Liv heads to the Bonfire Night celebrations. Yesterday, she visited the site of her accident so that she could successfully retrieve something that no one else knew even existed; now, she tries to put it out of her mind.

At the community center, Liv briefly spots Drew, who disappears quickly into the crowd. She then encounters Anna, who seems preoccupied and is looking for Margot. Liv notices that Anna is bleeding, but Anna rushes away as the fireworks begin, vanishing before Liv can ask her about the injury.

Margot regains consciousness and discovers that she is gagged and bound in the middle of a burning bonfire. She struggles to get free and realizes that she is wearing an earphone, which is now ringing with an incoming call. She answers it and yells for help, only to discover that Drew is on the other end; he declares that he has arranged for Margot to be burned alive in a fire that she created herself, since she was the one who killed him first.

Anna, who managed to break out of the utility room with some nearby tools, rushes down to the community center. She accosts Drew as he is talking to Margot, and a sobbing Margot apologizes for her actions and begs to be rescued from the bonfire. Anna runs for help, and the firefighters manage to put out the fire. The paramedics pull out a badly burned Margot, who is still alive. Before Margot is taken away in the ambulance, she pulls Anna close and whispers something that changes Anna’s life forever.

Following the Bonfire Night incident and the resulting police interview, Anna returns home to an empty house. She lied and told the police that she had found and answered a ringing phone that was lying on the ground. She claimed that Margot was on the line and had begged for help, after which Anna alerted the fire marshals. 

Unbeknownst to the police, Anna has taken the phone and plans to dispose of it in her own time. Now, Anna reflects on what Margot told her before being taken away. She is convinced that Margot was telling the truth. Suddenly, the voice of Ioana whispers in her mind, saying, “You know what you have to do” (289). For once, Anna agrees.

December: One Month After Bonfire Night

Watching from the window, Brandon tells Liv that Margot is back. Liv replays a video on her laptop, wondering what to do with it; she hides it from Brandon as he joins her. Brandon tells her that he has booked the concrete delivery for the floor of their extension for the end of January. Liv mulls over the rising costs of their studio and home renovation, wondering how to secure more money.

Along with Drew, Anna watches Margot’s return. The media interest surrounding the attempt on Margot’s life has not yet faded, but no one has come looking for Anna or Drew, and it is clear to them that the police don’t suspect Drew’s involvement in the matter. The incident has also gained Margot the sympathy of the public for the first time in years. As they watch Margot head up the front steps of her house, surrounded by paparazzi, Drew bitterly claims that Margot should be thanking him. Anna privately agrees.

One month after the incident, Margot recuperates at home and reflects that her near-death has positively affected her relationship with Nicu; they are finally working on their marriage again. She also feels closer to Frankie and Tommy than she has ever been before, and she is genuinely enjoying their company. Suddenly, Anna arrives; Margot has invited her over for a long-overdue conversation.

Now aware that Drew is really Anna’s brother, Margot tells Anna that Drew is the person with whom she had been having her three-month affair. Drew and Margot had met through a dating app; they got together after Drew told Margot that he and Anna had an understanding about leading separate lives. Some weeks into the affair, Drew told Margot that he had fallen in love with her, and she felt compelled to end the relationship. Drew took the news badly, so Margot agreed to meet him one last time on the day before the bonfire. They spent the night together, and the next morning, Drew told her the truth about his and Anna’s past. He then sedated Margot in preparation for placing her beneath the bonfire.

Now, Anna asks Margot if she remembers her and Drew from the night when the siblings’ parents were murdered. Margot confesses that they have been impossible to forget. She has searched for Joanna and Andrew Khan over the years, hoping that they were okay. She didn’t make the connection when she met Anna and Drew as adults, especially given that they had had their last names changed to “Mason” after their uncle and aunt adopted them. Margot then confirms that what she told Anna on the night of the bonfire is true. (After Drew told her the truth about their past, Margot remembered that he was the one who had told her gang about the safe and the keys; he was the boy known to them then as “Andy.”) Margot states, “If it wasn’t for him, we’d never have broken into [the] flat” (306).

