On Christmas morning, Jane wakes sweating from a nightmare in which Ziggy stands over her with one foot on her throat while she cannot breathe. She reassures herself that dreams mean nothing, then turns to look at Ziggy asleep beside her, reflecting on his nightly habit of somehow moving from his own bed into hers.

Jane studies Ziggy’s sleeping face and thinks about what kind of man he will become. She recalls her mother’s firm belief that Ziggy is gentle like Jane’s late grandfather, Poppy, whom her mother half-seriously imagines has been reincarnated as Ziggy. This memory reinforces the family’s conviction that Ziggy could not have choked Amabella.

Jane remembers telling her mother about the orientation-day accusation. Her mother reacted with outrage and insisted Ziggy would never hurt anyone, but Jane admitted that Amabella had not seemed like a brat, even if Amabella’s mother had seemed unpleasant. Jane changed the subject when her mother heard uncertainty in Jane’s voice.

As Jane waits for Ziggy to wake, she worries that she has failed to give him a proper childhood, especially because their Christmas rituals feel improvised and incomplete in their small, fatherless family. Jane then returns to the central fear: although she loves Ziggy and believes he is beautiful and gentle, she cannot know with absolute certainty what he did.

The accusation stirs a buried traumatic memory in Jane: pressure on her chest, terror, a trapped scream, and black, purple, and red bruises. Jane forces the memory away and insists to herself that Ziggy could not have done it. When Ziggy wakes excitedly for Christmas, he accidentally hits Jane’s nose with his head; later commentary from Thea and Stu shows that other parents remained divided and suspicious about Ziggy.