rules. Jenna sees a pale blue business card among the coins and bank cards. Kate Evans has noticed it, too, and Jenna begs her silently to leave it. Kate takes it up and examines it but says nothing. She lists it on the form with Jenna’s possessions. They ask if she wants a solicitor. She says no, “I did it” (225).
Ray and Kate take Jenna to an interview room and start to record the proceedings. She tells them her name: Jenna Alice Gray. She relates that it had been a long day at an exhibition. It was raining, and she couldn’t see well. The boy came out of nowhere. She grips the edge of the table as she relives the events of that night. “I could have reached out and touched his face through the glass. But he twisted from me into the air and slammed onto the road” (227). Then she saw Jacob’s mother. When they ask her why she didn’t stop, she says simply, “I couldn’t” (227).
Chapter 25 Summary
Kate doesn’t believe Jenna. Ray says, “There’s something not quite right about it” (228). He has a feeling. Stumpy has located Jacob’s mother, Anya, who left right after the funeral because she received a lot of criticism from the community. She sought solace from the Polish community in London. Stumpy says Anya came to the UK at eighteen, did some cleaning for some offices, and got pregnant by someone working there. She is now twenty-six and feeling very guilty. It is after midnight when they all leave the office, and there is a moment of romantic tension between Ray and Kate, which passes.
Ray and Kate meet for a late breakfast the following day at the cafeteria. Kate says Jenna gave the same account as the previous day but would not say where the car is or why she didn’t stop. Kate is starting to agree with Ray that something is off. She mentions that Jenna gave a lot of detail about the moment of impact and wonders how the woman saw so much. If it happened quickly, she shouldn’t have seen anything. If it hadn’t happened quickly, why did she still hit him? Kate doesn’t want to charge her yet. She wants to find the car first. Ray says the mobile she threw away is probably more important. They agree to bail her.
Chapters 21-25 Analysis
This section begins with the big twist in Chapter 21, when Jenna is arrested for Jacob’s death. Prior to this, Mackintosh has worked to make Jenna’s motivations and actions ambiguous, so that while readers understand that she had undergone major trauma, much of it can be explained by and attributed to the loss of her only child. At this point, a narrative milestone occurs in that the characters whose viewpoints have been explored in the first part of the book finally meet and encounter one another.
Part 2 of the narrative begins by interspersing another point of view with Jenna’s and Ray’s. Finally, readers are introduced to the villain of the piece, Ian, who has only rarely been referenced before. His relation of meeting Jenna is the beginning of the part of the book in which all hidden motives, actions, and secrets come to light.
The theme of recovery becomes ever more overt—yet so does the theme of manipulation and abuse. Ian’s point of view reveals a cold-hearted, devious personality from the outset, when he is disappointed that Jenna’s name doesn’t live up to her looks and targets her immediately, playing a game that she does not know she is playing. Every moment between Ian and Jenna is orchestrated by him. He is a repellant character with many traits prevalent in antisocial personality disorder, and it is a difficult but effective device for an author to write about events from his perspective; this requires the author to put herself into a psychopath’s shoes in order to attempt a re-creation of his state of mind. In this first chapter of Ian’s story, he painstakingly relates how he set the trap that Jenna eventually fell into.
Back in Bristol, readers are interested to see how Jenna reacts to her arrest. Throughout these chapters, she shows a lack of emotion that hides multitudes and refuses to discuss why she left the scene of the crime. One of the revelations readers may experience here is that Jenna isn’t motivated by simple evasiveness; she is actually protecting herself from Ian’s wrath even after a year of being away from him.
As a result of the addition of Ian’s point of view, Bristol CID perspectives are less in evidence in these chapters, although Kate’s personality is further elucidated by her snide remarks at Jenna’s situation as well as her quick-thinking when it comes to noticing the small blue business card that Jenna is holding. This little card, which is for a women’s refuge for abused women, becomes another important motif in the story, as Ray and Kate are quick to realize that there’s something wrong about the situation, and the small card becomes an important factor in finding out the truth once they have unlocked its meaning and what business it represents. The card is intentionally ambiguous, since it is often given to women who have a stake in hiding that they have it.
Another motif that becomes significant here is that of the broken lock on the door. While first mentioned in passing in Chapter 12, the broken lock is noted a few more times before Jenna and Patrick have a conversation about it in Chapter 21 that more clearly states its significance. Jenna says about Iestyn, “I think he finds it absurd that I want to lock it at all” (193), and Patrick says he has a point. However, a locked door signifies safety for Jenna, and the lack of one is troubling for someone who expects violence from her estranged husband—who does indeed come in through the door later to exact his revenge.
In these chapters, the tone and pacing of the story change; they have been low-key until now, but the plot begins to veer from more formulaic women’s literature to tenser and more thrilling suspense novels.
