The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

Meeting Jo and Pen at a restaurant for lunch, Alice reflects that Pen’s upbringing taught her to second-guess herself and never take up space. This marks a fundamental difference between the two of them, and Alice hopes that school will slowly allow Pen to change her tentative outlook for the better. At lunch, Jo points out a girl named Sylvia who was her childhood crush in boarding school. The two of them were kicked out of their school for having a romantic relationship, and Jo is nervous about the prospect of approaching her again.

On her laptop, Pen is excited when Chet and Sasha add her to a chat app and begin messaging her. Chet teases her in a friendly way and tells her that Sasha could give her horseback riding lessons since she isn’t a very good rider. Meanwhile, Sasha flirts with her, and Pen is thrilled at the thought of seeing him again. Later, as Pen listens to a voicemail from her mother, she feels grateful for the bond between them.

Pen begins her morning sequestered in a bakery, working through some French essays. She is interrupted by Julian, who asks her why she is studying French and English in Scotland. Pen knows that he is only interested in her because of Alice, and she feels annoyed. He jokingly tells Pen that he is avoiding his young wife, and she feels disgusted by the joke.

The night before, Alice called the landline in Pen’s room and said that she thought she saw Julian lurking outside of rehearsals, but Pen told Alice that she must have been imagining things. Now she thinks that Julian might really have been there.

In Julian’s class, Alice feels nervous excitement and hopes that it was him that she saw outside of the rehearsal space. After class, she speaks to Julian, and they flirt. He asks her what she thinks of the male lead in the play. Trying to provoke Julian into jealousy, she says it will be easy to fall in love with the male lead. Julian tells her to come to his office at lunch to discuss her last essay.

In his office, Alice is angry and humiliated when she sees that Julian gave her a grade of 61 on the paper. Julian is pleased by her reaction, having planned the low grade to deliberately destabilize her. As the two go over the essay, he assesses Alice’s body and silently objectifies her. His office is hot, so Alice takes off her sweater and inadvertently catches him looking at her breasts when her shirt rides up. Annoyed by the games that he is playing; she leans forward and kisses him.

In a letter to Pen, Elliot apologizes for ignoring her during the previous visit and invites her to come visit again.

In Pen’s dorm room, Alice and Jo drink wine and question Pen about how often she chats online with Sasha. She tries to downplay the crush that she has on him, but Alice is relentlessly critical and dislikes Sasha’s poshness as well as the fact that he is a fourth year at a different school. Pen is annoyed, especially since Alice has been trying to get her to come out of her shell and date for years. She also feels that Alice is being hypocritical, given that she refuses to talk about the fact that she is clearly is having an affair with Julian. Pen also worries that Alice might mention that Pen is a virgin.

Sasha comes online later and invites Pen to Talmòrach that weekend after his Saturday polo match. She agrees and buys a train ticket in anticipation.

Christina meets Pen at the station in Stonehaven, the closest town to Talmòrach, and tells her that Sasha’s polo match has been delayed. Pen is only a little disappointed because she is fascinated by Christina and wants to get to know her better. She admires the other woman’s self-possession and thoughtfulness. They go shopping for groceries in Stonehaven and then walk on the beach. Later, they drive to Talmòrach, where everyone in the village knows Christina. She introduces Pen to several of her godchildren, who work at various stores in town. With the shopping complete, they return to the house for lunch. Pen is pleased that George and Danny are there, and she plays with Danny while George eats.

Despite Sasha’s invitation, Pen worries that she is imposing on Christina and Elliot. Christina takes a phone call and tells Pen that she is in the green bedroom again and that George can show her the way. Seeing that George is preoccupied with Danny and not wanting to be a bother, Pen tells Christina that she knows the way. However, she gets turned around upstairs and walks into a bedroom that occupied by a teenage boy, who asks her who she is.

Christina reflects on the morning and her children. She was glad that Sasha, normally shy, had connected with Pen and invited her to visit. However, her youngest son, Freddie, has suddenly returned home in dire circumstances, and she is worried.

The narrative will later reveal that Freddie played a prank on his cousin Hugh, who works for the British government; Freddie was arrested as a result, and the scandal threatens to ruin the family. Hugh tormented Freddie as a child, and while Christina is sympathetic to Freddie, she worries that his thoughtlessness will cause problems she cannot fix. Christina is also frustrated that Sasha forgot to cancel Pen’s visit; now she is juggling the need to hide Freddie with the responsibility of entertaining Pen.

Christina is also aware of how much work she does for the village and the estate and how little respect she gets for it. Her own father, who called her “Teensy,” thought that she would never be more than a wife, and he was unsupportive when she tried to follow in his footsteps and join the Diplomatic Service. When she quit to help Elliot care for his dying mother, her father treated this event as the obvious ending for her career. Meanwhile, people near Talmòrach gossip about Christina because she does much of the housework herself and keeps only a small staff of servants. This weekend, she is trying to entertain Pen while also speaking to her former diplomatic coworkers in efforts to contain Freddie’s scandal.

When the teenager in the bedroom introduces himself as Freddie Lennox, Pen is surprised that he is not in South America and that no one has mentioned that he is hiding upstairs. He declines to tell her why he is home, though he says it had nothing to do with drugs. He then flirts with her until she leaves. Downstairs, Elliot finds Pen reading and takes her for a walk, giving her a tour of the estate. Pen is irritated and feels that everyone is pretending; she asks Elliot bluntly about Freddie. Elliot tells her that he and Christina want to be a friend to her but cannot answer all her questions. He also states that he doesn’t want to discuss Freddie. When they return to the house, Sasha’s car is there, and Elliot takes his leave of her.

Pen is horrified when she sees Sasha and can tell from his body language that he wants to avoid her. She goes upstairs, takes a hot bath, and then returns to help Christina with dinner. She hopes that she can ease Christina’s burdens and avoid Sasha at the same time. When Sasha and Elliot arrive, the latter lets slip that Sasha’s polo game was cancelled earlier; this makes Pen realize that he lied to Pen about being late. They all sit down for an awkward dinner.

On Sunday, Pen wakes early and borrows Danny from an exhausted George, letting her sleep in. As she takes Danny into the village and buys pastries from a shop, she overhears some gossip about Freddie. Sasha finds Pen in the kitchen and begins to apologize, but Christina interrupts them, praising Pen for her thoughtfulness. She asks Pen to stay for lunch, but Pen lies and says that she has a fixed ticket and needs to leave immediately.

On the train, an older man makes a pass at Pen and crassly tells her that she isn’t a beauty. She escapes him and tearily sits alone in another car. She feels foolish for imagining that Sasha was attracted to her. Reflecting on her childhood, she recalls her mother’s quiet suffering and thinks about how long it took her to realize that her mother’s distress wasn’t caused by a physical illness at all. Now, Pen’s cell phone rings, and she is startled to realize that her father is calling. She explains where she is, and he tells her that he will talk to her soon.

At the train platform, she is astonished to see her father waiting for her. He explains that he had some business in London and just came up for the evening to have dinner with her. He also asks her how the Lennoxes are, and she feels hurt, imagining that Christina or Elliot must have told him about her visits.

Ted takes her to a fancy restaurant and confesses that he had only guessed about her visits. He tries to warn her not to take Elliot too seriously, and she presses him for information about why the men’s friendship ended. She guesses that Ted used to date Christina, but he laughs and denies it. He tells her that he and Elliot grew apart gradually and that no one factor was the cause. After dinner, he drops her off at her dorm.

Ted privately reflects that he did indeed have other business in London; he remembers his brief lunch with a woman whom the narrative will later reveal to be Margot.