On honeymoon, Joanna finds herself stuck halfway up a climbing wall while Paul moves easily above her. The situation exposes a lie Joanna told on their first date: because she wanted Paul to like her, she claimed she loved climbing and even said Mumford & Sons were her favourite band. When Paul later suggested a climbing date, Joanna tried to maintain the fiction, briefly considered reinventing herself, then discovered in a lesson that climbing was far harder than she expected.

Rather than admit the truth then, Joanna faked a wrist injury with a badly applied bandage and diverted the second date to a restaurant instead. That deception worked, and since then she has avoided the subject. But with a climbing centre near their hotel, she can no longer dodge it, and now she is physically struggling and emotionally ready to give up the pretence.

As Paul climbs back down toward her, Joanna lets herself hang in the harness and admits the truth. Paul jokes about it, tells Joanna to climb onto his back, and carries her safely down to the floor. He then reveals he had already guessed she was not a climber because of her nails, showing that he saw through the lie and treated it as harmless rather than serious.

Afterward, Joanna reflects that small lies and self-reinventions can be part of the early fun of love, while big lies are what truly matter. She feels Paul still knows who she really is and believes he is the right man for her. But when Joanna checks her phone and sees a message from her mother asking for Holly's number so Holly can be invited to dinner, Paul's muted, reluctant response to the request feels wrong to Joanna. The chapter ends with Joanna wondering whether she has just glimpsed one of Paul's lies, and hoping it is only a small one.