Ash accepts a bouquet from a delivery driver, brings it to the kitchen, and rejoins a family gathering: Nina Swann (Ash’s mother), Arlo (Ash’s brother), Ash’s grandmother, uncle, aunt, three cousins, and Ash’s best friend, Ella, sit around a messy table after the funeral. The mood is brittle yet relieved, as if the hardest part of the day has passed. Nina asks about the flowers; Ash reads the card: they are from “The Tanners,” whom no one recognizes. With vases exhausted, Ash wedges the new bouquet into an already-filled vase and sits down as Ella tops up her wine.

As the group drinks, Ash reflects on her father, Paddy Swann, who loved sunshine, pursued it obsessively, and organized his life and home around it. The irony of a sunless funeral day sharpens Ash’s grief; she dismisses magical thinking that the dead can influence the weather. Paddy was fifty-four.

Ash states the stark facts of his death: two weeks earlier, while very drunk after a restaurant opening in Soho, Paddy was pushed onto the train tracks by a stranger named Joe Kritner and killed by an oncoming train. She notes the collateral trauma to the train driver, witnesses, and paramedics. The blunt recitation underscores the randomness and violence of the act.

There is a photo album on the table that Ash and Arlo compiled, with empty pages for guests’ contributions. Ash opens to a mid-1990s image of Paddy at a festival and asks Nina where it was; Nina identifies Glastonbury, recalling acts like Oasis, Pulp, and The Cure, oppressive heat, and heavy partying with friends Lena and Johnny. The family exchanges knowing smiles about Paddy’s appetites for alcohol, drugs, music, and social life.

Ash frames Paddy as uncomplicated and joyful, contrasting him with the “very complicated” stranger who killed him. The family’s noisy presence is pierced by the absence of Paddy’s voice and physicality, and by the reality that life will proceed without him.

Overwhelmed, Ash slams the album shut, drains her wine, and silently wonders how the family will mark the end of this day and begin whatever comes next.