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Penny Kent
Gerald’s assistant and secret lover, whose affair punctures the family’s public image.
Gerald and the continuation of their relationship despite the damage caused by discovery.
The book

Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freePenny works as Gerald’s assistant.
She conducts a secret affair with him while he presents conventional family life publicly.
The discovery of their relationship helps trigger the final collapse.
How the book draws them
- ProfessionalHer political work gives her legitimate access to Gerald.
- DiscreetThe affair depends on secrecy.
- PersistentShe says the relationship will continue.
- CatalyticExposure helps destroy the family’s public story.
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