Don't Let Him In

Martha and Alistair’s youngest child, Nala, is very ill. Martha wants to take her to the emergency room, but Alistair is gone with their only car. She leaves her husband a voicemail but gets no response. Nala’s fever rises, and Martha calls her friend Grace for a ride.

Grace suggests that Martha put a tracker on Alistair to find out where he disappears to, but Martha finds the suggestion immoral. When she gets home the following day, she returns calls from angry customers whose orders went unfulfilled. She realizes that she cannot continue to live this way. She cannot understand where all her money is going; she works hard and her business is successful, but her finances seem worse all the time. She decides that when Alistair gets home, she will confront him and not back down.

Four years earlier, Nick sits down with a cup of tea in Amanda’s Tooting apartment. He is disappointed that two decades after he faked his death and disappeared with her money, she has not managed to rebuild her wealth. She is furious that he left her in debt with their two young sons to raise.

He tells her that he never wanted to leave, but he had to escape from people who were threatening them. He asks whether he can stay with her for a few weeks. He tells her that he has a heart condition and needs to be near his specialist, who is at a nearby hospital. She relents, as he knew she would.

In the present, on Saturday morning, Ash goes with Nina to meet Nick in Bangate. Ash notices how run-down the area is and is appalled when Nick suggests that Nina open a new Paddy’s restaurant in this location. Nick claims that the restaurant will turn the area around by bringing in a middle-class clientele.

Nina tells him that she does not have the money for such a large investment, and he suggests that she take out a loan against the existing Paddy’s restaurants. Ash is relieved when, on the ride home, Nina assures her that she has no intention of doing so.

Before Alistair leaves for work, Martha drops a dog tracking tag under his backseat. She watches his movement from Bangate Cove to Folkestone Harbor, where he parks outside a temporarily closed restaurant. When he arrives home, he tells her he wants to open a second location of her Martha’s Garden florist business. He shows her the same spot in Bangate that he earlier tried to convince Nina to invest in.

Martha is delighted by the idea but reminds him that they do not have the money. He tells her that if she borrows £150,000 against her home, the local council will match the funds. He urges her to take a chance on something that will buy them the future they want so much, and she finally agrees.

Four years earlier, Nick tells Amanda that he has an appointment with his heart specialist. He heads for Tara’s house, feeling angry that after four years of effort, he has nothing to show for the time he has put into the marriage. He opens Tara’s laptop and tries to get into her bank account; he is furious when he realizes that she has changed her password. Tara’s daughter Emma arrives. He stands up, grabs his coat, and pretends to have just come in himself.

Emma makes it clear that he is not welcome in her mother’s house. Nick blames Emma for the fact that Tara has not sold her house and made the money available to him; he knows that Emma has never trusted him. He thinks, not for the first time, how much he would like to punch her in the face. He accuses Emma of being jealous of his bond with Tara, and she mocks the idea. She says that she was the person who tipped off the police about his stalking of neighborhood women. Nick imagines hitting Emma until her face is unrecognizable.

Now, Jane and Ash meet again, and Jane tells Ash that the people at Nick’s supposed wine bar in Mayfair have never heard of him. Then she shows Ash an online photo of Nick that is labeled “Justin Warshaw.” “Justin” claims to be a life coach. Jane zooms in on the picture and points out Justin’s wedding ring. She mentions that this “Justin” person appears on the internet for just a few years and then disappears. Jane gets a message from Sarah May, a former customer of “Justin’s”; Sarah agrees to Jane’s request for a Zoom meeting the next day.

Ten days before Christmas, Martha enjoys working in the shop with Alistair, who has quit his job as promised. She is feeling especially warm toward Alistair because he has recently helped her younger child, Jonah, deal with some confusion and tricky emotions around his gender identity. Jonah’s trust in Alistair seems to confirm that Martha is also right to trust him.

Four years earlier, Nick heads for Mayfair, where he stops to admire the vacant ground-floor space where he and a man called Luke Berner plan to open a wine bar. He is very excited about the idea, as he has always dreamed of owning his own restaurant. He is frustrated because he still does not have the money he promised Luke; he intended to get Tara to sell her house, but Emma prevented that. At four o’clock, he meets with Luke, who says that he has another investor, a Jensen de Witt. He and Jensen have decided that Nick is too much of a risk and are cutting him out of the deal.

Nick wishes that he could see Martha—it is the only thing that will make him feel better—but she is busy. He has promised to take her somewhere fancy next week, and he has to figure out how to get some money for that. He goes back to Amanda’s and claims that he needs to travel to a heart clinic for an experimental treatment. He asks her for £800 for travel expenses. She says that she does not have it, and he asks whether she can get it from one of their sons. He pretends to be breathless and in pain. Eventually, Amanda agrees to find him the money.

Now, during the Zoom call between Ash, Jane, and Sarah, Sarah explains that she met the man calling himself “Justin” about 12 years ago. She had a few wonderful life coaching sessions with him, but then he started raising his fees. He pressured her into more frequent sessions and convinced her to buy books and other items from him. Eventually, he got her to take out a loan from her parents to pay for his coaching fees, and after a year, she was £5,000 in debt. Then he suddenly moved away, and she never saw him again.