Anna reflects on Margot’s revelation, remembering when a 14-year-old Drew had begun to pull away from their parents and get into huge fights with them, especially as he began to socialize with older boys. Anna remembers one specific fight in which their father flushed plastic bags of tablets down the toilet as Drew screamed that some people were going to kill him for this. Two weeks later, Anna and Drew’s parents were dead.

Margot recounts the events that occurred on the night when Anna’s parents were murdered. She confesses that it was her idea to burn the place down, but she explains that she was terrified that Warren would kill her otherwise. Once she discovered Anna and Drew, she tried to convince Warren not to destroy the building. However, he tossed the lighter to the ground before Margot could stop him, then dragged her out into the street. Margot called the police afterward and waited until the ambulance arrived and pulled the children out. Now, Margot believes that if she had told Warren about Anna and Drew, he would have killed them both immediately; she figured that they would have a better chance of surviving the fire.

Anna remembers that on the day after Bonfire Night, Drew came creeping back into the house in the early morning. Spotting him on the security camera, Anna snuck up on him and shattered his kneecap with a pipe wrench before he could attack her. Anna then confronted Drew about what Margot had revealed to after the fire, and Drew confirmed his involvement in the break-in of their parents’ store years ago, claiming that it was supposed to have been a quick affair in which no one would get hurt. He also confessed that he had recognized Margot, just as Anna had when she saw Margot on TV, but he pretended not to so that Anna would move on. Hearing this, Anna ordered Drew out of her house and her life, and in response, Drew passed his phone to her, grinning.

In answer to Anna’s question, Margot reveals that she didn’t tell the police about Drew’s involvement in the incident at Bonfire Night because she did not wanting to entertain further questions. However, Margot now asks Anna to keep Drew away from her, and Anna promises that it has already taken care of. When Anna reveals her knowledge of Margot’s involvement in Liv’s accident, Margot confesses the truth. Anna then reveals that Drew was the one who recorded Margot and Brandon together and sent it to Nicu. She also reveals that her move to this town was a “culmination of a decade-and-a-half-long campaign to make your life as miserable as possible” (317).

Anna tells Margot that ever since the age of 17, she has been working to sabotage Margot’s career. First, she worked as a trainee reporter to write false, negative stories about Margot, slowly chipping away at the public’s perception of her. Anna also masterminded the Glastonbury disaster for Margot’s band via an anonymous social media campaign, and she then engineered the failure of Margot’s solo on YouTube. When Margot and Nicu got together, Anna was the one to break the news to Ioana, and she also convinced Ioana to sell stories to the media as the “scorned woman.” However, after Margot visited Ioana on the day before the wedding, Ioana decided that she had had enough, and she told Anna so when Anna went to see her that same day. An enraged Anna pushed Ioana off the balcony to her death, then typed out a suicide note on Ioana’s laptop, blaming Nicu and Margot.

Overwhelmed by everything that Anna has told her, Margot excuses herself and goes to cry in the bathroom. When she returns, Anna completes her story, confessing that she has a key to Margot’s house and has been moving things around and sending all the hate mail. She is the one who found and kept Liv’s cat, releasing it again after Margot replaced it. She also responded to the email from Margot’s band, turning down the reunion offer and deleting the email so that Margot would never see it. Anna also confesses to killing Zain, Jenny, and Warren. However, she says that she doesn’t want to hurt Margot anymore because she had a change of heart after Margot tended her wounds.

Anna is also sure that Margot won’t be reporting anything that Anna has just confessed; Margot has finally won back her reputation, and Anna knows that she won’t risk this by exposing the past. When Anna points out that the two of them are bound together for life, Margot reveals that she is pregnant with Drew’s child.