Evelyn Skinner approaches a British soldier on an Italian road, seeking Allied contacts to help protect artworks in the war zone.

Captain Darnley brings Evelyn and Ulysses into a ransacked villa to reveal Pontormo's Deposition from the Cross hidden inside.

Captain Darnley is killed in action just three days before his 31st birthday, devastating Ulysses.

Ulysses returns to London after the war to find his father's business destroyed and Peggy has had another man's child.

Peggy asks Ulysses for a divorce and refuses his offer to help raise her daughter Alys.

A solicitor arrives at the pub to tell Ulysses that Italian soldier Arturo has bequeathed him his entire Florence estate.

Ulysses invites Peggy to move with him to Florence; she declines but asks him to take Alys instead.

As Ulysses's car pulls away from London, Cress appears in the rearview mirror packed and ready to move to Italy.

Ulysses, Cress, and Alys arrive in Florence and convert Arturo's inherited house into the Pensione Bertolini.

Alys tells Ulysses she met a woman named Evelyn at a church; he races to the train station but misses her train.

Alys tells Ulysses she has fallen in love with a girl, and he accepts her without hesitation.

The river Arno floods Florence, destroying Ulysses's globe workshop and devastating thousands of homes, businesses, and artworks.

Evelyn recognizes Ulysses in a flood newspaper photograph and immediately travels to Florence to find him.

Evelyn and Ulysses are finally reunited in Florence after searching through the flood-damaged streets of the city.

Ulysses and Evelyn visit Captain Darnley's grave in Florence together, choosing to remember him as young and full of life.

The novel opens in 1944 as British soldier Ulysses Temper meets art historian Evelyn Skinner in war-torn Italy, forming a bond that will define both their lives. After the war, Ulysses returns to a changed London where Peggy has had another man's child and asks for a divorce, leaving him adrift. An unexpected inheritance from an Italian soldier he once saved transforms his future, leading him to move to Florence with young Alys and his friend Cress to establish a pensione. For over two decades, Ulysses and Evelyn keep narrowly missing each other in Florence, until a catastrophic flood of the Arno finally brings them back together. Their reunion sets the stage for the novel's later years, in which Evelyn becomes a permanent member of Ulysses's chosen family. The story closes with the two of them at Darnley's grave, honoring lost love by choosing to remember joy over grief.

The headline journey from wartime Italy to Florence reunion.

Peggy and Eddie have sex under a bridge; she feels degraded and refuses to see him again until he arranges a hotel room.

Ulysses, Darnley, and Evelyn survive a heavy artillery attack while sheltering at Allied Headquarters in a Tuscan villa.

Ulysses saves the life of an Italian soldier named Arturo, who has climbed to a window ledge intending to jump.

Cress discovers a hickey on Ginny and deduces she is pregnant; Peggy then breaks the difficult news to Col.

Col gets drunk and smashes up his own bar in a rage after learning that someone took advantage of Ginny.

Tubby delivers a corpse to Col's bar, claiming it is Davy, the man responsible for Ginny's pregnancy.

A policeman arrives showing a photograph of missing man Eric Davy, and Peggy realizes Tubby has killed an innocent man.

Cress begins reading novels, pursuing romance with a neighbor, and socializing freely in Florence for the first time in his life.

Evelyn and artist Dotty travel to Florence; Dotty sketches the city and gives Alys a small, valuable painting.

Alys and Romy secretly escape together to a countryside villa; Alys slips away alone in the middle of the night.

Paola, Cress's long-term Italian girlfriend, dies suddenly, leaving him devastated and withdrawn from the world.

Col, Pete, and Peggy make an unannounced trip to Florence to be with Cress after Paola's death.

Young volunteers pour into Florence from around the world to scrape mud from the streets and rescue priceless artworks.

Col brings Peggy to Florence to recover after her car accident, and she stays for years reconnecting with Alys.

Peggy performs at a club with Pete and meets an American named Glen, who reveals that Eddie died in the war.

Across four decades, the secondary characters and overlooked moments of Still Life quietly drive the story forward. In wartime London, Peggy makes choices born of desperation, while in Italy, Ulysses's act of saving a stranger's life plants the seed of his entire future. Back in London, small-neighborhood dramas — Ginny's pregnancy, Tubby's murderous deception, and Cress's steady evolution — fill the postwar years with life and consequence. In Florence, Cress finds love for the first time, Alys navigates her first heartbreak with Romy, and Evelyn and Dotty's visit sets up a near-miss that haunts the characters for years. The later chapters bring loss, solidarity, and eventual healing, as Paola's death draws the London friends to Florence, the flood galvanizes a generation of Mud Angels, and Peggy finally learns the truth about Eddie's fate.

The supporting moments that shape the pensione family's world.

Darnley kisses Ulysses twice before their unit leaves Florence, a farewell that reveals the depth of their bond.

Cress bets all his money on an unlikely Olympic athlete and wins a life-changing fortune.

Claude the parrot vanishes from the bar when Tubby first arrives and only reappears after Tubby's scheme is uncovered.

On the road to Italy, Cress reveals he has secretly smuggled Claude the parrot across the border from England.

Alys's travel journal contains a sketch of Ginny and Devy Kaur together, revealing the true father of Ginny's baby.

During the pensione's first Christmas gathering, Claude the parrot tells Peggy directly and clearly not to marry Ted.

Despite warnings from Ulysses and Claude the parrot, Peggy goes ahead and marries the controlling Ted.

Ulysses completes his first handmade globe in Florence, reviving the craft his late father once built a business around.

Ulysses and married café manager Giulia finally share a kiss on the night of Ulysses's 40th birthday.

While studying art in London, Alys unknowingly attends one of Evelyn Skinner's art history lectures.

During the flood cleanup, Jem recites a poem he learned through Evelyn, stunning Ulysses's family with an unexpected connection.

After helping with the flood restoration, Evelyn decides to leave England permanently and move into Ulysses's pensione.

At a political demonstration, a vespa crashes and Alys rushes to help the injured rider, discovering it is Romy.

Evelyn celebrates her 99th birthday surrounded by her chosen family gathered in Florence.

The novel flashes back to reveal that young Evelyn gave E. M. Forster the idea behind the title A Room with a View.

Pool 3 captures the pivotal choices and discoveries that quietly redirect the lives of every character in Still Life. From Darnley's farewell kiss to Cress's lucky fortune at the Olympics, small moments accumulate into life-changing momentum. The move to Florence is shaped by hidden truths — Claude smuggled across borders, a sketch that clears an innocent man's name — while Peggy's fateful decision to marry Ted despite all warnings sets her on a long road toward self-destruction. As the decades pass, Ulysses quietly revives his father's craft, Alys unknowingly sits in Evelyn's lecture hall, and a flood brings Evelyn permanently into the pensione's orbit. The novel closes with a late-life celebration for Evelyn and a flashback that reveals her as the hidden muse behind E. M. Forster's most celebrated novel.