Gus visits Mary’s encampment, Sunnymede, and finds her cabin. Mary wonders how Gus found her. Gus implores her to talk. She observes that Mary looks more cautious than she used to.

Mary shares her awareness of Gus’s professional involvement with Anna and Bonamy, but she reveals that Jean made her believe that Gus sought them out on her own. Gus asks about Mary’s baby and learns that she became pregnant after a one-night stand. She does not know the father and is supported by Jean. Gus tries to get Mary to believe that Jean has been inserting false memories in her clients’ minds. She warns her by reminding her what happened to Oriel and asserts that she is looking out for Mary as her friend. Mary denies that they are friends, indicating that Gus judged Mary after she told the truth about Lawrence and that Gus abandoned her after passing her over to Jean.

Gus realizes that Jean withheld her letter from Mary and similarly withheld Mary’s letter and portrait of Gus from Gus. Mary shares Jean’s claim that Gus leaves people and places whenever she loses interest in them and exploits new people, like Anna. Gus understands that Jean has been leading her on, getting her to cooperate through the promise of reuniting with Mary. Gus implores Mary to see that Jean has been exploiting her and that her parents really love her. She reveals that she shared the truth about Lawrence with Anna and Bonamy, but Mary refuses to believe that they didn’t know. She accuses Gus of coveting her, prompting Gus to apologize for making her feel uncomfortable. Jean calls Mary’s phone. Despite Gus’s pleas, Mary answers.

Gus takes the stand to verify the evidence that features her as Jean’s client and correspondent. The correspondence shows that Gus provided Jean with information relating to the Finbow household and their meetings with their legal team. Ibrahim reviews the evidence of the correspondence and suggests that Gus was cooperating with Jean only because she was enticed by the promise of speaking to Mary again. Someone runs out of the gallery in tears; Gus suspects it is Mary.

Afterward, Gus tries to follow Mary outside but bumps into Anna and her legal team instead. Gus attempts an apology to Anna, but Anna walks away. Carr reassures Gus that she will manage Ibrahim’s questioning on the next day. She encourages Gus to take a walk.

Gus visits a park and is surprised to see Jean. She warns Jean that there are legal ramifications to Jean talking to a defense witness, but Jean continues talking to her anyway. She forgives Gus for testifying against her, framing it as an offense against both herself and Mary. Gus denies that Jean ever cared for her and that the Finbows have manipulated her into antagonizing Jean. Jean suggests that she continues to advocate for Gus’s success and talent, which prompts Gus to cry. Jean reassures her but extorts her by threatening to share their recorded sessions with Gus’s parents if Gus continues to speak as a defense witness. Gus reveals that she has been recording their entire conversation, giving her evidence of Jean committing witness tampering.

Jean pleads with Gus not to release the recording to the courts. Gus agrees to withhold the evidence and recant her witness statement on the condition that Jean breaks off contact with Mary and her baby. Jean agrees and takes a call from another client.

Gus returns to the stand to discuss her witness statement. Carr asks her about the history of her relationship with Jean. Gus asserts that Jean made her a worse person, exploiting the vulnerability Gus felt around her sexuality to manipulate the truth about her upbringing and early life. Gus confirms that while her relationship with her family is estranged, Jean made her believe that it was necessary to cut them out of her life in order to grow. This enabled Jean to isolate and exploit Gus.

Gus admits that Jean made her believe that she could pursue a romantic relationship with Mary, but only if Mary distanced herself from her family. Gus felt indebted to Jean because she couldn’t afford their sessions, so Gus referred Mary to Jean and obtained information that would benefit Jean to make up for her limited financial capabilities.

As Gus is reflecting on this part of her statement, she changes course, admitting that her statement contains falsehoods that need to be corrected. She claims that Jean never coerced her into helping her case and that she sought information about the Finbows independently, painting herself as Jean’s willing accomplice. She discredits her own witness statement, claiming that Jean never threatened her to cooperate.

