By Ink & Imaginings | Updated August 2026

Mad Mabel weaves two timelines together for 80 Chapters which means it is very easy to lose track of where you are. This is a summary of every chapter, in order, from the prologue to the last line.

Use it however you need to. Read it straight through as a refresher before book club, scan to the chapter you are stuck on, or come back after you have finished and want to process everything Sally Hepworth was doing with Daphne.

⚠️ MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: Full spoilers for Mad Mabel ahead, including the ending. If you have not finished, this will ruin every twist in the book.

Want the shorter version instead? Our complete Mad Mabel guide has the character breakdown, the ending explained, book club discussion questions, and my honest take.

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Jump to a Chapter

Eighty chapters is a lot to scroll. Pick your chapter and go straight to it.

Prologue to Chapter 16:
Prologue · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16

Chapters 17 to 32:
17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30 · 31 · 32

Chapters 33 to 48:
33 · 34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38 · 39 · 40 · 41 · 42 · 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 · 48

Chapters 49 to 64:
49 · 50 · 51 · 52 · 53 · 54 · 55 · 56 · 57 · 58 · 59 · 60 · 61 · 62 · 63 · 64

Chapters 65 to 80:
65 · 66 · 67 · 68 · 69 · 70 · 71 · 72 · 73 · 74 · 75 · 76 · 77 · 78 · 79 · 80

Mad Mabel Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Below is every chapter of Mad Mabel, start to finish, including the ending. Sally Hepworth braids two timelines together. We have Elsie at 81 on Kenny Lane which is labeled "Now," and Mabel's childhood at Rosehill labeled "Then." I have kept the labels so it's easier to follow along.

Full spoilers from here. If you are mid-read and just want to check where you are, the jump to chapter above is for you.

Prologue Through Chapter 16

Prologue

An unnamed narrator points out that nobody suspects old women or little girls of murder. This is because Men commit almost all of them. An elderly woman or a young girl turns up in those statistics roughly once in a million. She closes by saying she has always thought of herself as special.

Chapter 1

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is 81, six feet tall and broad shouldered with reddish grey hair. She has lived on Kenny Lane in central Melbourne for close to sixty years. Her neighbors are Peter Pantages, Joan Waters who sues people for fun, Roxanne and her seven year old Persephone, Old Ishaan and his Chihuahua Nugget, and the Nguyens.

Nobody talks much, which suits her. She is making tea with her childhood friend Daphne when a photocopied newspaper article appears under her door. The headline makes her dizzy. Someone knows who she used to be.

Chapter 2

The article got everything right. Her name, her parents, her isolated childhood, the hospital, and the fact that people around her kept dying. Persephone turns up needing to interview an old person for school and insists on calling her Elsa.

Elsie tries to palm her off on Ishaan, but Persephone says he must be dead. There is no answer at the door, vitamin boxes are stacking up on the steps. Elsie climbs the shared fence and looks through the back door glass. Ishaan is on his kitchen floor. Nugget stops barking for the first time all day.

Chapter 3 (Then)

Born 1944 as Mabel Elsie Waller to Elliott Waller and Mary Fitzpatrick of Rosehill. She is "Mad Mabel" long before she understands why. At six, her mother hears a boy use it at Mass and works out on the walk home that her daughter has no friends.

Mabel says she had one once. Daphne Barton who moved to England. She is bullied for her red hair, her height, and being clever. Billy Harris makes her timekeeper for a fence climbing race and tells her to wait in her garden for the winner. She waits knowing nobody is actually coming.

Chapter 4

We are introduced to the full opulence of Rosehill. Ballroom, conservatory, pool... guesthouse. Elliott's favourite story is walking past as a boy, seeing Mary framed in a window, and deciding the place would be his one day. Mabel eventually works out the love story was never between her parents. It was between her father and the house, and her mother just happened to come with it.

Mary gets ready with sherry or gin. Good days mean makeovers and blood red lipstick. On a bad one she puts her fist through the dressing table mirror, and Mabel notices that the blood running down her wrist is the same shade as the lipstick.

Chapter 5

Mabel creeps downstairs during a dinner party. A drunk guest wonders aloud whether she is really Mary's daughter, given the difference in looks. Sent to bed, she hides by the staircase instead. A platinum blonde named Susan McGinty sits with her, says something about how sorry she must be about "what happened to Kitty," and is cut off when Elliott appears.

From the landing Mabel hears her father say they do not discuss Kitty, and that Mabel is mad. She decides the only good things about him are his hair and his Harrods wool socks. If she ever kills him, she will give the money away and keep the socks.

Chapter 6 (Now)

There are paramedics on Kenny Lane and all the neighbors are out watching. Elsie silently corrects Peter's version of events. The back door was unlocked, and Ishaan was obviously dead, just a thin trickle of blood from one ear.

Joan tells the paramedics that whoever found the body should be looked at. Daphne defends her. Joan turns to the street and asks if any of them know who Elsie really is. Peter tells her to stop. A police car pulls in.

Chapter 7

Waiting on the porch, Elsie decides Joan slipped the article under her door, and she and Daphne laugh until they cannot breathe. She says that laughing like that is the part of friendship that keeps you alive.

Constable Harris and Detective Gibson arrive. Harris asks about the scratch on her arm. She explains Ishaan scratched her while she was handing his dog back, and admits she had been threatening to send Nugget to a sausage factory. She does not pretend to have liked him.

Chapter 8 (Then)

With her parents travelling, Mabel is left with her mother's younger sister Cecily, called Cess. She wears slacks, smokes, and drinks martinis. Cess's best friend Vanessa, called Ness, is a librarian who actually listens and praises Mabel's writing. Ness tells her to keep a diary.

