Lynette McGregor Character Analysis

Lynette is Callum’s oldest sibling at 20 years old. When Callum first introduces Lynette to readers, he describes her as somewhat “simple.” For the last three years, Lynette has existed in her own world that Callum thinks must be happy. She doesn’t go out at all, and she experiences delusions where she insists she’s not actually a nought, but a Cross. While Callum, Mum, and Dad go along with Lynette when she experiences her episodes, they make Jude extremely angry—he thinks that Lynette believes she’s better than the rest of the family, and that their parents baby her too much. However, one night when Lynette and Jude actually engage in physical violence during one of Lynette’s episodes, Dad finally tells Callum and Jude the truth about why Lynette suffers these delusions. Dad reveals that three years ago, Lynette was in a relationship with a Cross boy named Jed, and several nought men beat Lynette and Jed almost to death, just for being in an interracial relationship. Once Jed was released from the hospital, he moved away. But Lynette still struggles to remember that this happened years ago and that she’s 20, not 17. And Dad suggests that she can’t bear to think of herself as a nought, especially after noughts caused the trauma. Lynette starts to briefly recover when she and Jude fight physically, but she’s unable to come to terms with how racist and demeaning the world is to noughts. Several weeks after the altercation with Jude, Lynette walks in front of a bus, killing herself, and makes it look like an accident—but she leaves a note for Callum, telling him the truth. For this, Callum hates Lynette. But several years later, as Callum faces his own execution, he wonders if Lynette may have had the right idea.