42 pages • 1 hour read
Gilly MacmillanWhat She Knew
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Day 5: Thursday, October 25, 2012”
In the early morning hours of the fifth day of the investigation, Rachel is disturbed by the sound of someone climbing over her backyard fence. It’s a journalist hoping to get a photo of activity inside the house. She yells to frighten him away while Nicky runs outside and accuses the rest of the reporters of vandalizing her family.
By mid-morning, Jim and Emma appear at Rachel’s place. They want to ask Nicky about two people named Andrew and Naomi Bowness. Rachel is confused because she doesn’t know what this line of questioning is about. Nicky resists talking about the Bowness couple until Jim forces her to disclose the truth.
Andrew and Naomi are Rachel and Nicky’s real parents. They had a son named Charlie who was afflicted with a rare degenerative disease. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Ben. To spare their child from future suffering, the parents took Charlie, and all three leaped to their deaths. Rachel was only a year old at the time and remembers none of these events. Nicky has carried the burden of protecting Rachel from the truth for her entire life.
Alice and Katy Bowness are the real names of Nicky and Rachel. Their aunt changed their identities as children to prevent the stigma of their family’s tragedy from following them through life. Jim pushes Nicky to admit that she showed an unnatural attachment to Ben after he was born. Nicky admits that she thought Rachel was weak and incapable of raising a child.
After the detectives leave, Nicky and Rachel try to patch up their fractured relationship, but Rachel feels her entire family history is a lie. “From now on it would be impossible to unpack every detail of my history, every assumption that had led to me building a sense of my own identity, and of Ben’s identity” (264).
The focus of the chapter now switches to Jim’s perspective. During his session with Manelli, he reveals that he felt a sense of triumph at having discovered Nicky’s secret. “Sometimes on a case you get a bit of information that feels electric, like static under the skin, especially when it’s very unexpected” (240).
Jim says that Fraser is happy that the department is finally making progress. They’ve been able to eliminate Fount as a suspect since he has an alibi. Other detectives are verifying Nicky’s whereabouts during the time of the disappearance.
When Manelli asks about Jim’s personal life, he says that he and Emma hardly have a chance to attend to their relationship. They’re pursuing different angles of the case and are too exhausted to spend any quality time together at the end of the day. In spite of battle fatigue, Jim admits to Manelli that he feels fired up about the Finch case because things are finally starting to happen.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Day 6: Friday, October 26, 2012”
As Nicky prepares breakfast for Rachel on the morning of Day 6, she says it might be a good idea if she leaves for a few days. Her own family misses her, and Rachel needs time to process their new family history. Thinking she’s being helpful, Nicky has copied a supportive message from a family in America whose son was murdered. This communication only upsets Rachel further because she refuses to accept the possibility that Ben could be dead. “I’d also placed my trust in the veneer of a civilized society, the lie that is sold to us daily, which is that life is fundamentally good and that violence only happens to those who warrant it; it tarnishes only the trophy that’s already stained” (282).
Rachel asks Emma to drive her to visit her mother-in-law, Ruth, at a nursing home. Ruth suffers from dementia, but she looks forward to her weekly visits with Rachel and Ben. Rachel lies to the old woman and says that Ben is sick at home with the flu. On the way back, Rachel asks Emma to drive to Ben’s school because Rachel needs to pick up his belongings. When confronted with so many items that remind her of her son, Rachel nearly passes out. Emma guides her back to the car.
Back at home, Nicky’s bags are packed. Laura will be over later to take her place. When Nicky vacillates about leaving or staying, Rachel angrily tells her to leave because she can’t stand her sister hovering.
When Laura arrives later, she mentions that she knows one of the reporters outside. Laura writes a gossip column and recognizes many of the press people. Now that Rachel is already suspicious of her sister, she’s beginning to doubt whether she can trust Laura either. Someone has been leaking details of the case to reporters. That someone might be Laura. Rachel shoves Laura out the door.
Jim picks up the thread of the narrative at this point and talks about a letter that’s come to Fraser. The writer accuses John of arrogance and hopes that the loss of his child will humble him. Fraser immediately orders Jim to bring John to headquarters to discuss any former patients who might have a grudge against the doctor.
The detective spends hours with John, pressing for details of children who died on the operating table. The process takes its toll on both men. Jim confesses, “I found the interview unexpectedly hard, and I think that’s because I recognized myself in him. I knew that if I was him, I would be broken too, and somehow, although it shouldn’t have, that got under my skin” (296).
The narrative switches to one of Manelli’s interviews with Jim. When discussing his role in forcing Nicky’s confession and grilling John for the names of former patients, Jim defends his actions by saying the fallout from those events was simply collateral damage. He insists he was doing it all for Ben. Manelli’s case file reveals a side note from the psychologist. She writes that if Jim doesn’t confront his emotions over the Finch case, she fears for his long-term psychological stability.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
This segment foregrounds a theme that hasn’t received much earlier attention—the loss of trust. In earlier chapters, Rachel lost trust in the public when it failed to support her emotional plea to find her son. That general loss of trust is amplified when Rachel discovers the truth about her family and feels she can no longer trust her own sister.
When Jim forces Nicky to disclose her real parentage, Rachel realizes her entire past has been built on a lie. Rachel has not only lost her son, she’s lost her entire identity. While this might be difficult to accept, the more disturbing revelation is Nicky’s fascination with Rachel’s son. This adds a new dimension of complexity to what Rachel perceives as her sister’s betrayal. Nicky may be the person who abducted Ben because of her all-consuming obsession to replace her dead brother, Charles.
Rachel’s loss of trust isn’t limited to her sister. It begs the larger question of whether anyone at all can be trusted. Her parents were untrustworthy for abandoning their two remaining daughters. Her aunt can’t be trusted because she fabricated an entirely new identity for Nicky and Rachel. Nicky can’t be trusted on two counts: for lying about the family’s past and for secretly coveting Ben.
Now that Rachel’s trust has been violated, no one in her inner circle is free from suspicion. Her distrust changes to paranoia. Rachel turns on Laura simply because Laura works as a journalist. Without any evidence to back up her assumption, Rachel accuses Laura of leaking confidential information to the press and throws her out of her house.
Even though Jim is the catalyst for destroying Rachel’s faith in those closest to her, he doesn’t register any guilt about what he’s done. He explains to Manelli that this family drama only constitutes collateral damage in the detective’s search for Ben. In making this statement, Jim once again demonstrates how emotionally disconnected he really is.