Mabel overhears them agreeing that if her parents are too stupid to appreciate her, they will do it instead. Ness gives her Anne of Green Gables and hugs her. It is the first time anyone has hugged her because they wanted to.

Chapter 9

The diary starts, and it quickly fills up with Cess and Ness. Two unmarried women with a wordless understanding, which the town has opinions about. Mabel tells them they are bosom friends like Anne and Diana. Watching them makes her happy and quietly wrecks her, because she does not think she will ever have that kind of relationship.

Chapter 10

Mabel spends her parents' parties hiding with the caterers and then watching guests from doorways, writing down who is drunk and behaving badly. One night she hears something in the upstairs hallway and finds a platinum blonde with her legs around a man in a black suit. She recognises the socks first. Maroon, grey diamonds, pure wool. Her father's socks.

Chapter 11 (Now)

Two weeks on, Ishaan's house has been cleared and Elsie has ended up with Nugget because the shelter is full. Peter has brought over a dog bed. Persephone wants to play Uno. Elsie refuses, threatens the sausage factory again, then offers her the dog outright. Nugget bares her teeth at Persephone and licks Elsie's hand. Persephone declares the matter settled.

Roxanne is asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Elsie tells Persephone to go find a friend. Persephone says Elsie is her friend, and when Elsie brushes it off, points out that beggars cannot be choosers, and clarifies which of them is the beggar.

Chapter 12

A man is loitering at the end of the lane and Persephone is hiding on her own porch, scared. He asks if Roxanne lives there and Elsie says no. He asks Peter, who starts to answer honestly, catches Elsie's eye, and lies badly enough that the pause gives them away. Joan turns up with a younger man and the stranger leaves, telling them to let Roxanne know Shane came by.

Chapter 13

Harris and Gibson are back again. Elsie says Ishaan is no loss, that his dog barked constantly and used her garden, and that she threw the results back over the fence. Asked why she went looking for her nemesis, she says she wanted him to do Persephone's school interview instead of her. Asked whether she threatened to kill him, she says that if she had been planning to, she would not have announced it first.

They take one of her shoes. On the way out Gibson says he had always wondered what became of her, and Harris jokes that she had to change her name because she could hardly go around calling herself Mad Mabel. Elsie tells him she never called herself that.

Chapter 14 (Then)

At fourteen, Mabel is packed off to summer camp while her parents holiday nearby. She steps off a rotting platform, falls, breaks her arm and cracks ribs. Her mother arrives at the hospital smelling of wine and apologising, and Mabel is grateful for it anyway. After surgery she wakes to find Mary crying, and finally hears about Kitty.

Katharine, her younger sister, dead of polio at one. Mabel had polio herself at three and a half. One day, isolated on the patio, she was found playing with Kitty. Nobody could explain how the baby got outside. Kitty was dead within a week and Mabel recovered. Elliott believes Mabel unlocked the door on purpose, out of jealousy. Mabel asks whether her mother believes it. Mary only asks whether she did it. Mabel says no. But she also cannot remember.

Chapter 15

Her Hospital stay drags on. Her mother visits every day, drinking and smoking. Cess and Ness bring books and her diary. Her father does not come at all. Mabel turns Kitty over and over and starts to wonder whether she is mad. She rereads Anne of Green Gables, and decides she is going to find a bosom friend of her own.

Then Mary arrives one morning still in yesterday's clothes, having discovered Elliott is going to London with Susan McGinty. Mabel tells her what she saw in the hallway. Her mother slaps her, calls her a vile girl, asks what is the matter with her, walks out to the fire escape, and goes over the railing without stopping.

Chapter 16 (Now)

Elsie and Daphne buy replacement shoes. The next morning Persephone lets herself in, demands breakfast, and complains that there is nothing baked in the house. She helps herself to biscuits. Elsie catches herself thinking about making banana bread. Then she realises Persephone has wandered off and finds her looking into the closed second bedroom. Elsie's heart goes, and she snaps at her and shuts the door. Persephone apologises with tears in her eyes and runs out.

What this stretch is doing: Hepworth spends these chapters proving that the label came before the crime. Every cruel thing anyone believes about Mabel traces back to one man deciding what story to tell about his own daughter. Meanwhile in the present she adopts the dog she complains about and lets the child in every single day.

Chapters 17 Through 32

Chapter 17 (Now)

Pounding on the door at 7:30 in the morning. Adeem Anand and Libby Conquest run a YouTube channel called AdLib that reinvestigates old cases, and they want Elsie's story. Adeem blocks the closing door with his arm until Libby tells him to move it, which is the thing that makes Elsie hesitate.

They know her legal name. Adeem shows her a headline reviving Mad Mabel and getting her age wrong. She whispers that she is 81, not 82. Libby offers her uncut footage and her own words. Elsie sees a television van and a second car with cameras coming down the lane, repeats that she is 81, and shuts the door.

Chapter 18

The street is a circus. Elsie gets a law firm on the phone with Daphne beside her. She has already rung the police, where a call taker confirmed the investigation is open and that detectives had not spoken to press, which points at a neighbour. Elsie said out loud that she would kill Joan, and Daphne ended the call for her.

Senior partner Linda Raiti walks her through the headline line by line. Questioned: true. Nemesis: true. Age: wrong, and not enough. Linda tells her a defamation case would probably outlive her, and waives the fee. Elsie cries silently. Daphne asks if they are in trouble. They are.

Chapter 19

Elsie picks the YouTubers, reasoning that they are young enough to be sincere and, she says, easier to manipulate. Face blurred, location withheld. Libby records the opening: Mabel Waller, convicted of murder in 1959 at fifteen, known worldwide as Mad Mabel, speaking publicly for the first time at 81.

