Roseanne decides to write a secret account of her life after Dr. Grene gives her an inkwell filled with blue biro ink.

Republican soldiers carry their murdered comrade Willie Lavelle into Joe Clear's cemetery and ask him to arrange an illegal burial.

Father Gaunt fires Joe Clear from his beloved cemetery job and offers him a new position as a rat-catcher.

During a rat-catching job at an orphanage, a paraffin-soaked rat escapes Joe Clear's grip before he can throw it onto the bonfire.

A fire tears through the orphanage that night, killing 123 girls who were sleeping inside.

Joe Clear is found dead in a derelict cottage, and Roseanne believes he hanged himself from grief.

Father Gaunt visits the bereaved Roseanne and urges her to convert to Catholicism and marry the much-older Joe Brady.

Tom McNulty rescues Roseanne from drowning at Strandhill beach, recognizing her as the girl from Café Cairo.

Tom McNulty and Roseanne marry in Dublin despite his mother's strong disapproval of Roseanne's Protestant faith.

Father Gaunt spots Roseanne and John Lavelle together as they descend from Knocknarea and fixes her with a cold, blank stare.

Father Gaunt arrives at Roseanne's isolated hut with official documents and formally announces that her marriage to Tom has been annulled.

Eneas McNulty arrives at Roseanne's hut covered in ash, having just fled the German bombing of Belfast.

Roseanne gives birth alone on Strandhill beach during a storm and wakes to find her newborn baby gone.

Father Gaunt arrives at the hospital where Roseanne is recovering and directs her to Sligo Mental Hospital as a place of safety.

Dr. Grene discovers at Nazareth House in England that he is Roseanne's lost son and rushes back to declare her wrongly committed.

Roseanne Clear McNulty secretly begins writing her life story while confined as a patient in Roscommon asylum, where Dr. Grene has cared for her for decades. Her testimony traces how her father Joe Clear lost his beloved cemetery job, took work as a rat-catcher, and died under mysterious circumstances while Roseanne was still a teenager. After being pressured by the manipulative Father Gaunt and ostracized by her in-laws, Roseanne married Tom McNulty but saw the marriage annulled when Father Gaunt spotted her on Knocknarea with a former rebel. Left alone in a hut on the Sligo coast, she found brief comfort with Tom's outcast brother Eneas, gave birth alone on the beach, and lost her baby before Father Gaunt delivered her to an asylum. Decades later, Dr. Grene investigates her case, travels to England, and makes the extraordinary discovery that he is the child Roseanne lost on that stormy night, returning to declare her wrongly committed and finally free.

The headline events that shape Roseanne's tragic life and Dr. Grene's revelation.

Joe Clear takes Roseanne to the graveyard tower and demonstrates that hammers and feathers both fall at the same rate.

Father Gaunt agrees to absolve the dying rebel Willie Lavelle after John Lavelle swears his brother never personally killed anyone.

Free State soldiers storm the cemetery temple, fire on the rebel soldiers inside, and arrest the survivors.

Joe Clear hunts rats with his Jack Russell terrier Bob while Cissy retreats further into silence and madness at home.

Cissy secretly buys an ornate Ansonia clock on credit from Mr. Fine's shop and then smashes it on the concrete floor.

John Lavelle rescues Roseanne from Joe Brady's assault in the graveyard and escorts her to his brother Willie's grave.

Dr. Grene tells Roseanne that his wife Bet has died, and Roseanne crosses the room to comfort him, surprising him deeply.

Roseanne saves a lost child near Rosses Point beach and is rewarded with a job at Café Cairo by the grateful mother.

Roseanne encounters John Lavelle by chance at the cinema during a showing of Top Hat and he tells her she looks lovely.

Tom brings Roseanne to meet his mother at the family bungalow, where Mrs. McNulty is coolly unwelcoming from the start.

Jack McNulty blocks Roseanne backstage at the Plaza dance hall and coldly tells her that Tom does not want to see her.

A heavily pregnant Roseanne walks to Mrs. McNulty's bungalow to ask for help and is turned away at the door.