Sarah explains that she met with Justin in the home he shared with his wife, Laura, and their two little girls. She cannot remember the address, but she describes the house and the area. After the Zoom call ends, Ash uses the internet to find the house Sarah has described.

Alistair takes Martha to Bangate Cove. She is delighted to have a day away from home and work with her husband, baby, and dog. She throws her arms around him and tells him how much she loves him. Alistair has promised Martha lunch out, and he drives her to a gastropub near Folkestone. Unexpectedly, he tells her to go in and get them a table—he will join her after he runs some paperwork to a client who lives nearby. As she gets herself, Nala, and the dog settled at the restaurant, Martha has a bad feeling that her husband is about to disappear again. She checks the tracker in Alistair’s car and sees that he has parked outside a large villa a few minutes away.

Nick stops by Nina’s home unexpectedly, saying he can only stay for a few minutes. He has not contacted her for a full week, but now he wants to take her out soon. Later, Ash casually tells Nina that a friend of hers went to Bar Amelie, Nick’s supposed wine bar in Mayfair, and was told Nick does not work there. She shows Nina the webpage for “Justin’s” coaching business, but Nina refuses to believe that there is anything nefarious about Nick having never mentioned this part of his history. Ash tells Nina about Laura and the two daughters, but Nina gets angry and implies that Ash is having another mental health crisis, like the one that caused her to leave London. Ash begs Nina to show Nick the “Justin” photo and insists on being taken to the wine bar. Reluctantly, Nina agrees.

Four years earlier, Nick is pleased to be sharing a bed with Amanda again, because it is more comfortable than the couch. He asks her for another loan, and she protests that she cannot get the money. He tells her that if he misses even one medical treatment, he will be kicked out of the experimental program. He will die without recovering the money owed to him by the woman he has been living with—money that he and Amanda can use to buy a bigger place and help their sons out financially. Amanda agrees to do “the last thing in the whole world she wants to do”—ask her sister Bella for money (170).

Now, Martha meets Grace for lunch two days before Christmas. Martha tells Grace that the night they took Nala to the hospital was a wake-up call for Alistair, and he’s back to being her “perfect guy.” Grace is skeptical but supportive. After lunch, Martha returns to the shop, but Alistair isn’t there. Her assistant, Milly, says that he has gone out on urgent business. As soon as she is alone in the shop, Martha brings up the tracking app on her phone, but she cannot see the blue dot of the tracker anywhere on the map.

Ash’s brother, Arlo, arrives home for a few days. He, Nina, and Ash are planning a Christmas Eve trip to the village for pizza. At about four o’clock, however, Nick surprises Nina with a visit. Nina asks him to come in for a drink so that he can meet Arlo. Nick takes out three Christmas gifts—one for each of the Swanns—and as he and Nina move to the table, Ash and Arlo exchange a glance. Ash knows that her brother is also irritated by Nick’s sudden presence.

Soon, though, Nick has charmed Arlo as he charms everyone. Ash is sad that she won’t be able to catch up with Arlo now. She prompts her mother to ask Nick about his past as a life coach. Nick answers quickly and smoothly, saying that he did it for a while when he was temporarily burned out on the restaurant industry.

Nick returns to Martha’s house. She is angry, but he tells her that he had to deal with an emergency at his mother’s house. He tells Martha that his mother has dementia now, and he needs to take care of her. He will need to travel back and forth to where his mother lives, 120 miles away, and he will need money. Martha feels her world crashing in on her again. She notes that her husband smells of wine and thinks about the inactive tracker in his car, which is probably destroyed. He looks at her with so much love, however, that she wavers, unsure what to believe.

Four years earlier, Nick takes the money that Amanda gets from Bella and books a three-day vacation in the Cotswolds for himself and Martha. He tells Amanda that he needs to leave for medical treatment. He tells Martha he has accepted a new job as director of a hospitality training company. He pretends to be upset at how many hours his new job will require, and she is touched. That night, he suggests that since they will be so busy, they might consider living together. Martha agrees, and they decide that because of her sons and the florist shop, it makes the most sense for them to live at her place rather than his.

Now, Nick returns to Amanda’s house and goes right to bed. Alone in the bedroom, he scrolls through his phone, enjoying the photos of his vacation with Martha. The doorbell rings. He is horrified to hear the voice at the door: It is Tara.

Nick hears Tara and Amanda arguing about whether Tara’s husband “Jonathan” is there. Tara shows Amanda a photo on her phone, and Amanda protests that this is her husband, “Damian.” Nick hurries out as Tara tries to show Amanda a photo of Nick and Martha in the Cotswolds. Nick very nearly panics and flees; for the first time in his life, he does not feel equal to the task at hand.

He feels a switch flip inside him and experiences “a total loss of control” (196). He goes downstairs, grabs Tara’s phone, and shoves her against the wall. He orders her to leave, implying that he will hurt her if she stays. She tells him that she is going to expose him, and he presses his arm into her throat. She nearly gets away from him, and he yells at Amanda to help.

Confused, Amanda holds Tara’s arms as Nick kills her. Amanda asks who she is and what they are going to do next. He convinces her that Tara has been stalking him all these years, and they cannot risk going to the police. They will have to deal with the body on their own.