On the day that Stuart has plans to see his daughter, Blaise, who’s in London on a rare visit from Australia, Jessamine fakes a severe illness and begs him to stay and take care of her. She claims to be dying, with symptoms of intense pain and numbness, in a manipulative attempt to make him change his plans. Stuart sees through the act but feels helpless. Daisy, Jessamine’s daughter, recognizes her mother’s behavior and urges Stuart to leave for the day and ignore Jessamine’s calls to prevent her from getting into his head.

Stuart follows Daisy’s advice. He turns his phone to silent and spends the day feeling a mix of anxiety and liberation, visiting old friends at his squat and wandering through London. He buys Blaise a gift and reflects on the freedom he has lost since moving in with Jessamine. He feels a deep nostalgia for his former life and resents the “benign imprisonment” of his current situation.

Stuart enjoys a fun dinner with Blaise at the restaurant on the top floor of the Standard hotel. He tells her about the “car crash” of his life with Jessamine. Horrified, Blaise begs him to stay with her at her hotel for the night, but Stuart refuses, explaining he cannot abandon Daisy, who relies on him. He promises Blaise that he will have left the toxic situation by the next time they see each other. After dinner, he takes a taxi back to Thornwood, filled with anxiety about what he will find. As he unlocks the front door, he is struck on the head from behind and loses consciousness.

Jasper recalls the day Claire arrived at Thornwood when he was a child. Claire was treated differently from the other “au pair girls” (166) his father brought to the house. She ate with the family and seemed almost like one of them, but Jasper saw her fear and recognized she was a prisoner. He began intentionally leaving doors unlocked for her, willing her to escape. He understood that his father, despite his calm and loving demeanor, was a monster. Eventually, Claire was taken downstairs to his father’s study like the other girls, and Jasper didn’t’ see her again for almost a year. One night, he heard a new sound that convinced him that things had gone too far. Determined to act, he stole a small knife from the kitchen, intending to find a way to get it to her to help her fight back.

In the present, Jane drives to Dresden Close, near Winchester, to find Stella Madden. When Jane explains her inquiry, Stella immediately guesses she is asking about Jasper. She invites Jane in and reveals that Jasper was her lodger for about a year and a half after he left home to attend clowning school. Stella describes him as initially polite but increasingly strange, dark, and brooding. She felt unsafe around him, sensing a “festering child” beneath his charm.

Her fear solidified when she read a local news story about a young woman being harassed in a nearby park by a man in a clown mask who was masturbating. Convinced it was Jasper, she and her husband fabricated a reason to make him leave. Jasper had just found a job at Martello’s Circus, so he left without issue. Stella gives Jane the date of the incident—June 10, 2008—and Jane shows Stella the torn letterhead she found. Stella confirms she forwarded a letter to Jasper about a year ago. Seeing the “Dr.” on the letterhead, Stella recalls Jasper mentioning a therapist, leading Jane to suspect the letter is a clue to someone who knows the inner workings of his mind.

Stuart awakens in an unfamiliar room. He is in immense pain, particularly on the left side of his head. He finds his ear is bandaged, his vision is blurred, and his body aches. By looking out a low window, he realizes he is in a locked room on the attic floor of Thornwood. He is weak and dizzy but manages to stand and confirm the door is locked from the outside. He calls for help. A moment later Jessamine appears through a crack in the door holding a knife, threatening to cut off his other ear if he does not get back into bed.

While walking her dogs, Jane searches for the therapist Jasper had seen, using the partial information she has. She eventually identifies him as Dr. Anthony Twist, a psychotherapist specializing in EMDR, a therapy for processing trauma. Aware that patient confidentiality will prevent Dr. Twist from discussing Jasper, Jane decides to book a consultation for herself, reasoning she has her own traumas to address. She successfully makes an appointment for Wednesday. Later that evening, Jane sends a message to Dexter, summarizing all the recent developments: Jasper is a flasher who ran away from a circus in Little Belmont, Daisy may have gone to meet him believing he was her uncle, and Jessamine might have been infertile. She suggests meeting up on Wednesday, and Dexter immediately agrees.