Dr. Grene reads Father Gaunt's deposition describing Roseanne's alleged nymphomania and recognizes it as evidence of deep hatred toward women.

Dr. Grene visits Percy Quinn in Sligo and learns that an asylum orderly named Brady sexually assaulted Roseanne over many years.

The old Roscommon hospital is demolished and Dr. Grene imagines seeing John Kane rise as an angel from the rubble.

These events illuminate the full arc of Roseanne's story through the moments that shaped its margins. From Joe Clear's graveyard dealings with rebel soldiers and Cissy's terrifying descent into madness, to Roseanne's chance encounters with John Lavelle and her cold introduction to the McNulty family, each scene adds texture to the forces conspiring against her. Dr. Grene's loss of his wife Bet marks a turning point in the present-day narrative, as Roseanne's unexpected act of comfort across the room reveals a warmth that deepens his determination to understand her case. His investigation eventually uncovers that Roseanne was sexually assaulted by an asylum orderly during her long decades of confinement, a final cruelty heaped upon her wrongful imprisonment. The story closes with the demolition of the old Roscommon hospital, where Dr. Grene glimpses an angelic vision of John Kane rising from the rubble — a haunting final image of protection and irreversible loss.

The supporting scenes and secondary moments that deepen the story's full tragedy.

Dr. Grene tells Roseanne there has been an outcry against social incarcerations and she feels dread rather than relief at possible freedom.

Father Gaunt dismisses Joe Clear from the cemetery and, finding no ashtray in sight, flicks cigarette ash into Joe's cupped hand.

Joe Clear reads in the Sligo Champion that all the rebel soldiers from the cemetery burial have been shot dead, with John Lavelle the sole survivor.

Dr. Grene tells Roseanne that Father Gaunt's deposition claims Joe Clear was in the RIC and was murdered by the IRA.

Roseanne begins working at Café Cairo, where she notices Tom McNulty regularly ordering Chinese leaf tea with his brother Jack.

Tom asks Roseanne to visit Father Gaunt about the Ne Temere decree, an indirect signal that he intends to propose marriage.

Dr. Grene confesses in his diary that he had a brief affair with a colleague named Martha at a psychiatric conference in Bundoran.

Roseanne climbs Knocknarea to meet John Lavelle in secret, sensing it is a mistake for a married woman but unable to resist.

Father Gaunt visits Roseanne in her isolated hut, formally declares her a nymphomaniac, and reveals that John Lavelle has been hanged by the state.

German warplanes fly low over Strandhill beach at night, pulling the water into torn sheets and terrifying the isolated Roseanne.

Roseanne vividly recalls Eneas breaking her out of the asylum and handing her their newborn son by a moonlit river, insisting the memory is real.

Dr. Grene finds Jack McNulty's old letter hidden inside Religio Medici, revealing Tom's second marriage and Eneas's mysterious disappearance in London.

Dr. Grene reads Roseanne's testimony and realizes that John Kane is Sean Keane, the son John Lavelle sent to watch over Roseanne.

Dr. Grene reads a birth certificate at Nazareth House in England confirming that the adopted child William Clear is Roseanne's son — and his own true identity.

Dr. Grene finds Kane gone with only a farewell note, then drives to Strandhill where Roseanne's long-neglected rose bush still holds its last blooms.

This pool follows the hidden mechanisms of the story — the choices, confessions, and revelations that gradually expose the truth about Roseanne's life and Dr. Grene's identity. Father Gaunt's casual cruelty toward Joe Clear, Roseanne's fateful decision to climb Knocknarea, and the long isolation in her corrugated hut all accumulate into the tragedy of her wrongful confinement. Dr. Grene's own moral failures — including a confessed affair that permanently estranged his wife Bet — mirror the flawed human judgments that shaped Roseanne's fate across a lifetime. As he reads her hidden testimony and a long-lost letter from Jack McNulty, the connections between their two lives snap into focus with increasing urgency. His journey to Nazareth House in England delivers the novel's central revelation, confirmed by a birth certificate, and the story closes when he finds Roseanne's rose bush still blooming on the beach where she once gave birth alone.