On Christmas Eve, the McCarthy flat is freezing despite festive decorations. Marie and Elizabeth wear coats indoors waiting for Santy to bring doll dresses, while baby Alice is wrapped in blankets. Bernie is distressed because Maura has disappeared and failed to deliver the promised gifts. Despite knocking on Maura’s door three times that week, she has received no answer.

Bernie tells Dan she worries about Maura, saying Dr. Davenport has a temper. Dan objects, reminding her that Christy is a respected doctor and will soon deliver their baby. Bernie suggests making the dresses herself, but she lacks the skill and yarn. Dan proposes visiting Mrs. Stitch, but Bernie refuses, recalling negative memories of the shop.

Determined to salvage Christmas, Dan decides to buy coloring pencils for Marie and a toy pram for Elizabeth.

On Christmas morning, Maura wakes to the smell of alcohol and cigars. Her face is bruised, and she applies heavy makeup to conceal it. When Christy finishes his morning prayers, Maura nervously discusses preparations for hosting his family for Christmas dinner, but he stops her. He has told his family she is unwell and instructs her to stay in bed while he spends Christmas with them alone. Before leaving, he gives her emerald earrings she silently vows never to wear, and reminds her she must be in ideal condition to try for another baby in six weeks.

After Christy departs, Maura changes into the trouser suit she wore on her wedding day, retrieves the doll dresses from under the bed, and replaces the Santy tags with ones signed from herself. She leaves wearing an old coat from before her marriage, deliberately ignoring the fur coat Christy gave her.

She walks through quiet, rainy streets to the McCarthy’s door. Dan answers, visibly alarmed when rain washes away her makeup to reveal bruising. Though Maura insists she cannot stay, Dan and Bernie persuade her to join them for Christmas dinner. She gives the dresses to the delighted girls and spends a warm, joyful day with the family, observing Dan’s devoted interactions with his daughters and thinking how fortunate Bernie’s unborn baby is to be born into such a loving home.

By February 1970, Maura has learned to manage Christy’s moods by being an impeccable housewife. Bernie’s late-stage pregnancy grows difficult, with swollen feet and severe headaches.

On Christy’s thirtieth birthday, he is displeased with the watch strap Maura bought him. His sister Grace insults Maura’s housekeeping, and Christy leaves for the pub with colleagues, telling Maura to wear the emerald earrings for their private celebration later. The request fills her with dread. When she opens the box, she discovers the earrings are for pierced ears. She spends the afternoon in a panic, unsuccessfully trying to force them through her earlobes.

Christy returns home drunk. As he sobers, he pulls Maura close and laments that at thirty he is still not a father. He announces they should fix that immediately. When Maura reminds him that the doctor advised waiting six weeks after her pregnancy loss—only five have passed—Christy overrides her. Desperate to conceal her unpierced ears, Maura claims to have a headache. Enraged, Christy grabs her by the hair and drags her toward the bedroom.

The morning after Christy’s birthday, Maura lies awake beside her snoring husband experiencing a new, unbearable shame after being raped. She recalls repeatedly saying no until she fell silent, and Christy calling her a good girl. She thinks to herself that she is tired of being a good girl.

Unable to sleep, she goes downstairs at dawn to find Dan McCarthy racing up the path in a panic. He tells her Bernie is turning blue and they need Dr. Davenport immediately. Maura screams for Christy, who quickly dresses and leaves with Dan.

Left alone, Maura impulsively takes Dan’s abandoned bicycle and pedals frantically toward the city in her nightdress. She arrives at the McCarthy flat to find it silent. As she prepares to knock, the door opens and Christy emerges, followed by Dan carrying Bernie, whose face is gray and body limp. When Maura asks about the children, Dan dazedly replies they are sleeping. Maura tells them she will stay with the girls, and the car speeds away, leaving her wondering if she will ever see Bernie again.

On the stalled Dublin—Belfast train in 2023, Saoirse asks Maura if Bernie survived. Maura confirms she lived, but her baby boy did not. They named him Philip, and he would be 53 now. Maura praises men like Dan McCarthy who valued their wives and daughters.

Saoirse’s fiancé Miles calls. Moving to a quieter part of the carriage, Saoirse tells a confused Miles she is on a train to Belfast and that she met a woman whose story is helping her find answers. She says he is a good man and that she needs to finish the journey before coming home. Miles sounds frightened and asks her to return immediately. They tell each other they love one another before ending the call.

As the train resumes moving, Maura asks Saoirse where she is, implying a deeper meaning. Saoirse reflects that she is where she wants to be—childless—knowing Miles will never accept this. Maura offers her the chance to get off at the next stop, but Saoirse declines.

In the hospital, Dr. Davenport tells Dan that Bernie is fortunate to have survived preeclampsia and warns that another pregnancy could be fatal. Bernie silently scoffs at being called fortunate while grieving her son, whom she names Philip McCarthy. A nurse scolds Dan for sitting on the bed, enforces visiting hours, and escorts him out despite Bernie’s breakdown—shouting that her baby is dead. He promises to return that evening with her scrapbook.

That night, after the babies are taken to the nursery, Mrs. Sweeny defies the rules by sitting on Bernie’s bed, and the other women in the ward offer their support. Bernie feels profoundly isolated, thinking that Mrs. Sweeny has six sons while she has one in heaven.

Having received no news from the hospital, Maura spends a stressful day with the McCarthy children. She plays Snakes and Ladders with Marie, cooks stew, and is too anxious to eat. While washing up, Marie tells Maura she wants to be a mother when she grows up. Maura encourages her to consider other professions. When she suggests actress, Marie becomes delighted with the idea of playing make-believe.