Chapter 20 (Then)

Two days after Mary's death, Elliott visits the hospital to tell Mabel her mother has died, as though she does not know. He accuses her of not being upset enough, asks what the two of them talked about, and then asks whether Mary really jumped. Mabel says they were talking about Susan McGinty, which lands. He tells her the funeral is Thursday, a day she cannot attend, and that he is leaving for London. She asks who unlocked the porch door the day Kitty got outside. He smiles slightly and leaves without answering.

Furious, she throws Anne of Green Gables at the wall, and a girl in a hospital gown and pink cardigan appears in the doorway: Daphne Barton, from kindergarten, back from England for tuberculosis treatment and boarding at St. Mary's. She proposes friendship and lists her qualifications, which are loyalty and an ability to talk her way out of anything. They pinkie swear. Daphne stays all afternoon and suddenly the world feels survivable.

Chapter 21

Five days after the death a nurse announces that Mabel's mother is here. The hope lasts about a second. It is Cess, in black, with a Mass booklet from the funeral. At Rosehill, Mabel cannot make herself walk through the door, and Cess waits on the porch with her for nearly an hour. Ness arrives, pulls them both in, and Cess makes a raw sound that finally lets Mabel cry.

In the days after, Mabel and Cess bond over hating Elliott. When Mabel says he hates her because of Kitty, Cess refuses the premise entirely, calls her darling for the first time, and tells her the truth. He resents her because she is smarter and stronger than he is.

Chapter 22

Mabel overhears men speculating about why Cess and Ness never married, and asks them. Cess says no man was ever good enough and that marriage was built for men's benefit. Ness says love turns up in a lot of places and that Mabel can marry or not, as she likes.

Later Daphne arrives on a bike in the rain and insists Mabel ride the handlebars with a broken arm. They crash immediately, and again, and again, laughing on the ground each time. On the porch Daphne mentions she has started at St. Mary's, hates everyone there, and wants Mabel to know the visit is not pity.

Chapter 23 (Now)

Elsie works through the public theories on camera. Kitty was polio. She did not push her mother off the balcony. Asked what the reports got right, she says the coverage of the murder she was actually convicted of was fair, and if anything soft on how vicious it was. Libby raises Daphne, about whom the public has been ugly, and Elsie gets emotional.

Daphne was not a bad influence, she was the one person who stood there, gave everything, asked for nothing, and saved her. During a break Adeem takes a call from his wife and remarks that he never knew you could be this frightened of someone you love. Elsie tells him that for her, love and terror have always been the same word.

Chapter 24

Persephone hammers on the door mid-interview and drags Elsie into the lane to show her that she has learned to spin a Hula-Hoop around her neck, which she practised all day. The neighbours watch from their porches. A group gathers at the end of the lane, one of them holding a sign reading Murder Mabel. A man points, shouts that it is her, and comes fast. Peter steps out.

The man stops and raises his arm. Persephone screams at him to stop. Elsie puts herself in front of the child, there is a loud pop, and she is covered in blood and going down. Her last thought is about whether Persephone is safe.

Chapter 25 (Then)

Cess and Ness come up to meet Daphne properly. Mabel panics about the gap between Daphne's family and hers until Daphne breaks it by telling Cess she looks like Marilyn Monroe and Ness like Audrey Hepburn. Afterwards Daphne says they will be friends for life.

Mabel goes back to St. Mary's a week early to be near her, and Daphne is waiting at the gates with a new name: Maybelline. After history, her teacher Mr. Loukas gives her his condolences, mentions losing his own mother young, and says he is there for her any time, day or night. That night Mabel imagines marrying him.

Chapter 26

A beach bonfire, classmates, Billy Harris, and a new Greek boy called Christos who opens by calling her Beanstalk. Mabel's comeback wins the group over. During Truth or Dare, Billy is dared to kiss her and forces his tongue into her mouth. She shoves him off and he turns nasty.

Following her down the beach, he taunts her about Kitty using a phrase she recognizes instantly as her father's, and she suddenly understands, Elliott spread the story that she killed her sister. That is where Mad Mabel came from. That is why she has never had a friend. Something in her gives way. Looking back, Elsie says this was the moment she actually became Mad Mabel.

Chapter 27 (Now)

Face down on the cobbles, blood in her eyes, Roxanne screaming, Peter calling an ambulance. Elsie's first question is whether Persephone is hurt. Adeem tells her it was a water pistol filled with fake blood. She tries to cancel the ambulance and Roxanne insists, because of the fall and the broken wrist. Peter goes with her, the Nguyens take Nugget. As the doors close Elsie catches sight of Joan on her porch, looking ashamed.

Chapter 28

Clean break in the wrist. Daphne turns up in the corridor furious about the attack. When they decide to keep her overnight Elsie complains and is privately relieved, because she is shaken and cannot stop thinking about what could have hit Persephone instead.

Peter refuses to leave. Persephone visits, thanks her for saving her life, and demands to sign the cast first. After they go, Elsie clocks that Roxanne's hurry to leave was about more than the roommate.

Chapter 29

Peter drives her home to find Kenny Lane closed off by police, called in by Peter and by Joan's lawyer nephew. Elsie is surprised Joan helped. Peter says Joan is not so bad, and Elsie suggests he is sweet on her. She turns down his offer to come in, wanting to be alone before Daphne arrives, and once inside she finally cries.

Then Roxanne knocks with daisies from Mrs. Nguyen and asks, nervously, whether Elsie is Mad Mabel. Elsie confirms her birth name and that the stories are hers. Roxanne, distraught that her daughter has been spending every day with a convicted murderer, says Persephone cannot come over any more. Elsie says she understands.

