After Jack's death in Vietnam, Cherry is devastated but supported by three women in her life: her Auntie Pat, her mother, and her grandmother. Together they pull her through grief with tea, walks, baths, and companionship. A shared addiction to the racy soap opera Number 96 provides nightly distraction, and Cherry reflects that legal, harmless distractions are essential for coping with grief.

Cherry continues her university studies at Sydney University without her marks dropping, but she walks through campus in a daze, finding fictional characters more real than the people around her. During this period, her friend Ivy causes a painful rift by telling Cherry to stop wallowing, dismissing her relationship with Jack since they were never formally engaged, and comparing her to Auntie Pat wasting her life. Cherry is deeply offended on behalf of both herself and her aunt, as she and Jack had planned to marry and have four children. A year later, Ivy sends a sincere letter of apology, which Cherry accepts, leading her to reflect that it's never too late for an apology—before correcting herself to note that sometimes it is.

After graduating, Cherry resists everyone's expectation that she will become a math teacher. She methodically looks through the White Pages, writing to forty organizations that might have use for someone with a math degree. Two weeks later, a man with a Scottish accent calls her, and Cherry lands her first job—not teaching math, but counting gray kangaroos.