Privately, Gus reasons that sabotaging Anna’s case will ensure Mary’s freedom from both her family and from Jean. Jean will likely win the case but will maintain her distance from Mary because of the evidence Gus has against her. Gus signals this by using Jean’s own words against her on the stand. Later, Ibrahim cross-examines Gus, using her own admission of a falsehood in her statement to discredit her as a witness. She insinuates that Gus was harassing Jean, which provokes Gus on the stand. Ibrahim also gets Gus to admit that Mary wasn’t the only client she referred to Jean; she also referred Mary’s friends, Decca and Bea. Ibrahim calls to strike Gus’s statement from the record, citing a clear bias against Jean.

As Gus descends from the witness stand, she compares being observed by the court illustrator to being observed by Jean during their sessions and Mary during their portrait sittings. She believes she will be portrayed by the illustrator as a “somebody,” rather than a person of no consequence.

Gus returns to Stoke-on-Trent to resume her life while waiting for the verdict announcement. Three months after the end of the trial, Gus reads a report about starlings falling out of the sky due to unknown influences on the murmuration’s sense of stability. While Gus feels confident in her choices, she wonders if Jean has followed through in distancing herself from Mary.

Gus receives an email from Thea inviting her to contribute to an exhibition she is curating in Rome. Gus is encouraged by the invitation, contrasting Thea with Jean as a mentor for her artistic life. While looking for places to stay in Rome during the exhibition, Gus comes across the listing for Jean’s former apartment. She realizes how much Jean had pretended to manipulate Gus. Gus now draws from her experience of coercion to inform her artistic work, blending plaster casts of her hand into new ceramic pieces.

One afternoon, Gus receives her portrait from Mary, who has also sent a postcard of herself with her newborn daughter. Gus is moved by Mary’s forgiving gesture and opens the portrait to look at it. Gus understands that Mary’s perspective of her did not align with the truth of who Gus was. She is no longer upset with Mary for the incorrect nature of the portrait, but she also realizes that she, Mary, Anna, and Jean had perceived each other wrongly.

Gus reconnects with her parents during the holidays and starts to appreciate the consistency of their character. She receives a scathing email from Anna, which makes Gus believe that Anna has lost the trial. Her suspicion is confirmed on New Year’s Eve when the verdict goes public. Justice Larkin rules that there is no concrete evidence to support Anna’s claims in her newsletter, making them libelous. The ruling also reveals that Beaker was the private witness who was cross-examined on day three of the trial, a privilege afforded to him on the basis of his rehabilitation from addiction. Beaker’s testimony ultimately convinced the judge that Mary chose to work with Jean without undue external influence. As for Gus’s evidence, Larkin suggests that she derailed the proceedings with her unreliable testimony.

Gus is relieved that Anna’s team never called on Lawrence as a witness. The narrative implies that he is starting to face accountability for his abuse of Mary and other students. Gus visits an online forum on Lawrence and chats with one user, whom she has reason to assume is Mary. The user’s confessions about her abuse by Lawrence allow Gus to feel that Mary has disentangled herself from Jean’s false memories. Gus invites the user out to coffee, but the user eventually disappears from the forum.

To pay for the damages to Jean, Anna closes Bellinter and mounts an aggressive public relations campaign, promising to appeal the verdict. The narrative implies that Anna and Mary have started making attempts to reconcile with one another.

Gus goes to Notting Hill to attend a fundraiser sale for the Melrose Academy, following Lawrence’s dismissal and the Finbows’ withdrawal of financial support from the school. She expects to see Mary there but finds Lucy instead. Lucy is buying all the portraits Oriel made as a student, which were archived at the academy.

Lucy and Gus leave the sale together. Gus opens up about how she searched aggressively for Oriel after she went missing. She continues looking for Oriel, even after Oriel has died. She adds that people have started to share their stories of being manipulated by Jean, leading the police to reopen a case against her. Gus apologizes for not being able to tell Lucy who she was when they first met. Lucy assures her that she always knew who Gus was. Gus then confesses that she dreamed about Oriel, who came to check how Gus was doing. Gus then prepares to give Lucy the recording of Jean intimidating her.