Summary

Part 3, Section 2, pages 276 - 332, begins with Sean’s perspective as he recounts his relationship with Nel. Growing up, Sean had assumed his mother’s guilt of abandoning him by suicide. When Nel entered the picture she started to question everything about Sean’s mother’s death for the purposes of her project. Sean mentions how sometimes Nel had made him feel disoriented, but that touching the scar on his wrist always brought him back to reality. He and Nel met at the Ward’s cottage near his father’s house for their trysts. After Patrick saw her leave the cottage one day, he beat Sean and drove him home to Helen, exposing the affair to her.

As he drives up to Howick, Sean starts to recount again how he had stopped seeing Nel after what had happened with his father, but he had...