Chapter 30 (Then)

After the bonfire, Mabel runs until she cannot. She comes across Mr. Loukas walking his dog. He sits her down and gets everything out of her: her mother, the name, Kitty, her father's accusation, her fear that everyone thinks she is a monster. As she leaves he tells her not everyone thinks so. His dog, for one, thinks she is amazing. Nobody has ever called her that.

Chapter 31

Billy does not come home. His parents start knocking on doors, beginning with the Wallers, because Mabel was the last person seen with him. Cess brings Mrs. Harris up to her room. Mabel confirms the bonfire, explains that Billy followed her and would not stop, and offers Mr. Loukas as a witness to where she was afterwards. A police car pulls up. An officer speaks to Mr. Harris, who turns to his wife looking stunned and tells her they have found Billy.

Chapter 32 (Now)

Persephone whispers through Elsie's bedroom window, wanting to know why people sprayed her with blood. Elsie says people decide things about you without knowing you. Persephone admits her mother has banned her from bothering Elsie, and that she came because she thought Elsie might be lonely, being lonely herself.

She mentions a new friend at school called Delly, and complains that Roxanne will not let anyone come over. She takes Elsie's hand. When Roxanne calls, they drop it fast. On her way out, Persephone says she liked being called darling. Elsie says if she keeps saying Elsie instead of Elsa, it might happen again.

Chapters 33 Through 48

Chapter 33 (Now)

At 11:02pm a tall dark haired man is hammering on Roxanne's door shouting for her. Elsie is reaching for the phone when the door opens and Persephone is standing there in pajamas holding a blanket. Elsie throws on a dressing gown and gets outside with Nugget.

She claims to be the babysitter who nipped home, and when he does not buy it she bluffs about how heavily policed the street is thanks to Joan. A siren sounds somewhere and he turns to look. Elsie grabs Persephone, gets her inside, slams the door, and the two of them hold on to each other and cry.

Chapter 34 (Then)

Swimmers find Billy semi conscious at the bottom of concrete steps by a beach car park. Suspected brain injury, induced coma. The rumour is immediate and specific, Mabel pushed him after he rejected her. She stops being ignored and starts being feared.

Daphne defends her to anyone who will listen, which is nobody. In the library Mabel shows Daphne Anne of Green Gables and finds out Daphne already loves it, and they perform the bosom friend ceremony properly, and end up laughing on the floor. Mabel calls it one of the happiest moments of her life.

Chapter 35

Two days later Christos finds them in the bike shed. He apologises for Billy's comments about her mother and sister, and for not stepping in when Billy kissed her, and says that if she had hurt Billy it would have been fair enough. Daphne pushes her to walk home with him.

On the way he explains Billy engineered the whole game to get the kiss. Mabel asks whether people really think she is a killer, and Christos says people want a common enemy and do not much care about the truth. He tells her he does not believe she could kill anyone, then says that if she did decide to do Billy, he would not tell.

Chapter 36

At Sunday Mass, with the parish praying for Billy's recovery, Mabel spots a face in the crowd and realises she has a crush. When an elderly parishioner arrives late, the man gives up his seat and signals her to follow him out. He takes her behind the church, puts her against the brick wall, and kisses her. It is nothing like Billy. Afterwards he tells her she enjoyed it, and that he will see her next week. She agrees. It is Mr. Loukas.

Chapter 37 (Now)

Persephone will not let go, shaking. They go through the house and confirm Roxanne is not there. Elsie says she has to call the police and Persephone begs her not to, terrified her mother will be arrested for leaving her. Elsie checks the lane, locks the door, and wedges a chair under it.

In the bedroom Persephone climbs into her lap and asks her to stay, and makes her pinkie promise. As she falls asleep she mumbles that she loves Elsie. Elsie tells her to sleep well, waits until she is out, and lets herself smile.

Chapter 38

Keys in the lock. Roxanne comes home to a barricaded door and Elsie inside. Persephone explains that a man came and Elsie protected her, and Roxanne goes rigid. She admits she leaves at night for an office cleaning job that pays well but runs while Persephone sleeps, and that overnight childcare is out of reach.

Elsie describes the man. On her way out she asks Roxanne whether she would like her to kill him. Roxanne asks if she could make it painful. Elsie says painful is a specialty of hers.

Chapter 39

Daphne arrives to find Elsie wrecked. Roxanne knocks and comes in, and it all comes out. The man is Shane, Persephone's father, and the restraining order is useless. He was charming and then he was not, and he hit her first while she was pregnant. She got out when Persephone was six months old and he keeps finding them. She will have to move again and cannot keep working nights.

With Daphne prompting her, Elsie offers to have Persephone on Roxanne's work nights. After Roxanne leaves, Elsie opens the spare bedroom to get it ready, and the room is full of photographs of Peter. She packs them away and tells herself it is time to stop.

Chapter 40 (Then)

Mabel tells Cess and Ness she is going to the pictures with a friend. Cess notices she is wearing her mother's scarf and straightens it for her. She is meeting Mr. Loukas, and they keep meeting. At his house, the school sports shed, behind St. Mary's. He tells her he loves her and has never felt like this. Mabel notes that nobody has ever said that to her before, and that hearing it becomes something she would do anything for.

Chapter 41

A hot Saturday, and Daphne suggests doing their faces with Mary's cosmetics. The result is a disaster, Mabel clown-faced with flat wet hair, both of them on the floor laughing. They laugh loudly enough that they do not hear Elliott come home early. He fills the doorway and roars, and the laughing stops.