Jessamine sits with Stuart and explains that she only took a “chunk” of his ear and that the injury was an “accident” meant only to scare him. She says her mother, Annie, stitched the wound at home to avoid questions from medical professionals. She claims they moved him to the old “au pair girls’ room” (259) to give him space to recover. Stuart has been unconscious for 36 hours. Jessamine, who’s newly sober, offers to wash him. Exhausted and in pain, Stuart surrenders to her care. As she leaves the room, he hears her lock the door behind her. The memory of her threat with the knife returns, and he feels a sense of violation in the sour-feeling room.

After four days locked in the attic room, Stuart is desperate to get out. He manipulates Jessamine by suggesting they spend quality time together, reminding her of when they first met. He convinces her to let him out of the room. Once free, he discovers that Jessamine has deleted all contacts for his family and children, including Blaise, from his phone. He suppresses his anger to avoid conflict and begins a strategy of appeasement to slowly regain his freedom. He promises Daisy he will stay at Thornwood until she turns 18, giving himself a five-and-a-half-year timeline for his own escape. Using Daisy’s phone, he finds Blaise on social media and sends her a message asking for her contact information.

In the present day, Jane returns to Little Belmont. She stops at Helen Yaxley’s to collect the photograph Daisy had left in her suitcase and to retrieve a bra from the suitcase for scent-tracking. Jane takes her dog, Reggie, to the field where the circus was held and has him track Daisy’s scent from the bra. Reggie leads her to a tarmacked area behind some large rubbish bins where the performers’ caravans were parked. He finds a discarded paper coffee cup from the local village shop, confirming that Daisy was at the circus grounds. Jane speculates that Daisy was there to find or observe her uncle, Jasper.

Jane attends an appointment with psychotherapist Dr. Anthony Twist in London, pretending to be a potential patient. She uses her own genuine childhood trauma—neglectful alcoholic parents and subsequent self-destructive behavior—to establish herself as a credible candidate for his EMDR therapy. After he explains the process, she reveals her true purpose: She is investigating the disappearance of Daisy Black and believes his former patient, Jasper, is responsible.

Dr. Twist confirms Jasper was his patient and that he might pose a danger to young women. He admits he wrote to Jasper a year prior after a news article described an assault that reflected behaviors Jasper had confessed to during their sessions, but Jasper never responded. Bound by confidentiality, he cannot share specifics but tells Jane that Jasper’s therapy was consumed by dreams of being trapped in his childhood home, which he described as a “hellhole.” The conversation reinforces Jane’s belief that the secrets of the case are inside Thornwood.

Jane meets Dexter and they decide to stake out Thornwood. They spot Stuart Tucker leaving with the dog, Hugo, and follow him to Hampstead Heath and then into a pub. When Hugo recognizes and approaches Jane, she and Dexter are forced to confront Stuart. Jane tells him what she has learned about Jasper being a potential abuser and that she believes Daisy is with him. She urges Stuart to report Daisy missing. Stuart is visibly distressed and afraid, insisting it is not that simple. He tells them, “You’re right: There is shit going down at my place. There is, like, really bad shit” (286), but he insists that involving the police would put Daisy in even greater danger. Jane pleads with him to tell her the truth and Stuart’s resistance cracks. He starts to talk, recounting the story of DI Brooks’s visit during lockdown.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, a detective, DI Yasmin Brooks, arrives at Thornwood. She is from the cold-case team and is reinvestigating the 2005 disappearance of Claire Connolly. She questions Annie, who was present during the original investigation along with her husband Allen and children Jessamine and Jasper. Annie claims Allen and Jasper both left home years ago and she has no contact with them.

