Opening
In these chapters, Alice Love stumbles through the ruins of a life she can’t remember and discovers a devastating twist: the memory she’s been clinging to as the cause of her divorce isn’t even hers. As her marriage to Nick Love looks irreparable and her friendship with Gina Boyle grows ever more mysterious, her sister Elisabeth reaches a breaking point in her own battle with Infertility and the Longing for Family. The past refuses to stay put, and the present keeps forcing Alice to look.
What Happens
Chapter 21: The Sultana
Alice faces an impromptu interrogation from her three children, led by a fierce, suspicious Madison Love. They fire off questions about favorite foods and teachers—she fails them all. Details about the recent past spill out: constant fights about Gina, credit cards (“the American Expense”), and a day when little Olivia got lost at the beach. Madison needles her with the accusation that Olivia is her favorite, a jab that lands hard. Nick Love tries to intervene, but the kids don’t let up.
Desperate to connect, Alice shares a sweet secret from before Madison was born: they used to call the baby “the Sultana.” The nickname softens Madison for a blink and unlocks Alice’s first true memory—those bleary, love-drenched early months when she and Nick drove all night to soothe a sleepless baby. Looking at Nick, she says, “We were so happy.” He stays cool, unmoved, a wall where there used to be warmth.
Intercut, Elisabeth writes a homework entry to her therapist: she and Ben explode over adoption. After years of assuming the other was opposed, they discover the truth—they’ve both been waiting for the other to say yes. Exhausted by grief and longing, Elisabeth declares she is “done,” sliding into numbness and junk TV.
Chapter 22: The Gestapo
Alice attempts the school run and feels like she’s impersonating a stricter, sharper woman. The car ride is chaos; Madison calls her a “Nazi,” “the Gestapo,” and Tom recites a list of triggers: lateness, slamming doors, and—most of all—Nick. The kids say she “hates” their father. Shame floods Alice.
At school, Kate Harper delivers gossip with a smile: another mum, Miriam, called Alice a “slut” for dating Dominick Gordon right after separating. Cornered, Alice blurts that she and Nick are getting back together. Kate looks stunned and counters with a bomb: Alice once told her she could never forgive Nick for skipping Gina’s funeral. Dominick appears, affectionate and easy, until he’s called away. Then Kate turns unexpectedly sincere—don’t go back “for the children,” she warns, recalling her own hard childhood. Elsewhere, Elisabeth confesses in her entry that she might be a “horrible mother” and wonders if she ever truly wanted kids. A letter from Frannie reveals a long-ago fiancé, Phil, and a quiet, unrealized hope for a child; now she finally grasps the shape of Elisabeth’s pain and wishes she could say that being a wife can be a gift, even without motherhood.
Chapter 23: Lack of Sleep
A handsome man named Luke arrives on a motorcycle, and for one disoriented second Alice wonders if she hired a gigolo. He’s her personal trainer. He’s been training her—and Gina—for three years, and grief flashes across his face when he says Gina’s name. When Alice asks why her marriage broke down, he calls his girlfriend to jog his memory. The verdict: it all came down to “lack of sleep.”
Luke adds that thirty-nine-year-old Alice runs on coffee—never without a takeaway cup—and sends her to Dino’s, her favorite café. After he leaves, Alice drops to the floor and bangs out thirty push-ups like it’s nothing. She shouts, “Beat that!” to no one, and it hits her: she’s missing Gina with the ache of a ghost she can’t picture.
Chapter 24: The Kiss in the Laundry
At Dino’s, the place hums with familiarity. Dino greets Alice warmly and recounts the day Elisabeth unraveled—she tried to walk away with a stranger’s toddler. Alice arrived and handled it, explaining Elisabeth’s infertility to the shocked room. Dino presses an African fertility doll into Alice’s hands for her sister and mentions that Nick came in looking wrecked. “I would fix it if I could, mate,” he said.
Caffeinated and hopeful, Alice races home—then freezes in the laundry. A vivid, whole memory slams into place: a party, a small red-haired woman perched on the washing machine, Nick kissing her. Betrayal burns. She calls her old friend Sophie, but the conversation is awkward; they’ve drifted. Then Alice’s mother rings—she’s told the divorce lawyer Nick and Alice are reconciling, and today is Elisabeth’s pregnancy blood test. Shaken and furious, Alice confronts Nick about the kiss. He flatly denies ever cheating, his condescension scraping her raw. “I’m glad we’re getting a divorce,” she screams, and slams the phone down.