Chapter 42 (Now)

Filming resumes. Elsie makes Adeem coffee and deliberately leaves out the sugar he asked for, on health grounds. They want to use the footage of the attack, and she agrees, saying she has been a spectacle her whole life. Libby says it is time to talk about her father. Elsie goes stiff, then agrees, noting that he was never physically violent with her because he preferred the psychological version.

Chapter 43 (Then)

Elliott stands over the two girls in his bedroom, mocking Mabel's face and calling her a tramp. Cess comes in and defends her, explaining that she gave permission for Mabel to use her mother's things as part of grieving.

Elliott waves it away, announces he has come back to look after his daughter, and gives Cess seven days to pack. After he goes Mabel stands completely still, as though not moving might stop it happening The safest months of her life end in about four minutes.

Chapter 44

Mabel does not get out of bed all weekend. Daphne visits. Cess brings trays up. On Sunday night Mabel says she is not going back to school, and Cess tells her flatly not to waste a brilliant life. Mabel asks why she cares. Cess says Mabel is the only family she has left and the most important person in her life.

Mabel points out she is not the most important person in her father's. Cess says that is exactly why she is never leaving her alone with him. Mabel smiles and privately does not believe Cess can win.

Chapter 45 (Now)

Detective Inspector Carlaw and Detective Wills interrupt filming and ask Elsie to come to the station. Libby and Adeem point out she is not under arrest, and the detectives note that refusing will not play well later.

Elsie goes out of curiosity. The neighbours are all watching. She asks someone to take Nugget and Roxanne and Persephone step up. Joan asks if she should tell Peter, and Elsie surprises herself by saying yes.

Chapter 46

At the police building they lay it out. Ishaan's DNA on her shoe, which she dismisses, since she found him. Then her DNA under his fingernails, which she also explains, since he scratched her over the dog the day before. They line up the rest: the feud, the witnessed threats, the DNA, the fact that she found the body. Elsie tells them they are here because of a nickname. The interview stops when her lawyer arrives, and it is Joan's nephew.

Chapter 47 (Then)

A week after Elliott moves back in, Cess produces the paperwork. Her parents' will left Rosehill to Mabel, with Cess as trustee until Mabel is grown. Elliott tries charm on Mabel, then argues the will says nothing about custody and threatens to take her away. Cess tells him he would have to apply to the courts and would lose, given how much he travels.

On his way out he mentions, lightly, that the law would give him a claim on the house if there were no other living relatives. Cess tells Mabel it is an empty threat. For the first time, Mabel believes somebody loves her.

Chapter 48

Billy wakes from the coma about a month on, with holes in his memory. He comes back to school looking the same and behaving worse. The Sunday meetings continue. Then, handing out parish flyers with Daphne after Mass, Mabel sees her father come out of the church arm in arm with Susan McGinty, a blonde girl of about six beside them. She and Elliott lock eyes as they pass. Daphne calls it a death stare. Mabel says looks cannot kill, and then says that if they could, he would already be dead.

Chapters 49 Through 64

Chapter 49 (Then)

Elsie says her worst fear at that age was ending up in her father's care and her greatest happiness was the secret, and that in her innocence she thought of Mr. Loukas as her Gilbert Blythe. It ends in the school sports shed. He arrives, starts kissing her in the dark, pushes her against a metal cage of basketballs, and puts his hand inside her underwear. Brother Stanislaus, the principal, walks in.

Mabel hides, Mr. Loukas produces an excuse, and the principal locks the shed on his way out with her still inside. She waits for Mr. Loukas to come back. He does not. She smashes her way out through the tin wall with a hockey stick, and goes to his house filthy and expecting an explanation. A young woman opens the door.

Chapter 50 (Now)

Bailey Andrews, Joan's nephew, drives Elsie and Joan home and tells her not to talk to police again without him, and that the evidence is circumstantial. Joan admits she was frightened of Elsie and that she is the one who told police about her past after Ishaan died. She says she has since worked out that the whole street adores Elsie, Persephone most of all, who thinks she is a hero.

She apologises, takes responsibility, and promises to help fix it. As they pull in she mentions that Peter has been beside himself, and Elsie realises Joan is asking permission. She gives it, and finds herself starting to like the woman.

Chapter 51

Elsie waits for her first babysitting night and admits to Daphne that she has never been any good with children. Roxanne is late so Elsie goes over and offers to do bedtime so she can get to work. Daphne clears out immediately. Over two hours Persephone requests stories, water, a stuffed hippo, several bathroom trips, and a back rub lasting forty five minutes.

She is asleep at 11:33pm and Elsie feels comprehensively beaten by a seven year old. At 3:33am Elsie wakes with Persephone asleep beside her, cannot carry her back with a broken wrist, and lets her stay. When the child curls into her and puts an arm across her, Elsie cries and cannot stop, while Persephone sleeps through it.

Chapter 52

Adeem brings brownies from his wife and jokes about how often Elsie gets injured while they are filming. Libby raises a diary entry in which Mabel wrote that she was delighted Mr. Loukas was dead. Adeem finds the word choice a problem. Elsie asks them for a better one, and they offer pleased, thrilled, jubilant, and she points out jubilant is considerably worse. Adeem tells her to stop stalling and tell it.

Chapter 53 (Then)

Mr. Loukas appears in the hallway behind the woman. She wants to know why a student is at their house, and he identifies Mabel as his history student. Mabel invents a game of hide and seek and asks to use a phone. The woman, Tessa, says they have not got one, watching him the whole time. She follows Mabel out, takes hold of her arm, and asks what is going on between her and her fiancé. The word stops Mabel dead.

