Jo

Jo is Frances’s friend and a returning figure in Frances’s life after the Tranquillum House retreat. Three weeks after Frances comes home, Jo speaks with her by phone, describes her plans to return to work, and opens a possible path for Frances’s new novel by proposing that it include a murder.

Identity and Reintroduction

Jo reappears in the novel’s closing stretch, in a scene set three weeks after the retreat. Her brief exchange with Frances places her in the role of an established friend who can tease Frances familiarly while also discussing her professional future. The conversation moves easily between Frances’s exercise claims, Jo’s retirement, and the prospect of publishing Frances’s latest work.

Retirement and Return to Work

Jo says she is going back to work because work is easier than retirement. Her explanation is not idleness but the competing expectations of family life: her siblings think she should take full responsibility for their elderly parents, while her children expect her to care for their children. She loves her grandchildren, but does not want that affection to become an assumption that she will provide day care. Her decision to start her own imprint gives her return a concrete form and makes clear that she intends to shape her work rather than simply resume an unspecified job.

Jo and Frances

Jo’s familiarity with Frances is evident in the teasing opening of their phone call. When Frances says she has been doing push-ups, Jo disputes the claim and asks whether she has interrupted her in flagrante delicto. The joke establishes a relaxed, candid friendship; Jo can question Frances without ceremony, and Frances responds by talking about the small lifestyle changes she is trying to maintain after the retreat.

Their conversation also connects Jo to Frances’s writing career. Jo has read Frances’s new novel and says she loves it, but she is not yet ready to make an offer. Instead, she asks whether Frances would consider adding bloodshed, potentially a single murder. Frances doubts she has it in her to write one, and Jo counters that murderous impulses already exist in Frances’s romantic heart. The exchange turns friendship into a professional negotiation without losing its humor: Jo offers a publishing opportunity, but also challenges Frances to broaden the novel.

Narrative Role

Jo’s return brings Frances’s story back into ordinary life after the intense experiences at Tranquillum House. The scene gives the retreat a modest afterlife rather than presenting it as a complete transformation: Frances is attempting to exercise more, eat less chocolate, breathe more mindfully, and drink less wine, while Jo is making a practical change of her own by leaving retirement for a new imprint. Their conversation ends with a possible murder on the table—not as an event in their lives, but as Jo’s proposed addition to Frances’s fiction.