The Club

Nikki

In Ned’s absence, which is starting to look strange, Nikki takes a long walk and reflects on her relationship with Ron. Over the years, she has begun to see it as abuse and has been glad that her son would never know his father. At this point, she runs into Kurt himself. He asks her if she knew about the filming, and she tells him that she only suspected this weekend and feels betrayed by Ned, whom she respected and trusted. Kurt has watched enough of the video to see his father prey on a series of young women, though Ned cut out the sexual activity. Kurt refuses to pay and hands Nikki the memory stick. She watches it. Ned hadn’t included Nikki on the tape, but the young girls remind her of herself back then, and she sees Ron use the same routines on them. She is sick in the bathroom.

Jess

Jess gets hold of a guest costume and stalks Georgia throughout the performance. While she had always imagined Georgia as a reluctant party to the crime, the footage showed the woman taking charge in the aftermath. Jess now wants to force a confession from the woman. She accosts her, calling Georgia a murderer. The actress is genuinely confused, and Jess provides a few details about the accident. Georgia denies even being in England at that time. She tells Jess that her husband has many affairs, often with women who fit a certain physical type and resemble Georgia. At this point, Jackson lurches into the room.

Adam

Adam sees Jackson’s entrance and thinks that Jackson’s alcohol addiction is worse than it’s ever been. Searching for Ned, Jackson mistakes Adam for his brother. Adam clarifies his identity and ushers Jackson into a different room. Jackson isn’t the first to make the mistake. The identical costumes have led to multiple people congratulating Adam as the man of the hour. Even Annie handed him a drink meant for Ned. Jackson warns Adam not to mess with him, and Adam feels as though the actor might be drawing on a line from one of his films. Jackson then storms out of the room.

Exhausted (and drugged from the drink that Annie gave him), Adam sits down in an armchair. He remembers the first crime that he committed on Ned’s behalf: burning down the original Home Club. He resolves to quit regardless of the consequences but is then strangled from behind by Keith, who thinks that he is Ned.

Annie

Freddie backs out of the conspiracy. Annie reminds him of the consequences and asks why he betrayed his friends. He tells her that he was being blackmailed over a sexual scandal. Newly wary of being recorded, he would insist on meeting the journalist at Home where cameras and phones are forbidden, which ironically made him susceptible to Ned’s blackmail.

Keith emerges, his hands torn up from the struggle, and Freddie disappears. Annie learns that Keith murdered Adam and stuffed him inside a trunk. Frantic, Keith demands to know what he should do, and Annie wonders why everyone expects her to solve their problems. Then, they hear a helicopter preparing to take off and remove Freddie from the island.

Freddie’s helicopter woke up Lyra Highway. She then heard two men shouting, one of whom was Keith, and peeked out of the window. Keith joined a man whom she couldn’t see (Jackson) in a Land Rover, and they drove off. Lyra now knows about the drunk driving incident but not about the murder that sent Keith fleeing. Adam’s body was discovered the next morning after Jackson and Keith had already drowned in a waterlogged car. Coroners have noted the potent mix of alcohol and various drugs in Jackson’s bloodstream.

Jess watches Jackson stumble about while calling for Ned. She realizes that she believes Georgia. Sobbing, she runs out of the manor, overwhelmed with emotions including relief that she is not a murderer. She watches the video again, having recorded it on her phone. This time, she correctly identifies the woman in the video: Annie Sparks.

Nikki

Nikki remembers killing Ned on Friday night. She confronted him on the jetty, a place that he often went to think. Ned admits that he knew Nikki’s age and that she fit the profile of the girls whom Ron groomed. He set it up and filmed it. While he had other videos, it would have been hard to prove that those girls were underage. When Nikki became pregnant, he approached Ron, demanded money, and arranged the adoption, taking advantage of the looser adoption laws in the United States. Ron was thus protected from a potential paternity scandal.

Nikki asks why Ned kept her around, and he replies that she’s a good PA. One of her best characteristics is that she doesn’t ask questions, never catching onto the blackmail scheme. Even if she had, she would have been trapped since no one would believe that Nikki hadn’t been in on it. His contempt is the last straw. She walks away, surprising even herself when she turns back and runs at him, shoving him into the water.

Annie

Annie rushes to look for Keith and Freddie’s memory sticks. They self-erase after 72 hours, but she wants to copy them to her laptop so that she has leverage over the men who could expose her involvement in Adam’s murder. She finds Keith’s but not Freddie’s. Someone calls Annie from the Boathouse, where the locals whom Adam invited to watch the fireworks have arrived.

The journalist interviews Annie, the interim CEO of Home Group. In the days following the tragedy, she kept the other clubs open, fielding a record number of new applications. Ned’s death remains a mystery, though some speculate that either Keith Little or Jackson Crane might have been able to shed some light on the issue if they hadn’t died the next night.

Annie

On her way to Adam’s funeral, Annie finishes reading the Vanity Fair article and recollects the week following the deaths. Repeatedly interviewed by the police, “she [has] given her version of events so many times it [has] started to feel like the truth” (285). She has been trying to get into the bunker so that she can destroy the footage of Jackson and her.

Annie doesn’t know the details of Ned’s various blackmail ventures. She wakes up, anxious, asking herself if she has the strength to follow through on her plans. She intends to let in a new generation of wealthy members and accumulate new secrets. Unlike the old Home clubs, these patrons will come from a broader range of industries, giving her access to new types of indiscretion.

Laura

Laura is Adam’s wife, and the novel substitutes her point of view for that of her husband whose death has devastated her. She struggles to make any sense of the ordeal. She hates the way that Adam has been made into a footnote in the stories of Keith, Jackson, and Ned. Halfway through Laura’s eulogy, Annie’s phone rings.

Jess

Jess wrestles with the traumatic events of the island weekend. Her old job has accepted her back after the Island Home staff were let go due to the location’s closure with their non-disclosure agreements still in place. She remembers the chaotic mess of Sunday morning and the gradual discovery of all the bodies. Annie demanded Jackson’s key and likely found the memory stick, unaware that Jess had recorded it on her phone. Jess has waited until the media frenzy around Island Home died down so that her parents’ story didn’t get lost amid the noise. Finally, on the day of her father’s birthday, she calls Annie, interrupting Adam’s funeral. Jess tells her that she has seen what Annie did and that “it’s over” and hangs up. She has uploaded the footage to YouTube and emailed it as an attachment to the police. She is now free to move on and live her life.

Nikki

Nikki is let go from the Home Group with a large bonus. Despite multiple offers, she remains unemployed, spending her time in quiet pursuits. She sometimes thinks about contacting Kurt but hasn’t yet. One night, she catches part of an awards show and a tribute to the now-deceased Ron Cox. Kurt makes a speech, remembering the loving father and talented director. Then, he talks about the other side of his father, “the man that some of them knew. That some of them had helped enable” (303). He calls out his father’s crimes against women and condemns systemic abuse of women. Nikki cries and, proud, finally decides to contact Kurt.