Tessa tells her he left a school in Adelaide over an affair with a student, calls it a sickness, and goes back inside. Standing in the street, Mabel understands that it was never a romance and that she was never the first. She punctures his tyre and runs home to Cess, who notices the scratches on her arms, does not push, threatens her with a cold dinner, and leaves a hot one outside her door.

Chapter 54

Tessa's words go round Mabel's head all day. A substitute takes history and does not know where Mr. Loukas is. An assembly is called after lunch, and before Brother Stanislaus finishes his sentence Mabel already knows the teacher is dead. She also knows she is glad.

Chapter 55 (Now)

The filming wraps at ten and Elsie goes to bed feeling lighter than she has in decades. At four in the morning Nugget barks and she puts it down to possums. At 8:30 she wakes to Peter, Joan, Roxanne, Persephone, and the Nguyens standing in the lane staring at her house. She goes out. Persephone is pointing and shouting one word. MAD is painted in red down the side of her house.

Chapter 56 (Then)

The school is told Mr. Loukas died in an accident, crushed by his car while changing a flat tyre. Daphne whispers good riddance. Mabel takes grim comfort in being the last girl he got. At home Cess and Ness have heard it on the radio, and Ness mentions his fiancée was interviewed, which Mabel visibly reacts to. Cess asks about the night before. Ness asks, gently, whether something happened between Mabel and her teacher.

It all comes out: the affair, Tessa, the other students. Mabel says she did not kill him but she is delighted he is dead. Cess holds on to her and says she is delighted too, because otherwise they would have had to do it themselves.

Chapter 57

Ten days later the autopsy calls it homicide. Cycling to school, Mabel tells Daphne she saw him the night he died and that she cut his tyre. Daphne swears she will never tell, even if there was more. At school two uniformed officers are with Brother Stanislaus, and one says loudly, in front of everyone, that they need a statement because she was at his house that night. Mabel asks whether she needs an adult, and is told her father has already consented.

She is walked to a police car in front of the whole school. At the station the lift doors open on Cess arguing that they cannot question a minor without her permission and that her lawyer is coming. Mabel runs at the sound, finds Cess behind a desk, and Cess crawls underneath it to get to her. Holding her, Cess announces to the room that she is going to kill Mabel's father. They both cry.

Chapter 58

The statement is never requested again. But Tessa's account puts the affair into the record and it spreads. Mabel is called a harlot. A neighbourhood father spits at her in the street. Billy torments her, follows her into the girls' bathroom, and forces her hand onto him. Mad Mabel is now said out loud everywhere.

Christos is the only one who does not drop her, and gets anti-Greek abuse from Billy for it, and stays anyway. They trade insults with Billy and share lunches. He kisses her at a hidden cove. With Christos she actually talks, about her family, while he tells her about Greece, and Mabel decides she has found her real Gilbert Blythe.

Chapter 59

Alone in the bike shed, Mabel is cornered by Billy, who harasses her and blocks the way out. She shoves him with everything she has. He stumbles back into Christos, who has just arrived behind him. Their heads collide and Christos goes down onto the asphalt.

Chapter 60 (Now)

The neighbours gather at the graffiti. Peter says kids. Roxanne says random. Joan and Peter offer to clean it off and Roxanne suggests reporting it. Elsie is moved and also entirely clear that it will not be the last time, and that as long as she lives on Kenny Lane every person on it is in danger because of her.

Chapter 61

Elsie babysits Persephone and Delly, against her better judgement. They call her Grumpy Granny and talk her into making an apple pie. Watching them she sees Cess and Ness, and herself and Daphne. When Persephone calls her the best granny in the world, it hurts, because the best granny would not be putting her family in the path of a mob. After they go, Elsie rings a real estate agent and puts the house on the market.

Chapter 62 (Then)

Mabel screams as Christos hits the ground. Billy accuses her of trying to kill him. Christos sits up dazed and says sarcastically that yes, it must have been Mabel, since Billy is obviously not strong enough to knock two people over with one shove. As Billy leaves, Mabel tells him to stay away from her, since she apparently goes around killing people. Christos insists on walking her home, so she walks him to his family's fish and chip shop instead.

His mother is out front, and when Mabel explains about his head, the woman hears her name and her face changes. She scolds Christos in Greek, looking at Mabel throughout, and as Mabel walks off she hears her switch to English to tell him not to go near that girl again.

Chapter 63 (Now)

Final day of filming. Adeem runs the list back: her sister, her mother, Billy, Mr. Loukas, Christos. Elsie agrees it is a lot to be blamed for and points out how neatly it served her father. Libby asks whether she wants to talk about him. Elsie says no, and then says that is the reason they are here.

Chapter 64 (Then)

Mabel comes home to Cess and Ness at the kitchen table with paperwork and whiskey. Elliott's lawyer has written claiming he is entitled to Rosehill. Cess says he has no legal right, but her voice is wrong. He is marrying Susan, and the argument is that he needs the house for his new family, including Susan's daughter Amelia. The strongest card he holds is that he can say he needs Rosehill in order to raise Mabel, who owns it.

What this stretch is doing: the Mr. Loukas chapters are the hardest in the book and Hepworth does not let anyone soften them, including Elsie, who at fifteen believed it was a love story. Tessa confessing later matters enormously, because Elliott keeps telling people Mabel did it anyway. The rumour has stopped needing evidence.

Chapters 65 Through 80

Chapter 65 (Then)

Mabel takes Daphne on a long bike ride to think. She is worried about Christos, and it occurs to her that her father may only ever have married her mother to get the house. She looks Susan up in the parish directory and they go and watch from across the road. Amelia is climbing a jacaranda and gets stuck.

