Nora leaves the care home with her bag and Mrs Elm’s chess set and walks along Shakespeare Road, feeling the now-familiar tingling that signals a life nearing its limit. Passing her former flat, she compares its shabbiness to the comfort of her Cambridge home with Ash and Molly, and notices Mr Banerjee’s once-cared-for house overgrown and neglected.

She meets Kerry-Anne, now an exhausted mother with a double pushchair, and they share a brief, awkward exchange. After returning a dropped toy, Nora wonders how small differences—like her past help for Mr Banerjee—might have altered outcomes. She glances up to see a stranger at her old window holding a cat that isn’t Voltaire, and the faintness intensifies as she heads into town.

On the high street, Nora feels stronger from her many lived experiences, until she witnesses police arresting two boys outside Boots. Recognizing Leo, a pupil she had taught in another life, she tries to intervene but is rebuffed. She learns Leo stole goods and carried a concealed knife. Nora recalls how, in her root life, affordable piano lessons had helped Leo thrive; in this Cambridge timeline she’d never been there to teach him, and his path diverged.

Reflecting on how small choices create branching lives, Nora realizes her absence has rippled into worse outcomes for others. The destabilizing sensations escalate into a plunging darkness, as if another Nora is ready to replace her. She turns away, hurries toward the car park, and repeats, "This is a good life," trying to anchor herself to the existence she wants to keep.