Dan returns home looking exhausted and years older. Maura guides him to a chair and gives him stew. When she asks about the baby, his silence confirms it died. Maura puts Marie to bed, her thoughts on Bernie, the lost baby, and the broken man at the kitchen table.

Father Walsh visits Bernie in the hospital on the night of Philip’s death. He tells her about a small garden plot at the back of the hospital for babies who did not survive, but Bernie knows she will never visit. She never sees her son again, and no paperwork or cost is involved.

After nine days, Dan takes Bernie home but is emotionally distant and does not kiss her. At the flat, he reveals he has moved his belongings to the living area so their bedroom now belongs to her and the girls—the only way he can enforce the doctor’s order of no more pregnancies, he says, as he cannot trust himself otherwise. Bernie argues it is not a marriage, but Dan insists it is the only way he knows to keep her safe. Alone after she screams at him to leave, Bernie feels hatred for Dr. Davenport—for his abuse of Maura and for the advice destroying her marriage. She writes Philip’s name repeatedly in her scrapbook until the page tears. As she drifts to sleep, she feels Dan take the book, place it on the table, and kiss her forehead. She fears it is the closest they will ever be again.

On a hot summer day in 1970, Bernie is in good spirits for the first time in months. She and Maura have plans to see a James Bond film, with Dan coming home early to watch the children.

Bernie jokes that she might find a new man at the cinema who will actually touch her. It has been six months since Dan has been intimate with her, and her various attempts to change his mind—dressing up, dieting, cooking his favorite meals—each prompted compliments but ended with Dan taking long walks. Just the previous week, when she pressed herself against him while they waltzed in the kitchen, he broke away and walked until sunrise. They both realized their marriage was at a breaking point.

Bernie meets Maura at Clerys clock. Instead of heading to the cinema, Maura leads her to meet Geraldine, her friend from Switzer’s, who takes them to a pub where her brother Timmy is the barman. Bernie protests that women are not allowed in pubs, but Maura declares she is tired of being a good girl and does not care if Christy finds out. Inside, an old patron named Murph yells at them to leave, but Timmy calms him and settles them in a discreet corner booth with Guinness and crisps.

Maura asks Geraldine for a newspaper parcel, which Geraldine stops her from opening inside the pub. When Bernie asks what is happening, Geraldine whispers the parcel contains “French letters,” code for condoms. She becomes passionately vocal about women’s rights and control over their bodies. Murph’s outrage at this ignites rebellion in Bernie, who decides the risk is worth it to save her marriage. Outside, Maura gives the newspaper parcel to Bernie, saying this is what friends do for each other.

Dan is furious when Bernie shows him the “French letters,” terrified of what neighbors like Father Walsh’s housekeeper or the conservative Pearsons would think and shocked to learn Bernie went to a pub. Bernie tells him she cannot continue living without intimacy and is lonely. Dan admits the separation is equally difficult for him and confesses his greatest fear is that the contraceptives will not work. Bernie kisses him—their first real kiss in six months. They tell each other they love one another, and Dan picks up one of the packets from the table.

In August 1970, Maura reflects on a summer that has included moments of freedom visiting friends and returning to Timmy’s pub. She maintains the routine of a perfect housewife to appease Christy, but his intense desire for a baby remains a constant source of conflict.

On Elizabeth McCarthy’s fourth birthday, Maura attends the party wearing an outfit chosen to hide bruises. Bernie asks if Christy has hurt her, and after sending the children to the bedroom, Maura reveals she has had another pregnancy loss—her fourth since marrying Christy just over a year ago—though this one, unlike the three caused by Christy’s assaults, was natural. She confesses she believes it is for the best, as she cannot protect a child in her violent home. She then declares her resolution to ensure she never has a baby with Christy. Geraldine has given her a chart to track her fertility cycle using the rhythm method, learned from a smuggled American magazine, requiring her to avoid Christy for a few days each month.

Bernie suggests a doctor in Limerick who prescribes the contraceptive pill, but Maura explains this is not an option—a husband’s permission is required, and Christy denies the pill even to his own patients.

Bernie suggests another option: Mrs. Stitch, who provides services for “women’s problems” before noon. Maura understands this refers to illegal abortions and is uncertain it applies to her situation, but Bernie insists that it is worth trying. Maura asks Bernie to accompany her, and they agree to visit the following Wednesday. Bernie plans to tell Dan she is going to confession.

On Elizabeth’s first day of primary school, Bernie walks her and Marie to St. Anne’s. Elizabeth’s teacher, Mrs. Plum, is kind and gentle, while Marie’s teacher and school principal Sister Sloan is harsh, yanking Marie’s arm and threatening her with violence. Angered, Bernie skips her planned confession and goes directly to meet Maura.

They arrive at Mrs. Stitch’s red door to find her speaking with a very young girl holding a bottle meant to induce a pregnancy termination. Inside, Mrs. Stitch asks how far along Maura is. Maura clarifies she is not pregnant but wants to ensure she never becomes pregnant. Mrs. Stitch laughs, saying she would be a millionaire if she could prevent pregnancies, and when Maura asks about the contraceptive pill, dismisses the idea and tells her to “keep [her] legs crossed” or return when pregnant (184).

When Maura replies that she is married, Mrs. Stitch’s demeanor changes entirely. She angrily throws them out, telling them not to return unless they have real problems.