Elliott comes out and stands underneath telling her to hurry up, and does nothing at all when she slides and hits the ground hard. Amelia screams, Susan thinks the arm is broken, and Elliott asks whether dinner is ready. Watching him do it to a child who is not her, Mabel finally gets it. It was never about anything she did.

Chapter 66

Christos comes back to school fine, and forbidden from seeing her. Mabel takes it as confirmation that good things are not for her and decides her father will end up the same way. Three months later Tessa confesses to killing Mr. Loukas with a fireplace poker and staging the car accident after finding the flat tyre. Elliott keeps telling people Mabel talked her into it, or did it herself.

Mabel overhears Cess telling Ness that a neighbour believes it purely because Elliott said so, and Cess saying she understands now why Mary did what she did. Mabel apologises for causing them pain. Cess and Ness tell her the pain is what having someone to love feels like, and that the alternative is worse. Mabel does not understand yet.

Chapter 67 (Now)

Elsie goes out for the post mid-interview and finds Persephone sitting in the gutter next to a Forthcoming Auction sign she has pulled out of the lawn. Persephone wants to know who is going to look after her, make the apple pie, be her grandma.

Elsie sits down in the gutter next to her, and while the child sobs, feels the exact pain Cess described sixty years earlier, and understands it. Back inside, Adeem and Libby set up for the part they have been building towards, and Elsie says the past comes and sits down in the room with her.

Chapter 68 (Then)

The day of the murder it does not stop raining. Mabel feels ill, skips the library, and comes home early to find her father's car in the drive and his voice inside, calling Cess and Ness filthy whores, saying what they are doing is unnatural, claiming Rosehill. Going up the stairs she notices his silver handled umbrella propped outside Cess's room. Through the open door she sees Cess and Ness on the bed together and understands what they are to each other. Cess is listing his crimes back at him: blaming Mabel for Kitty, destroying her name, drinking Mary to death, spreading lies about Mr. Loukas. Mabel flinches when he shouts that she is mad, and they all see her on the landing. She stammers that she came home sick, and runs out into the rain as he orders her to pack. She finds Daphne and cries and tries to explain what she saw.

Chapter 69

An hour later she goes back. The car is still there. She pushes open Cess's door and Cess is on the floor, naked, her head at an angle it should not be at, dead. Elliott is standing over her, shirt soaked through with sweat. He turns and tells Mabel, calmly, that she will be blamed for this.

The umbrella is against the wall. She takes the handle. He is still smiling when she drives the steel tip into his upper chest, and then she shifts her grip and brings it down on his skull and splits it, and keeps going until her arms will not work and she is covered in him. She kneels down and makes sure. Then she thinks that if she is Mad Mabel, he is the one who made her.

Chapter 70 (Now)

Libby recaps: Elliott killed Cess, Kitty was an accident, Mary was a suicide. Elsie will not accept the framing and says her father was responsible for all three deaths whether or not he was in the room. Libby notes that at trial the court found Mabel's journal remarkably accurate about weather, dates, and events. There was exactly one thing in it nobody could verify. Daphne.

Chapter 71 (Then)

Mabel covers Cess with her blue silk robe, puts a pillow under her head, and smooths her hair, which the prosecution later makes much of, and which she has never once regretted. She leaves her father where he is. Then she goes to say goodbye to Daphne, joking about being Mad Mabel because she is trying to be brave.

Daphne refuses to laugh, says she hates the name, and says she will always think of her as Maybelline. They hold on to each other and Mabel goes. Waving at the window, she remembers that Daphne turned up in kindergarten when she needed her, and again in the hospital when she needed her, and that this has always been the pattern.

Chapter 72 (Now)

Adeem asks who Daphne is. Elsie, crying, says Daphne is her friend. Libby lays out the records. A real Daphne Barton was in her kindergarten class, and there is no evidence she ever came back from England. Adeem mentions the court's diagnosis, which sent her to a psychiatric hospital for five years rather than prison, and then tells her he thinks she was completely sane then and is completely sane now.

Elsie will not call Daphne imaginary. She cannot see her or hear her or touch her, and Daphne is also the reason she is alive, which makes her real enough. She says you can call her an imaginary friend if you want, but the distinction stops mattering when she is the only friend you have.

Adeem and Libby tell her she has real ones now, and offer themselves, and she takes it. Then they talk about Rosehill, which went to Mary's second cousin in England and was leased to the council, and Libby asks about the child Elsie had while she was locked up.

Chapter 73

Peter turns up furious about the auction sign. Elsie explains she is going because she is a danger to the street, and to Persephone in particular. Peter says Kenny Lane is her home, and that his mother made him promise to look after her. Elsie says that was before he knew who she was. Peter says she would be surprised what he knows, and pulls her into a hug with tears in his eyes, and calls her mum. Elsie leans in and tells him he does not get a say in whether she leaves.

Chapter 74

Roxanne finds Elsie on the porch and tells her she ran into Shane on the way home from work. He wanted to reconcile, and when she refused he lost it and mentioned Persephone for the first time, which Roxanne reads as a threat to get at her through her daughter. She also admits that before she left him, he once threatened her with a gun.

She reported it that morning and was told to call emergency services if he comes back. She warns Elsie to be careful, since Persephone stays over. Elsie promises to keep the child safe, and knows she cannot do anything at all for Roxanne, who is out all night.

Chapter 75

Magnificent Mabel premieres at a screening in Adeem's flat, and Elsie goes with Peter, who holds her hand while she cries. The documentary's argument is that she was never mad, she was sad, and that her father and everyone else failed her. It does 7.5 million views in a week. A hand painted sign appears at her door saying there is nothing mad about Mabel.

