The morning after Leo's day trip to Hobart, a thunderstorm causes flash flooding and cancels Saturday sports. Leo's daughter Bridie is recovering on the couch from the excitement of playing Zazu in The Lion King, while his son Oli is at a friend's house. Leo takes the unexpected free time to catch up on work and then sits down for coffee and croissants with his wife Neve.

As Leo watches Neve, he reflects on how they met at a party. He was drawn to her expensive Cartier watch—a rectangular, diamond-covered, eighteen-carat white gold piece—and complimented it as an opening line. Neve told him it was a twenty-first birthday present from her mother. They bonded immediately: she identified his anxieties, he cleaned and straightened her smudged glasses, and they established a dynamic that would define their relationship—Leo mitigating risk and worrying, Neve soothing and mollifying.

Their first kiss happened under a parking sign Leo had misread, and as they walked back to the party, Neve revealed it was the anniversary of her mother's death. Her mother had died when Neve was six, yet Neve believed the Cartier watch was a supernatural gift—she found it on the asphalt beside her car on her twenty-first birthday and thanked her dead mother. Despite being an atheist with no patience for superstition, Neve genuinely believes the watch came from her mother. Leo, now a parent himself who has lost his own father, understands this kind of magical thinking; he and his sisters routinely credit their late father when they find good parking spots.

Leo decides to tell Neve about the strange woman on the flight who predicted passengers' causes and ages of death. Neve listens with fascination rather than fear, viewing psychics as likely scammers. However, as Leo cleans Neve's glasses during the conversation, neither of them notices their daughter Bridie standing in the doorway listening. The chapter ends with Bridie asking in a terrified voice, "Is Daddy going to die?"