This section cements Irina’s mental health crisis by focusing on the theme of The Unreliability of Memory. Following the party, Irina suggests that Will sexually assaulted her based on the physical evidence around her. However, the novel introduces ambiguity over this conclusion when Flo’s blog reveals Irina’s habit of getting “blackout drunk” and then inventing stories to “fill in the blanks” (88). Flo’s private testimony externally establishes Irina’s unreliability, urging the reader to question the authority of her perspective as a protagonist and narrator. This unreliability is starkly illustrated through a recurring motif of glass. After a rough sexual encounter with a plastic surgeon named John, Irina believes she threw a glass that shattered and cut his face, but the photographs she takes show no evidence of glass or blood. The hallucination signifies the gap between perception and reality, a moment where her inner thoughts and feelings are projected onto reality but fail to leave a physical trace. Glass reappears in a nightmare where a boy picks glass from his skull, directly linking Irina’s perception with a repressed, violent trauma beginning to surface.

The narrative structure intersperses present events with deep dives into Irina’s photographic archive, tracing the origins of her predatory artistic practice. Flashbacks to her university projects, particularly What would you do to be my Boyfriend?, establish that her use of the camera for exploitation and psychological control is a long-standing behavioral pattern. This project, which involved baiting strange men into vulnerable situations, earned her condemnation for its cruelty and praise for its “bold, risky work” (101), cementing her identity as a transgressive artist. However, the archive’s tender photographs from her relationship with her former lecturer Frank offer a crucial counterpoint. These images are uniquely “warm,” documenting a period of mutual affection and suggesting a capacity for intimacy that Irina has since rejected. The lack of vulnerability that marked her refusal to acknowledge her relationship with Frank in public, as well as the pursuit of an imitation in her sexual dalliance with Flo as she changes her appearance to resemble Frank, marks a turn toward the hardened, predatory persona she now inhabits.

Through Irina’s burgeoning relationship with Eddie, the narrative shows how Irina’s artistic impulses bleeding directly into physical violence. She is drawn to Eddie as an aesthetic object, someone whose soft-bodied nervousness makes him an ideal subject for domination. The initial photoshoot, where he wears a rabbit mask, transforms her artistic interest into an intense sexual arousal rooted in control; she is aroused by his compliance. Moreover, the mask Eddie wears creates the illusion of respect, making him believe that Irina respects his need for anonymity when in reality, this condition gives her more leverage to exert power over him. Irina’s violent impulse finds its full expression during their first sexual encounter, where bodily violence becomes explicit. Irina repeatedly chokes Eddie, deriving pleasure from his physical distress and growing irritated when he begs her to stop. The encounter is one of subjugation, rather than mutual respect, proving that for Irina, sexual satisfaction and the complete overpowering of her subject are one and the same.

These chapters cement the idea that Irina’s artistic identity is rooted in insecurity about her background. Her flashbacks to her student days at Central Saint Martins in London reveal a deep-seated unease, where her regional accent and “state school” status made her feel like a “chav” (96) amidst affluent, southern peers. This experience fuels her present-day interactions. She asserts dominance over Eddie by subtly mocking his working-class signifiers, at one point comparing him to discounted meat at the grocery, and positioning herself as a gatekeeper of superior cultural knowledge, introducing him to “hardcore” cinema like In a Glass Cage. This dynamic is about reinforcing a power hierarchy where her refined, transgressive taste gives her control. This mirrors her relationship with Flo, as she infantilizes Flo to assert herself of her superiority. By using her aesthetic authority to define and possess Eddie, she weaponizes taste as a defense against anxieties that continue to shape her identity.