In a supermarket on Fitzgibbon Street, Julian rushes to gather snacks for pregnant Orla, noticing headlines about the Paris attacks. Back home, he comforts Orla as she eats ice cream, and they discuss baby names. Orla proposes honoring his mother with Cora or Cormac, but Julian struggles with the name “Cora,” burdened by traumatic associations with his mother’s death. He weighs the desire to redeem the name against his aversion to tying their child to tragedy.

Julian recalls how he has avoided making his trauma part of his identity, unlike his grandmother who speaks publicly about it. Prompted by Cian’s gentle counsel to “put things right,” Julian once sought out Orla at work after a flood-night misunderstanding. He abandoned the idea of writing a letter and told Orla in person that his father abused and then killed his mother when Julian was five. Orla reacted with shock and compassion, challenging his fear that he carried “murderer’s genes.”

Orla disclosed she was seeing someone, so they settled into a trusting but charged friendship at the Old Chocolate Factory. Over two years, their rapport deepened until a late pub night ended with a first kiss and the start of their relationship. Orla later said she had waited for Julian to grow into himself. The relationship steadied Julian’s once-wavering sense of self.

Despite business interest from England, Julian refuses to wholesale there, resenting the country he associates with systemic failure to protect his mother. He works on a bespoke engagement ring for an Oxford client, David, whose partner is named Lily; their email exchange reveals shared tastes and small life details, but England remains a boundary for Julian. He also rejects church baptism for their child, associating institutional religion with hypocrisy and abuse, while Orla defends attending Mass for community, ritual, and personal lightness.

They banter about confession and sin; Orla admits to jealous thoughts about a friend, Gráinne, and frames confession as noticing unhealthy thoughts and doing better. Julian remains unconvinced, recalling clerical abuses and the facile absolution of violent men.

Scene shifts to Maia driving into town before work. At Doyle’s café she greets Maureen, then opens her practice. With a middle-aged patient, Maia considers remedies and hears the woman fear opening an emotional “dam.” This mirrors Maia’s own therapy, where she has skirted the darkest details of her childhood and now wrestles with feeling left behind as Julian advances into marriage, home ownership, and parenthood.

Watching a TV segment with Sílbhe and Cian about Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum, Maia is comforted by their open support. Seeing a glowing female couple interviewed, she feels personal investment and later brings her conflicted feelings to counseling. She worries she might be an “imposter” for recognizing potential queerness at thirty-seven and fears choosing women out of avoidance of men due to her father. Her counselor suggests both truths could coexist: that Maia might be gay and also understandably fearful of men.

Maia does not act outwardly—no dating or disclosures—but carries the possibility privately. When same-sex marriage is legalized on November 16, 2015, she feels a quiet expansion of hope, as if a piece of her future has been secured.