On the side of the motorway, police officers inform Jess that the Rolls-Royce is uninsured and has a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification), making it illegal to drive. As they charge her with a potential £5,000 fine, Ed pulls over and offers assistance. The police ignore him and arrange for the Rolls-Royce to be impounded.

Stranded, Jess reluctantly accepts Ed’s offer to give her and her family a lift home. The drive is tense, and Jess explains they were headed to a Math Olympiad. When Ed reaches their house, Tanzie has an emotional breakdown, begging to find a way to get to the competition. Moved, Ed impulsively offers to drive them to Scotland himself. After some hesitation, the pleas from Tanzie and Nicky convince Jess to accept.

The next morning, Ed regrets his offer and drives to Jess’s house to back out. However, he overhears the family debating whether to trust him. He is won over by Tanzie’s intelligence and enthusiasm for the trip and decides to go through with it.

The journey starts slowly due to traffic and the dog’s unpleasant smell. The situation worsens when Jess reveals Tanzie gets severely carsick, forcing Ed to take slower roads all the way to Scotland, shifting what might have been a single day’s trip into a three-day journey. Before long, Tanzie vomits in the backseat, which requires a lengthy cleanup. Once they are moving again, Ed explains his company’s software idea, which involves mobile payment transactions that would cost a fraction of a penny per transaction. He argues that this is a negligible amount, but Tanzie calculates that the average family will end up paying close to £182 per year, which is a significant sum to a family like theirs. This creates an awkward silence.

Tension rises between Ed and Jess when he asks her to keep her feet off the dashboard and stop fidgeting, claiming that this is distracting and annoying. They stop near Oxford for lunch, where Jess provides homemade sandwiches to the children that Ed refuses to eat. Instead, he buys himself lunch at a pub and ends up buying an assortment of drinks for Jess and the children because he can’t decide which ones they might prefer and does not want to get back in line. Jess is shocked by his careless extravagance. She gives Nicky his painkillers, and Tanzie confesses she is having nightmares about the Fisher family. Jess promises her that she will handle them, though she admits to herself that she is worried she cannot keep her children safe.

After they resume their journey, Ed takes several strained phone calls, including one with his ex-wife, Lara. Jess notices that he does not pick up a call from Gemma.

As evening approaches, Ed begins looking for a hotel for them to spend the night, but Jess insists that she and the children will sleep in the car to save money. Ed books a room at a Travel Inn. However, he feels guilty and offers the extra bed in the room to Nicky since he just came out of the hospital and is still in pain. However, Jess refuses to let Nicky accept the offer. Ultimately, they compromise: The children will take the room, while Jess and Ed sleep in the car with the dog. While Jess and Ed try to get settled in the car, Ed asks her why she has seemed annoyed with him all day. She says it seems like he regrets his decision to help them. Seeking a truce, Ed buys a bottle of wine for them to share. Jess impresses him by using his shoe to thump the bottle against a wall until the cork pops out.

Sharing wine in the car park, Jess tells Ed about her past: She had Tanzie at 17, is estranged from her mother, and Nicky is her stepson. They play a truth game, during which Jess explains that wearing flip-flops in cold weather is her personal expression of faith that spring will arrive soon.

Ed admits he had driven to their house intending to back out of his promise. He says he changed his mind because after making some serious mistakes, he felt a desire to do something good. They fall asleep in the car and are woken in the morning by a security guard who tells them they cannot sleep in the car park.

On the second day, the children go to the Travel Inn breakfast buffet, where Tanzie and Nicky follow Jess’s instructions to smuggle extra food for the journey. The mood is more cheerful as they drive, and Ed and Jess debate the definition of being rich since Ed doesn’t think of himself as a wealthy person while Jess does. Later, they stop for tea in a country town.

At the tea shop, Tanzie borrows Ed’s phone and discovers a series of anti-gay messages posted by the Fishers on Nicky’s Facebook page. She shows them to Jess, who rushes to comfort a distraught Nicky. While she is gone, Ed comforts Tanzie and then tells Nicky he will help him sort out the problem. Ed and Nicky go to the car alone to have a talk, and when they return a short time later, they look satisfied.

The chapter flashes back to Ed and Nicky’s interactions after they stepped out of the teashop together. In the car, Ed helps Nicky guess the Facebook password of his lead bully, Jason Fisher. To avoid being traced, Ed calls his hacker friend, Jez, who lets Ed access Jason’s account remotely.

Following Ed’s instructions, Jez posts embarrassing messages from Jason’s account and removes the bullying posts from Nicky’s page. Relieved, Nicky listens as Ed shares his own past experiences of being an outsider. Ed advises him to find his tribe, assuring him that most worthwhile people were once outsiders. They agree to keep the hacking a secret before rejoining Jess and Tanzie.