Claire
Who they are
Claude Whelan’s wife, and the only voice in the book that asks him to end it. C02 gives her one telephone call from the middle of the second atrocity: she had been watching, she hoped he would do something, she hoped he would bring this to an end. He keeps her photograph on the desk and touches it when he is alone, “accessing her calm fortitude, her moral certainty”.
She never appears in a room, which is the point of her: she is what Whelan has to answer to when nobody is watching him.
Book 5 — London Rules
- C02 — Phones during the second attack; her hope that he will end it is the closest thing he has to a conscience.
- C06 — The photograph on his desk, touched on the way out of the room.
- C10 — Present in Whelan’s thoughts as the day gets away from him.