Sue

Sue is a Radio Brighton producer, Gerry Fenn’s partner, and Ben’s mother. Independent after a damaging marriage, she is wary of relying on another person even as her attachment to Gerry deepens. Her return to church and her actions during the Banfield disaster give that independence a changed meaning: in the final crisis, she draws strength from Ben, then uses his presence to help Gerry and the three of them escape together.

Identity and Background

Sue is thirty-three when she and Gerry meet in the narrative, four years older than him. She has dark, long hair and works as a producer at Radio Brighton, a demanding job that gives her professional independence but leaves her concerned that she is seeing less of Ben. The novel introduces her both through Gerry’s attraction to her and through the practical arrangements that shape her life: work, motherhood, and a deliberate refusal to let a new relationship become the center of her security.

Sue was married and divorced before she was twenty-six. Her former husband worked in advertising in London, and his repeated infidelities led her to seek a divorce. She had met him through a film-production job connected to his agency, but after the marriage ended she wanted distance from both London and the advertising world. She moved to the south coast, where her parents could help care for Ben. He stayed with his grandparents much of the time, while Sue made a point of seeing him nearly every day and having him with her on most weekends.

Her financial choices reinforce her self-reliance. Sue refused maintenance from her former husband, including support for Ben, and accepted only half the proceeds from the sale of their Islington house. The arrangement left her working hard and aware that her job took time away from her son. Her independence is therefore not presented as a simple preference for solitude: it is a principle formed after betrayal, maintained at a cost, and tested by the competing demands of work and parenting.

Relationship with Gerry Fenn

Sue and Gerry live only three blocks apart, but she resists his proposal that she give up her flat and move in with him. She fears becoming wholly dependent on one person again. At first, she had intended to permit only casual relationships; the connection with Gerry grows more frequent and emotionally important than that plan allowed. She worries that she is seeing too much of him, while Gerry’s own unease comes from suspecting that their arrangement favors him. Sue counters that she is receiving companionship, comfort, and a person to lean on when circumstances become difficult. Their closeness is real, but neither treats it as a settled domestic partnership.

The novel places desire alongside practical disagreement rather than allowing romance to erase Sue’s boundaries. Gerry admires her independence, though he is not always certain that his admiration is free of self-interest: her separate home preserves his own freedom too. Sue’s refusal to move in with him is not proof that she feels little for him. Instead, their intimacy develops within an unresolved negotiation about dependence, care, and how much either should surrender.

Banfield and a Return to Church

After the events at Banfield, Sue tells Gerry that she has gone back to the church there and has taken Ben with her on Sundays. Her decision follows an uncanny experience she struggles to describe: she recalls feeling dreamy, almost hypnotized. Gerry offers mass hysteria as an explanation for the collective response to the girl, while Sue points out that some investigating doctors disagreed about the Mansfield children’s collapse and that malathion had been found in the soil. Her contribution makes her neither an unquestioning believer nor a dismissive skeptic; she tests one explanation against competing accounts while admitting that her own experience unsettled her.

The return to church is significant because it is an action, not merely a report of altered belief. Sue brings Ben with her, folding her religious reconsideration into the daily responsibilities that already define her life. The novel does not establish that she has reached a firm theological conclusion. It does show her choosing to return after an experience that left her uncertain, and to make that return part of her son’s Sundays as well.

Ben, the Disaster, and the Rescue

During the final catastrophe at the shrine, Sue holds Ben close as the church fills with panic and the ground opens. Ben asks why people are screaming. She answers by soothing him and shielding him, attempting to give him the calm that the surrounding emergency has stripped from the crowd. When he insists that they must find Gerry before leaving, Sue goes with him. She becomes dizzy and nauseous, but the symptoms recede when Ben comes back and holds her. Sue recognizes that her steadiness seems to depend on his presence, although she does not understand why.

She leads Ben over the benches toward the altar, passing people who need help. Sue knows she cannot rescue everyone and focuses on reaching Gerry, hoping that together they may be able to carry one or two people away. Her choice is painful but deliberate: the danger is too great for her to assist all those calling for help, so she concentrates on the people she can reach. When she finds Gerry, she brings Ben to him and places the boy’s hand in Gerry’s. Gerry’s strength begins to return. The scene establishes a concrete chain of care: Ben steadies Sue, and Sue uses the child’s touch to help Gerry recover enough to move.

After Molly Pagett dies in the fire, Gerry tries to reach her and is left collapsed by what he has witnessed. Sue and Ben remain beside him. As the oak falls and the shrine burns, they pull Gerry from the platform and lead him away from the danger. The three escape together; afterward, Gerry draws Sue and Ben close while the fire continues and rain begins to fall. Sue’s role in the ending is neither to defeat the evil nor to explain the disaster. She preserves a small human bond amid its collapse, acting first as Ben’s protector and then as the person who helps bring Gerry out alive.

Character and Narrative Significance

Sue’s arc links the novel’s intimate concerns to its public catastrophe. Earlier, she guards her independence because dependence has brought betrayal; at the shrine, survival requires trust and shared action. That change does not erase her earlier caution. Rather, the finale shows her capable of relying on Ben without losing her agency: she understands that he steadies her, chooses to keep him close, and then turns that resource outward to help Gerry.

Her return to church likewise remains open to uncertainty. Sue describes an experience that felt almost hypnotic, considers explanations that do not agree, and nevertheless goes back to Banfield with Ben. The combination resists a simple division between faith and skepticism. By the end, her most decisive actions are not declarations of belief but acts of attention and protection: calming her son, finding Gerry, placing Ben’s hand in his, and helping them leave together. Through Sue, the story gives its final movement a counterpoint to destruction—a fragile, practical form of solidarity that persists even when explanation and safety fail.