Cherry reveals that she was indeed an actuary, describing her profession with pride and humor. She shares several actuarial jokes and explains that actuaries use probability, statistics, and financial mathematics to project the future—specifically, she spent her career analyzing mortality data and developing probability tables to forecast risk for insurance benefits. She notes the irony that her job was to determine how and when groups of people would die, not individuals, which is why her actions on the plane mystify even her.

After her divorce from David and her mother Mae's death, Cherry went through a difficult period, possibly depression. She and Auntie Pat drew apart rather than supporting each other, both needing to learn to cope independently. Cherry stayed in her mother's house and repeated her father Arthur's phrase "This too shall pass" to herself daily. Eventually, she reached out to Eliza, the woman in the leopard-print dress she'd met years ago at the fondue party. Eliza decisively guided Cherry toward a career in actuarial science, telling her the Australian insurance industry needed more actuaries and that her gender wouldn't hold her back. Cherry found the exams brutal but ultimately succeeded and worked in insurance at a senior level for many years.

About eighteen months into her first actuarial position, Cherry impulsively walked into a Hornsby hairdressing salon called Hazel's Hair, where the owner recognized her as "Madame Mae's daughter." Hazel had attended the same high school as Cherry, and over multiple appointments they became friends. Hazel eventually invited Cherry to a dinner party at her home in Terrey Hills, where Cherry drank a bit too much and told everyone about her mother.

Near the end of that dinner party, the doorbell rang and Hazel's husband Tony's brother arrived to borrow a gardening tool. The brother, named Ned, was an average-looking man with glasses and little hair, but when he saw Cherry sitting cross-legged on the floor, his face lit up. He crouched down, looked at her intently, and said, "Kronecker delta girl." Cherry had no idea what he was talking about.