Callum McGregor and Ryan McGregor’s father-son relationship

Callum McGregor and Ryan McGregor’s father-son relationship is presented through Callum’s grief after Ryan’s death in Hewmett Prison and the lasting effects of that loss. Ryan’s execution is a decisive rupture: Callum believes the authorities’ account conceals what happened, and his mourning feeds an anger that he carries into his later life.

Family Bond and the Execution

Callum’s bond with Ryan is made most visible in the aftermath of Ryan’s death. At Ryan’s execution in Hewmett Prison, Callum is present among the Noughts gathered to witness it. The scene is viewed through Persephone Hadley’s perspective: she sees Callum among the crowd and learns that the prisoner being brought to the scaffold is his father, Ryan Callum McGregor, sentenced to death after being found guilty of seven counts of murder and political terrorism. The formal announcement establishes the state’s account of Ryan’s fate, while Callum’s presence makes its personal cost unmistakable.

By the following July, Callum thinks of Ryan’s death not as a neutral end but as a killing. He acknowledges that the authorities officially called it suicide, but says that he and other Noughts knew differently. The contrast between the official label and Callum’s conviction becomes central to how he remembers his father: grief is inseparable from his belief that Ryan was wronged.

Grief and Its Consequences

Ryan’s death remains an active wound rather than a settled memory. Callum says that something in him died when his father did, and that thinking of Ryan still hurts, even as weeks pass. His thoughts return to the circumstances of the death and to questions he cannot answer, including what Ryan was thinking before he died. That uncertainty leaves Callum with no explanation that can ease his loss.

The loss also changes the shape of Callum’s everyday life. At sixteen and a half, he is no longer at school and describes himself as aimless, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. In a burger bar, he orders a burger, fries, and milk despite not being hungry, using the meal to pass the afternoon. The ordinary setting and his lack of appetite register how little purpose he can find after Ryan’s death. He also feels unable to reach his mother, who has withdrawn into grief of her own.

The Father’s Death and Callum’s Later Life

When Jude reappears, Callum asks whether he knows what happened to Ryan. Jude answers that he does and frames what follows as payback. The exchange shows how the loss connects the brothers: Ryan’s death is not only a private bereavement but a grievance that Jude proposes to answer through revenge. Callum’s question, and Jude’s grim reply, place their father’s fate at the centre of a new and dangerous direction.

Later, Callum sends money to his mother when he can, but does not visit her because he believes contact would put them both at risk. He says that she has lost her family one way or another, through no fault of her own. His own separation from her therefore carries a double meaning: he remains concerned for her, yet his fugitive circumstances prevent him from acting on that concern as a son might wish.

Near the end of his life, Callum still imagines what Ryan might have thought at the moment of his death and admits that he will never know. He connects that unanswered question to his hatred of the Crosses. Ryan’s death thus persists as both intimate loss and political grievance: the father-son bond endures in Callum’s memory, but the account of the death has been left unresolved, and grief has become entangled with the conflict around them.