Thursday, 4 July

Josie prepares to leave home and reconsiders the denim jacket she has worn since she was fifteen, when she met Walter in the pub. The jacket once symbolized her escape into a life with Walter, children, and a flat, but Josie now feels that identity dissolving. She rejects the jacket, chooses a black shirt and hoop earrings, and tries to present herself differently.

Walter notices Josie’s changed appearance and says she looks as if she is on holiday. When Josie claims she is going to the park with the dog and meeting a school-mum friend, Walter offers to come, then jokingly asks whether Josie is meeting a school dad. Josie senses anger beneath the joke, deflects it, and leaves.

At Alix’s house, Alix immediately notes that Josie is not wearing denim. Josie agrees that she may want to talk about the denim later. Josie looks for signs of Alix’s husband, but Alix says Nathan is back at work, leaving the house quiet and private for the recording.

Josie admires Alix’s comfortable, personal home and contrasts it with the council flat she shares with Walter, which feels filled with Walter’s belongings and rules. Josie says she does not know what she likes because she handed her life over to Walter as a child and never had a chance to discover herself. Alix encourages Josie by saying it is not too late and leads her into the studio.

The chapter shifts into the Netflix adaptation, showing a re-enactment of young Josie in a denim jacket following an older man into a large white house. Audio from Alix’s 4 July podcast recording reveals Josie describing Walter inviting her to his apartment when she was sixteen, giving her an engagement ring, asking her to marry him, and then taking her virginity roughly twelve hours after her sixteenth birthday.