Flowers and apology letters arrive daily. Somebody flies a banner over the city asking her forgiveness. The police sergeant rings to apologise for not helping and gives her his private number, and goes quiet when she asks whether he would do the same for Roxanne.

Chapter 76

Elsie wakes to Persephone sitting on her bed, having let herself in with Roxanne's emergency key. Persephone is famous at school for living next to the crazy murderer lady and would like some autographs. She asks why Elsie had an imaginary friend and says she would have picked the name Daisy over Daphne.

Elsie explains that she had no real friends and a large imagination. Asked whether she still talks to Daphne, she says sometimes, but less and less. Persephone concludes that is because she has her now.

Chapter 77

At 1:11am Elsie hears breaking glass and looks out to see Shane on Roxanne's porch holding Persephone limp in his arms, the child's bedroom window smashed behind him. Elsie goes out in her nightgown with Nugget behind her. Shane is drunk and holding a gun and tells her to leave them alone. Persephone stirs. Elsie shouts at Roxanne to call the police.

Lights come on down the lane and Joan and Peter come out. Elsie tells Shane that his daughter is a person and not a way to hurt her mother. He drops Persephone, who bites his arm and scrambles clear, and he turns the gun on the child. Roxanne screams. Elsie puts herself in front of her. The gun goes off. Going down, she can hear Joan and Roxanne and Peter and Persephone all shouting her name, and thinks how lucky that is.

Chapter 78

A documentary transcript. Three months into the psychiatric hospital, Elsie gave birth to a son, with a kind nurse called Maureen and Ness waiting downstairs. She was allowed to hold him and chose not to, because he was going to be taken anyway. She still felt it when he cried.

Released after five years, she trained as a librarian and worked at Ness's home for war widows and unmarried mothers, and found herself going back again and again to one particular baby boy Ness had adopted, and kept visiting him after she moved to Kenny Lane. His file said his birth mother was a teenager who delivered in a psychiatric hospital. His name was Peter.

Chapter 79

A newspaper report: Rosehill has a new owner, Mabel Waller's biological son, born while she was incarcerated and adopted out. The Forfeiture Rule stopped her inheriting it herself, but not from passing it to her children. The estate is worth more than twenty million Australian dollars. A second series of Magnificent Mabel is in production. And Mabel has been formally cleared over Ishaan, whose death turned out to be a vitamin overdose.

Chapter 80 (Persephone)

Three months after Elsie's death, Persephone is in her new bedroom with her friend Daisy. Peter shared the inheritance with Roxanne, which got them into a rental. Persephone still misses Elsie constantly, and Daisy points out this is the first time she has talked about her without crying. Nugget is on her lap and stays there.

Persephone worries that feeling better means she has stopped loving her. Daisy tells her she was not the only one who knew Elsie. Persephone realises she had forgotten that. And Daisy smiles and says that back when she knew her, Elsie used to call her Daphne.

What the ending is actually doing: Elsie dies the way Cess did, trying to protect someone she loved. The Ishaan investigation that drove the plot resolves as nothing at all. A vitamin overdose, no crime, no murderer, just a town that decided decades ago what she was. And then Hepworth hands Daphne to Persephone, which either means the child inherited the same thing that kept Mabel alive, or means Daphne was never only in Mabel's head. Hepworth does not tell you which.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many chapters are in Mad Mabel? Eighty, plus a prologue. The final chapter is narrated by Persephone rather than Elsie.

Is Daphne real in Mad Mabel? The honest answer is that Hepworth will not say. A real Daphne Barton was in Mabel's kindergarten class, and there is no record of her ever returning from England. The court called it a personality disorder. Elsie refuses the word imaginary, because Daphne is the reason she survived. Then the last page has Persephone's friend Daisy mention that Elsie used to call her Daphne, which reopens the whole question on the way out the door.

Who killed Ishaan in Mad Mabel? Nobody. His death is eventually ruled a vitamin overdose, and Elsie is formally cleared. The investigation that drives the entire present-day plot turns out to have had no crime in it at all.

Did Mabel kill her sister Kitty? No. Kitty died of polio at one year old, most likely contracted from Mabel, who had it at three and a half. Mabel's father spent the rest of his life telling people she unlocked the door on purpose, and that single lie is where the name Mad Mabel comes from.

Who did Mabel actually murder? Her father, Elliott Waller, after she found him standing over her aunt Cess's body. She beat him to death with his own silver handled umbrella. She was fifteen.

Who is Peter in Mad Mabel? Elsie's biological son. She gave birth to him three months into her stay at the psychiatric hospital and he was adopted by Ness. She moved to Kenny Lane to be near him and spent almost sixty years living next door without telling him. He works it out on his own before she dies.

How does Mad Mabel end? Elsie is shot dead on Kenny Lane, putting herself between Persephone and Shane, which is exactly how Cess died protecting her. Rosehill passes to Peter through a loophole in the Forfeiture Rule, and he shares the money with Roxanne. The documentary makes Elsie famous. The book closes three months later with Persephone, Daisy, and one last line about Daphne.

Is Mad Mabel based on a true story? No. It is fiction, though the Australian setting and the 1950s treatment of women and girls it depicts are drawn from real attitudes of the period.

What is the dual timeline in Mad Mabel? Chapters marked "Now" follow Elsie at 81 in present-day Melbourne. Chapters marked "Then" follow Mabel from 1944 through the murder in 1959. Hepworth alternates them in blocks rather than strictly, so the past catches up to the present right at the climax.

Did you catch the Daphne thing on your first read, or did the last page get you? Tell me in the comments. I want to know how many people saw it coming.