DI Brooks reveals that Daisy has no birth certificate or passport, raising questions about her parentage. The DI then explains that a neighbor, Sara Aalto, reported hearing movement and a female voice at the property on the day Claire disappeared, but later retracted her statement, saying she must have been mistaken, and it was just the family eating lunch in the garden. Recently, the DI found a paper bag containing a receipt from that day and guitar-related items behind the house. She announces her intention to get a warrant for a full-scale search of the property, stating she has more evidence than just the bag. Annie is furious and says she will consult her lawyer.

Stuart tells Jane and Dexter that DI Brooks returned with a warrant and conducted a four-hour search of Thornwood but found nothing. The DI was visibly devastated, having been convinced she would find evidence, possibly even bodies. Stuart, however, knew the police must have missed something and became determined to find out what the family was hiding. When Jane asks for more information, Stuart becomes hesitant, stating he promised Daisy, he would protect her and cannot trust them. Jane reveals that she herself was once brought to Thornwood by Allen Black and narrowly escaped.

Moved by her story, Stuart tells her that after the police searched the house, he felt convinced they’d missed something and started secretly searching the house. Finally, he found a photo of a girl.

Searching through Thornwood, Stuart discovers an envelope of negatives. After having them developed, he finds photos showing a smiling young Jasper sitting with his arm around a dark-haired girl. They’re sitting on the bed in what Stuart recognizes as the au pair girls’ room in the attic where Jessamine once held him captive. Enlarging the image on his phone, Stuart realizes the girl’s ankles are locked into metal leg restraints bolted to the floor.

Stuart immediately confronts Jessamine, forcing her awake and demanding answers. Under pressure, she admits that her father regularly brought women to the house, calling them au pairs, but that she and Jasper understood they were sex workers. She believes the shackles were used to prevent the women from escaping, though she claims she knew little beyond that as a child. She denies that Claire was ever at the house.



Pressing further, Stuart demands to know the identity of Daisy’s biological father, raising the disturbing possibility that Jessamine’s father may have raped and impregnated her. Jessamine reacts with fury and deflection, accusing Stuart of looking for an excuse to leave. Stuart threatens to bring the photograph to police and involve social services unless she tells him the full truth. Jessamine breaks down crying, insisting she was only a child and does not know what took place. The confrontation ends without resolution, and Stuart leaves her to sleep.

In the pub, Jane asks Stuart about the girl in the photo. Stuart explains that Annie dismissed the girl as an au pair and claimed the leg shackles were just a prop from a magic trick of Jasper’s. Annie also denied that Allen had abused their daughter Jessamine, calling Jessamine a fantasist and a liar. Stuart admits to Jane that he had believed Jessamine’s accusation but knew he could not prove it.

Jane then confronts Stuart about the outhouse behind his kitchen, pointing out the metal rings on the walls clearly meant to restrain someone. Stuart becomes terrified and prepares to leave. He desperately begs Jane not to go to the police yet, asking for time to talk to Annie and Jessamine again himself. When Jane brings up Daisy, Stuart cuts her off, insists he will deal with it, and abruptly departs.

Returning to Covent Garden, Jane and Dexter agree that the investigation has reached a point where the evidence must be handed over to the police the following day, regardless of the Black family’s desire for secrecy. Before they can take action, Tobias emails with a lead: The woman Jaspar assaulted in Winchester has been identified as Avril Christmas, a sales assistant at a Guildford department store.

Jane and Dexter travel to Guildford and approach Avril at work. Avril reacts with dark humor, describing the incident as her “party piece”—a grimly funny anecdote she tells now that she has a bit of distance from it. When shown the clown mask and photographs of Jasper, she confirms he is the man who assaulted her. She clarifies that he did not physically harm her but terrorized her by following her in the park, pressing close enough for her to hear his breathing through the mask, covering her mouth, performing a magic trick with a silk scarf, and then masturbating before fleeing. Avril also notes that Jasper is noticeably short, closer to five foot three inches, a physical detail Jane had not previously known. The encounter confirms Jasper’s identity as the clown assailant while raising new questions about the nature and escalation of his behavior in connection with Daisy’s disappearance.