Chapter 25: The Mega Meringue Committee
Hurt and spinning, Alice pulls out photo albums, finding image after image of her and Gina—joyful, inseparable. The doorbell rings: it’s the Mega Meringue Committee for a fundraiser meeting—Maggie (Dominick’s sister), Nora, and finally the small, red-haired woman from Alice’s memory: Mrs. Holloway, the deputy principal.
In the kitchen, Maggie and Nora gently set the record straight. The “laundry incident” wasn’t Nick. It was Michael—Gina’s husband—kissing Mrs. Holloway. Gina was the one who walked in and saw. That one drunken kiss blew open Gina and Michael’s marriage, and the Mega Meringue Day is in Gina’s memory. Later, Madison wakes from a nightmare, screaming, “Get it off Gina,” hinting she saw something terrible connected to Gina’s death.
Character Development
These chapters fracture and reassemble identities. Alice confronts the gulf between who she was and who she’s become; Elisabeth hits an emotional nadir; Nick complicates his own portrait; and Frannie’s past recasts her steady presence.
- Alice Love: Learns her children fear her “Gestapo” version; discovers a caffeine-and-fitness regime she doesn’t recognize; recovers a luminous baby-memory (“the Sultana”) that clashes with the cold present; and then realizes her most searing betrayal memory isn’t hers, shaking her trust in her mind.
- Elisabeth: Reaches rock bottom—public breakdown, explosive adoption fight, and the admission that she’s “done.” Her entries strip back to exhaustion, self-doubt, and a painful recalibration of desire.
- Nick Love: Appears curt and condescending to Alice, yet confides to Dino that he’d fix things if he could. His denial of the affair holds firm, complicating the story Alice believes.
- Frannie: Reveals the shadow of a lost fiancé and a quiet, thwarted wish for a child, deepening her empathy for Elisabeth and reframing her gentleness as hard-won.
- Madison: Weaponizes knowledge to test Alice, then briefly softens at “the Sultana.” Her nightmare suggests she carries a secret about Gina’s death.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters deepen the novel’s inquiry into Memory and Identity. Alice’s mind doesn’t just forget; it creatively fills. By appropriating Gina’s laundry-room trauma as her own, she builds a story that makes emotional sense of her pain. Memory becomes less a filing system than a narrative engine—one that can protect, mislead, and merge identities in the name of meaning.
They also trace The Evolution of Love and Marriage. The tender “Sultana” nights—exhausted but blissful—stand in stark contrast to a present defined by contempt, missed funerals, and weaponized routines. Elisabeth and Ben’s adoption stalemate shows how love erodes under shame, grief, and assumptions left unspoken, while Nick’s private regret complicates the blame.
The “Snippy Voice,” the sharp internal narrator Alice hears, signals the Transformation of the Self: a performance-optimized persona formed by stress, sleeplessness, and control. And the laundry room—ordinary, fluorescent, humming—becomes a symbol of secrecy and misdirected blame, the setting where two marriages are reinterpreted in a single, borrowed image.
Key Quotes
“We were so happy.”
Alice’s line bridges a vanished intimacy and a present defined by froideur. It crystallizes the novel’s grief for a shared life that didn’t simply end—it mutated.
“Lack of sleep.”
Luke’s summary reframes the marriage’s collapse as attrition rather than scandal. Burnout, not betrayal, may be the corrosive force, shifting the mystery from “who cheated?” to “what ground us down?”
“The Gestapo.”
The children’s label pierces Alice’s self-concept. Through their eyes, we see who she’s become: efficient, punitive, unyielding—a personality built for control rather than connection.
“I would fix it if I could, mate.”
Nick’s private confession to Dino complicates his coldness with regret. The line hints at a man trapped by pride, shame, or timing, and it invites Alice—and us—to rethink simple villainy.
“I am done.”
Elisabeth’s declaration marks the end of hope as strategy. It’s a boundary born of grief, and it reframes motherhood as something she can no longer pursue without destroying herself.
“Beat that!”
Alice’s shout during push-ups is playful on the surface but echoes with grief. It conjures a vanished rivalry with Gina and the ache of missing someone whose face won’t come.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence rewires the novel’s central question. Instead of “Why did Alice and Nick break up?” the story asks, “What stories do we tell to survive our pain—and what happens when those stories are wrong?” The laundry-room twist exposes the volatility of memory and forces Alice to examine the scaffolding of her identity.
Meanwhile, Elisabeth’s near-collapse and vow to stop trying raise the emotional stakes beyond Alice’s marriage, and Madison’s nightmare hints that the truth about Gina’s death lies closer to home than anyone wants to admit. Together, these chapters pivot the book from domestic mystery to psychological reckoning, setting up a deeper excavation of grief, loyalty, and the fragile narratives that keep families holding on.