Raff plays the fiddle for Fen because she asks him to, even though playing unsettles him and seems to draw up feelings he cannot control. He begins with something lively to comfort Fen, but the music shifts into a darker expression of his anger and helplessness. As he plays, fog closes in from the sea, and the sight of it makes Raff think of the fuel tanks.

The chapter then moves into Raff’s memory of the day Alex died. There is no fog that day, so Alex’s hanging body can be seen from far away as Raff walks alone down the hill toward the tanks. Raff is numb and unable to understand what to do, so when he reaches the body, he simply sits in the grass beneath Alex.

After a while, Dominic and Fen arrive, having left Orly at the lighthouse. Both Dominic and Fen try to hold Raff, but Raff cannot bear to be touched and can only think of the impossible problem in front of them. Dominic takes charge as he always does, and Raff feels the familiar expectation that his father can fix anything.

Fen climbs the metal ladder with her Stanley knife and saws through the rope while Dominic waits below to catch Alex’s body, because there is no safer way to bring him down. When Fen warns Dominic, Alex’s body drops onto him. Dominic tries to take the weight gently, almost like an embrace, but the force drives him to his knees and father and son go to the ground together.

Raff knows this image will stay with him forever. The long walk toward Alex’s hanging body may eventually fade, but seeing Dominic cradle Alex and fail to save him destroys Raff’s sense of safety. For the first time, Raff understands that even his father cannot undo death.