Drummond calls Thomas’s attention to a set of numbers Vivien recorded on her journal’s penultimate page. Thomas suspects that the numbers refer to a phone number, though he cannot reconcile them with an existing area code. He is reluctant to work with Drummond to decipher its meaning.

The Second Immortal Dinner came into prominence when the public realized the collective prestige of its guest list. The Blundys’ guests included novelist Mary Sheldrake and Francis’s editor and brother-in-law, Harry Kitchener. Critical interest in the dinner grew with speculation into the lost poem, which they saw as a glimpse into better times. This fostered scholarly debate, in which some argued that the Second Dinner’s prestige would never match that of the First. This conflict has helped to keep Blundy scholarship alive over the decades.

Following the champagne incident, Francis drafted a new poem and anticipated reading it for Vivien. Although he had been working on the corona for five months, he resolved to destroy all notes and drafts to ensure that Vivien’s gift was one-of-a-kind. He wrote the final draft on a vellum scroll and tied it with green silk, which he felt would add to the flourish of his reading later. Francis felt that he achieved the corona’s challenging form and considered the poem one of his best.

Thomas notes the dangerous tension between studying Francis’s life and his work, suggesting that the former distracts scholars from engaging with the latter.

Blundy scholars are inundated with an overabundance of records, thanks to the rise of digital correspondence and the data cloud during the Blundys’ lifetime. While there is a wealth of information on the Blundys’ shared life, very little is still known about them.

Thomas laments the loss of the world that the Blundys lived in. Even in spite of widespread industrialization, Thomas feels that their world was closer to Shakespeare’s world. Thomas’s world has been radically altered by humans’ destruction of the environment, which makes it impossible to recognize the world depicted in Shakespeare’s writing. Thomas suggests that as time goes on, it will become impossible to glean information about any writer who lived before digital technology.

Mary Sheldrake and her husband, Graham, arrived at the Barn for Vivien’s party in the late afternoon. On their way from London, the Sheldrakes fought over Graham’s admission that he had an affair that ended three months ago. Upon their arrival, Mary announced that their marriage was over, allowing her to continue engaging in her own discreet affair. However, not long after their arrival at the Barn, Graham discovered Mary’s affair after going through her phone messages.

Thomas points out that the Sheldrakes’ conflict is important only insofar as it informed their responses to Francis’s poem later that evening. He adds that Mary maintained her status as one of her generation’s most popular novelists, sometimes deriving her plots from Graham, whom she is assumed to have supported with her income.

While taking a shower, Francis considered the possibility of publishing “A Corona for Vivien,” though he worried this would diminish its value as a gift. He resolved that someone else would eventually uncover it and publish it on his behalf, bringing it to the wider reading public. Soon after greeting his next guests, Tony Spufford and John Bale, Francis placed the vellum scroll behind the mantel clock.

Over drinks, John shared anecdotes about his veterinary practice. The Kitcheners, Harry and his wife, Jane, who was also Francis’s sister, soon arrived. Harry was a poet who lived in Francis’s shadow; he championed Francis’s work and had agreed to write his biography.

As evening fell, Vivien went into the kitchen to prepare a salad. Jane and Mary set the table. Mary accidentally dropped a ceramic salad bowl, Jane’s wedding present to Vivien and Francis. Mary apologized profusely for her blunder. Vivien and Jane reassured her.

Thanks to his deep knowledge of the event, Thomas expresses intimacy with the Second Immortal Dinner’s attendees. He narrates how the last two dinner guests, Chris and Harriet Gage, were running late because they had to attend to their eight-month-old child, Todd, before turning him over to his babysitter. The dinner marked their first time away from Todd since his birth.

Drawing from Vivien’s journal, Thomas describes Chris as a college dropout who later worked as a men’s hairdresser and a builder. Harriet, his girlfriend from school, studied to become a profile writer and was eventually commissioned to write a piece on Francis for Vanity Fair. Harriet charmed her way into the Blundys’ inner circle, and the two couples became friends;  Francis and Vivien were Todd’s godparents.

The Gages arrived at the Barn during Francis’s speech about climate change. Francis generally denied its existence, and though his friends disagreed with him, they thought it better to let him say his piece and then change the topic to avoid offending him. Francis argued that climate scientists skewed data to alarm people about a “non-existent crisis” and that the Earth would eventually regulate itself. Thomas references a related phenomenon in the 2030s called the Derangement, in which a series of catastrophic weather events underscored humanity’s indifference to global heating. After Francis’s speech, Vivien was embarrassed, both by her husband’s foolishness and their guests’ indulgence of him.

In the middle of Francis’s speech, an intoxicated Mary considered the possibility of having an open marriage with Graham. This would allow them to circumvent the inconveniences of a divorce while still allowing them to engage in their affairs. When she and Graham looked at each other again, she felt her love for him renewed. She then thought twice about the way he looked at her, embarrassed by her assumption that Graham felt exactly as she did. She reinterpreted his gaze as one of indifference and escaped to the kitchen to offer Vivien help.