After Peter leaves the Kildare house, Ivan sits alone with a bleeding lip, processing the fight. He reflects on how their father's presence once acted as a forcefield preventing violence and cruelty between them, and how the fight proved their father is truly gone—not just from the house but from reality. Ivan spirals into grief, questioning the boundary between material fact and memory, wondering where his dead father now exists. His mother Christine calls, and Ivan carefully conceals what just happened, speaking normally about the upcoming chess event and deflecting her questions about a potential girlfriend. Christine asks about Christmas plans, and Ivan admits he won't be joining her in Scotland and clearly won't be spending the holiday with Peter.

After hanging up, Ivan replays the humiliation of the fight—being struck, cowering on the ground—and feels hatred for Peter, then recognizes a countering self-hatred beneath it. He reflects on his father's death in the ICU, the relief mixed with grief, and realizes that while the event of death is over, the loss only deepens with time. Overwhelmed, he calls Margaret. He breaks down crying on the phone, telling her about the fight with Peter and confessing that he doesn't truly accept his father's death. Margaret listens with tenderness, and Ivan asks if he can drive to her cottage. She says yes.

Ivan packs quickly, leaves a note for Naomi explaining he's staying with his girlfriend, and adds a postscript that Peter was at the house looking for her. He drives to Margaret's cottage, arriving around nine with a cut on his lip. Margaret, meanwhile, has spent the day reeling from a confrontation with her own mother, who shamed her for seeing a younger man after years of playing the righteous, long-suffering wife to her alcoholic ex-husband Ricky. Margaret feels fury at her family's disloyalty—her mother, her sister Louise, even her friend Anna—and the knowledge that no one will defend her.

When Ivan arrives, tension surfaces between them. Margaret tells Ivan their relationship can't last forever and raises their age difference. Ivan becomes frustrated and angry at her condescension. Margaret asks how his brother would feel, and Ivan's reaction—sinking to the floor, hiding his face—confirms to her that he already told Peter, and it went badly. Margaret retreats to her bedroom, feeling like the predatory older woman others see her as. Ivan follows, asks to sleep beside her, and they make love with raw intensity. In the aftermath, Ivan accidentally finishes inside her; Margaret reassures him and says she'll get the morning-after pill the next day.

Lying together afterwards, Margaret confesses she became self-righteous during her marriage as a coping mechanism and finds it hard to let go of needing to be right. Ivan recognizes a similar pattern in himself regarding Peter—he focuses on being the wronged party while glossing over his own faults. Ivan reassures Margaret that Peter doesn't hate her and had even apologized before the fight. Then Ivan tells Margaret how meaningful it was when she said she needed his love, and he speaks carefully, obliquely, about a future together—implying children, a lasting life. Margaret recognizes what he means and knows time will likely prove him wrong, yet she allows the fantasy to stand uncontradicted, moved by it. The chapter closes the next morning with Margaret at work, contemplating the exposure and vulnerability of her new life, the judgment of her small town, but also the lightness of loving Ivan—leaving him that morning studying chess with the dog at his feet, thinking about their evening plans, accepting the uncertainty and openness of everything ahead.