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 51-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 51 Summary
Jenna asks Ian why he killed Jacob, and Ian replies that the boy would have ruined everything because Anya wanted him to be a father. Jenna thinks of how she would have loved Jacob like her own son.
She feigns weakness, then throws her head back so that the back of her skull hits his face. He grabs her as she runs, and she pushes at him, causing him to lose his footing and fall down the stairs. As she goes downstairs, though, he grabs her ankle and gets atop her. She gets a knee into his groin and scrambles up, running out the door. He chases her. She misses the car park, making it to the coastal path. Eventually, she slows down, but then she hears his voice, telling her there is nowhere to run. She isn’t sure where he is, but then he is behind her with his forearm across her throat. She jabs an elbow into his ribs and twists away.
He reaches for her, but once again she fights back: “I have run enough from him” (433). She smashes her palm into his chin, pushing him backward…over the cliff. For a second she thinks she will follow him over, but she ends up face down on the edge and he falls into the waves.
Chapter 52 Summary
Ray gets a phone call from the South Wales DI as they are driving around Cardiff, telling him that Jenna is alive and Ian is dead. He says it sounds like she was running on the coastal path when he came after her, they struggled, and he went over the path. Ray doesn’t think he “fell,” exactly, but Swansea is filing it as an accident.
They arrive at Swansea hospital, where Jenna is recovering. She has many bruises. They ask how she is doing and apologize for not getting to him in time. Patrick is there; he helped Jenna get home after Ian’s death. After telling Jenna they probably won’t pursue her for lying about who was driving the car that night, he and Kate go to the Swansea police station. The DI, Frank Rushton, says they have not recovered Ian’s body, which is not unusual. Bodies often get broken up by the rocks. Frank invites the two out for a curry with the other police officers. Ray realizes this is dangerous for him and Kate, staying at a hotel after hanging with the Swansea boys. He declines, then texts his wife.
Chapter 53 Summary
Jenna gets some rest and awakens in the morning. Patrick is there, giving and seeking reassurance about her condition. Eve walks in. They embrace. Eve gives her a get-well card from her children. Jenna laughs and admits she has missed them all. Eve apologizes for the things she said after Ben’s death. Jenna replies that she should have listened. Eve says Jenna loved him, “Just like Mum loved Dad” (443). At this point, Jenna realizes that her father abused her mother. Eve tells her that their mother finally sent their father away after Eve witnessed him beating her and he hit her, too. Jenna wishes she could put things right. After Eve’s visit, Patrick says Iestyn will change her lock and clean up the cottage. Jenna believes now that life might go on: “Life could be good” (444).
Epilogue
Bethan and Iestyn have set all the villagers straight about Jenna, and she gets only kindness from them. She takes Beau out for a run before bed, thinking how Patrick understands her need for solitude. As she watches the tide come in, she actually feels lonely. She suddenly thinks she catches a glimpse of writing on the beach, but as she looks more closely there is nothing there: “It is not there. I cannot see my name.” (447). The sun slips beneath the horizon, and it is dark.
Chapters 51-Epilogue Analysis
The ending chapters of I Let You Go include plenty of action, as Ian and Jenna fight on a coastal path atop the Penfach headlands. She is able to get the best of him, perhaps for the first and last time in her life, because of a surge of bravery. This can be seen as a direct result of the fact that she has experienced recovery and happiness—and therefore, she has something to lose. She says, just before her final jab that pushes him over the edge, “I have spent most of my adult life hiding, running, being afraid, and now just as I’m feeling safe, he has come back to take it away from me. I will not let him” (433). Interestingly, the end also gives additional depth to the words I Let You Go, which can also mean that she has escaped Ian’s yoke at last. She has let him go not just physically, down that cliff, but psychically. He no longer has a hold on her in any real sense.
Interestingly, the police are completely ineffective to resolve Jenna’s plight. While they have shown themselves through diligent police work to be effective at finding out the truth, they are too late to help Jenna at all. This is one way of allowing Jenna to be the heroine of her own story. The chapter also ties up loose ends in Ray’s life, as he chooses not to go with Kate and other officers from Swansea CID in favor of returning home to Mags and his family. Just as Jenna has wrenched control of her life out of chaos, so has Ray.
In that way, Mackintosh has created a very sophisticated and tense ending. There are some elements one would expect at a happy ending, including the support of Patrick and Beau and the changing opinions of the townspeople. Jenna has found her voice and has, all by herself, gotten the best of Ian. Yet despite her success, there remains a palpable and real sense of foreboding that lingers with the audience after the last page has been turned, because the chaos of the sea will not reveal Ian’s end.
The story’s dominant symbols continue to the end. The Welsh landscape plays a large role in Jenna’s successful attempt to rescue herself from Ian. He falls over a cliff, into an unforgiving ocean with a current known to dash bodies to pieces; the setting here is an important player in the scene.
Here in the final scenes, the last incidence of writing in the sand makes Mackintosh’s audience wonder if Ian is truly gone forever, and it does seem written to create ambiguity about his ultimate fate. However, Mackintosh has said that, as far as she is concerned, the story has been concluded; in a Q&A on her website, she said, “Suffice to say, the story—as far as I’m concerned—has been told, and I have no plans to return to these characters.” Thus, if Jenna’s vision of the writing is not real, those words can be more aptly and powerfully be read as a metaphor for the idea that even when the reality of a threat is gone, the scars remain; but those, too, disappear with time.
