Fair Warning
If you just finished His and Hers and you’re asking who killed Rachel, how did the baby die, and what was that ending, you’re in the right place.
Here is the short answer. Anna’s mother is the killer. In Alice Feeney’s novel and in the Netflix series, she murders Rachel, Helen and Zoe to punish the girls who hurt her daughter. This video is full of spoilers, so if you haven’t finished, stop here and come back.
Who Killed Rachel
Let’s start with the crime. Rachel Hopkins is found in Blackdown Woods, stabbed more than forty times, with her shoes missing. Her fingernails have been painted with two words, two faced, and a red and white friendship bracelet is tied around her tongue.
For almost the whole book, you’re pushed toward the wrong people. Jack, the detective, was secretly sleeping with Rachel. Anna, his ex wife, lies about being in town. Then a former schoolmate turns up with a motive. The real killer was sitting in a conservatory, watching the news.
In the novel she’s Mrs Andrews, and the book never gives her a first name. The Netflix series calls her Alice. Her chapters are the short unsigned ones with no name, and the voice is so vague that you never think of a woman in her seventies.
The Red Herrings
Feeney builds a whole line of suspects. Jack looks guilty, because his boots, his knife and his secret affair with Rachel all point at him. He even hides that he was in the woods that night.
Anna looks guilty too. She knew about the bracelet in Rachel’s mouth before the police said it, and a car park ticket in her Mini bears the wrong date. Then there’s Priya, the eager young detective who always seems to know where everyone is, and Richard, the cameraman with a conviction for violence.
The book also gives us the killer’s own chapters, and they are written to mislead. She says people trust people like her, which sounds like a police officer or a journalist, and she mentions an imaginary friend, like Jack once had.
Hiding in Plain Sight
How does a seventy year old get away with murder? By being invisible. Anna’s mother seems to have dementia. She wanders the streets in a nightdress, forgets Anna is a grown woman, and Jack even takes power of attorney to look after her.
In her final chapter she admits it was an act. People in town had mistaken her drinking for memory loss, and she realised that playing forgetful would bring Jack back into her life and, she hoped, Anna home. The cancer was real, though. She just never took the tablets.
She also had keys. Anna’s mother cleaned half of Blackdown for twenty years, and people rarely change their locks. That’s how she walked into Zoe’s house and Anna’s hotel room, and why Anna later finds a drawer full of spare keys.
How She Did It
Her plan was to frame Jack, because she hated him for leaving Anna and for sleeping with Rachel. She borrowed his size ten Timberland boots and stuffed the toes with cotton wool. She took a small knife from a block she had given the couple as a wedding present.
Then she dressed the scene. Rachel’s shoes and phone ended up in the boot of Jack’s car. Fingernail clippings were hidden in a Tic Tac box. And she sent him texts from the dead woman’s phone, including miss me, lover.
Helen Wang, the headmistress, is killed in her office, with the word liar stapled into her chest. A voice changer from the school’s confiscated box is used to tip Anna off. Zoe is drugged with crushed sleeping tablets in her wine, killed in the bath, and left with one eye sewn shut.
The Name on the Wall
Here’s a detail I love. Before Zoe dies, she writes a name in her own blood on the bathroom tiles: Andrews. Everyone, including Jack, assumes she was warning them about Anna.
But the killer tells us Zoe opened her eyes, looked surprised to see who it was, and started writing. Reading it again, I think she was naming her killer. Anna’s mother is Mrs Andrews too.
It’s a lovely piece of misdirection, because the clue was sitting in the open the whole time, and every character looked at the wrong woman who shared that name.
Why She Did It
So why? It goes back to Anna’s sixteenth birthday. Rachel, Helen and Zoe, the girls she thought were her friends, got her drunk, gave her pills and walked her into the woods, where older men were waiting. Another girl, Catherine Kelly, was badly hurt. Anna ran, and she never told anyone.
Years later, Anna’s mother is clearing the house and finds a torn up suicide note in the chimney, where Anna tried to burn it. It lays out the whole night, and what Zoe did to Anna’s kitten. That is the moment the mother decides they have to pay.
She also knew what Rachel had done to other girls, and she knew where all of them lived. She had cleaned their houses.
How Did the Baby Die
Now the question people keep asking: how did the baby die? Anna and Jack’s daughter, Charlotte, died at three months old. Jack had talked Anna into a birthday dinner, and her mother babysat for the night.
In the morning they found Charlotte still in her travel cot, not breathing. The coroner called it a cot death, which means no one could have prevented it. Anna’s mother had been drinking and, for some reason, never called an ambulance. Anna and Jack both blamed themselves, and the marriage collapsed.
Netflix keeps that history. The series says Charlotte died suddenly while in her grandmother’s care, and Alice’s grief is part of what drives her to protect Anna.
Cat Jones and the Final Night
The mother’s plan had a second target. Cat Jones, the newsreader who takes Anna’s job, is secretly Catherine Kelly, the girl from the woods. The mother recognised her from a family photograph, and she meant to make Cat the fall guy.
She stole the cameraman Richard’s phone and texted Cat to come to her childhood home with her two little girls. Then she drugged the children, hid them in a shed, and left a note ordering Cat to hang herself.
Cat nearly dies, but she tied the noose with a sailing knot her father had taught her. She survives, stabs Anna’s mother in the woods, and gets run down by Anna’s car. Detective Priya Patel then shoots her. Richard, the cameraman, is killed earlier by the mother.
The Clues You Missed
Reread it and the mother is everywhere. She makes honey tea and boils a kettle on the hob. She keeps Anna’s bedroom spotless while the rest of the house is a mess, which matches the tidiness at each crime scene.
Zoe’s kitchen is spotless before she dies, and Anna’s hotel bed is turned down and a bottle of water left by it. Those are things a cleaner does, and a mother. Anna even notices that she doesn’t remember doing it.
Most of all, there are the pills on the windowsill. Priya later spots that they are cancer drugs, and nobody asks why a woman with dementia has hidden them in a drawer.
The Last Chapter
In the final scenes, the police believe Cat did everything. Anna hides the knife in her mother’s beehive, then lays a new patio over the vegetable garden, where her mother buried Anna’s father years before.
The last chapter is the mother’s confession. She is in a retirement village, with Jack, Anna and their niece Olivia visiting. And she is making another red and white friendship bracelet, for someone else next time they come. The book strongly hints the target is Priya, the detective who keeps stopping by with questions.
The book never says Anna knows, but she is protecting her mother. As she puts it, she did what she had to do.
Book Versus Netflix
How does the Netflix ending compare? The killer, the motive and the sad story of the baby are the same. The big change is how you find out. The series drops the killer’s chapters, and Anna reads a long letter from Alice, which has been her voiceover all along.
Alice also learns about the assault differently. In the book it is a note, while in the show it’s a video of the night. The final fight happens at a lake house, Priya shoots Lexy, who is the series version of Cat, and Richard survives to be arrested.
A year later Anna is pregnant, back on air, and she and Jack are raising Zoe’s daughter, Meg.
My Verdict on the Ending
I think the ending is bold and a little bonkers, and I mean that as praise. The best thing is that every clue about the mother is true, only misleading. The cleaning, the keys, the bees, the honey tea, the way she boils a kettle on the stove, all of it was there.
My gripe is the coincidence. A seventy year old woman building a plan this complicated, with hostages and a staged hanging, takes a lot of trust, and the book asks you to forgive it. I also wanted Anna to react more to learning what her mother did.
If you want to talk about it, leave a comment: was the mother right, and did Anna do the right thing by protecting her? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
