Part 2, Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “After”
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
When Rosie and Will return, she calls her mother and tells her she can’t return to Oxford. Mrs. Winters knows where she is and comes to Will’s house to take Rosie home. Will begs Rosie to stay, but she says she must leave as she can’t hide from her family. Will hasn’t wanted to drink since Rosie arrived. Mrs. Winters is angrier about Rosie staying at Will’s than her decision to leave Oxford. Rosie says that Josh’s death wasn’t Will’s fault. She says Josh was wrestling with his identity, which led to him drinking too much. When she tells her mom that Josh is gay, Mrs. White says nothing and changes the subject to Oxford. She begs Rosie not to give up everything she’s worked so hard for, but she acknowledges that it’s Rosie’s decision. Mrs. White confesses that she struggles with depression and breaks down in front of Rosie for the first time since Josh’s death. Rosie empathizes with her mother yet feels like she isn't being heard. Marley sleeps over, asks Rosie if she is okay, and reminds her that one year isn’t enough time to grieve properly.
Rosie returns to Oxford and Simon. Will throws himself into his garage work, saves enough money to get an apartment, and stays sober. He and Rosie talk on the phone often and speak as friends. Rosie stays with Simon, and although Will sleeps with other women, he doesn’t have a partner. Rosie waits two years to tell Simon about Josh, and when she finally does, he holds her tightly, and she considers marrying him. Gran visits Will at his apartment and reveals she has lung cancer and needs him to drive her to her chemo. The news is shocking, and Will is flooded with guilt.
Rosie brings Simon home to meet her parents for Mother’s Day weekend. At dinner, she feels suffocated by Simon’s niceness and the empty spot at the table, and she jumps up and abruptly leaves, claiming she needs something from the bakery. On the walk to the bakery, she wishes to do something shocking, like have sex with Simon on the floor of her room. After leaving the bakery, she runs into Will, who tells her about Gran. The news saddens Rosie, who asks him to go to the lighthouse. They sit near the ocean, and she asks Will if Mother’s Day is painful, but he says he rarely thinks about his mom. Will asks if they can meet for coffee before she leaves. Rosie brings Simon to coffee, and meeting Will turns awkward because Will gets jealous. Later, Rosie visits Gran, who is weak but still fighting. After dinner and cards, Will walks Rosie to the train station. As a result of “[…] a disconnection, a pain so deep and private they cannot broach it,” they don’t hug before she leaves (219).
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
Rosie marries Simon, but despite being invited to the reception, Will doesn’t attend. Rosie calls him the morning after the reception expressing her disappointment. Will tells her he is moving to the north, and whatever they have is over. After Gran finishes chemo and goes into remission, Will moves to the Yorkshire Dales, works for a mechanic, and trains to work for the Mountain Rescue. One year later, he still thinks of Rosie often. He drinks sparingly and meets a woman named Jen one night at a bar. He feels comfortable with her and tells her his entire life story, including about Rosie. After hearing his story, Jen says, “I’d say you just love the idea of her […] you’re pinning everything on something you’ve never even had. Something that’s not real” (226). Will takes her home that night, and eventually Jen moves in with him.
Amber, now a teenager, visits Will and Jen, and over dinner, Jen jokes about Amber and Will not having the same parents. Later, Will reveals that he and Amber have the same mother but a different dad, though Amber doesn’t know. Jen apologizes and tells Will she loves him. He says the same, but he doesn’t mean it. Alone together, Amber tells Will that she knows about the different dads. Amber tells him that she saw Rosie out with Simon in town. She says Rosie is thin, sad, and unhappy, and Amber feels worried about her. She says she worries about Will, too, and encourages him to see a therapist. She tells him that because of his reckless behavior, his high school classmates nicknamed him “Suicide Will.” Will gets called out to mountain rescue and finds a man who has died by suicide, and the sight triggers Will’s memory of the time in high school when he tried to harm himself in the bathroom by hitting his head on the mirror. People assumed he beat up a classmate.
Rosie convinces Simon to live in Norwich because it reminds her of Josh, but she doesn’t tell him that. They both take corporate jobs, and Rosie becomes thin from exercise and restricting her food. She tries therapy, but she still engages in her checking routines. Simon is a kind, caring husband, and Rosie feels guilty for not being content and harboring a secret longing for something else. She begins composing songs again, mostly writing them on her arm and sometimes transferring them to paper. Will texts her and asks if he and Jen can meet them when they’re in town. Rosie overthinks it, discusses it with Simon, and lies to Will, claiming she didn’t see the text in time. He doesn’t return her message.
Marley lives in London and has a baby with her partner Trevor. Rosie visits Marley and baby Skye but feels strange holding her as she has no urge to be a mother. Marley is happy in her life and earnestly asks Rosie if she is okay. She seems “on edge” and looks too thin. Rosie lies and says she’s okay. On the train ride home, Rosie thinks of Josh and how she is reminded of what she’s lost each time she looks in the mirror. She calls her mother for help, but her mom says she needs rest and maybe a job change.
Part 2, Chapters 11-12 Analysis
Daverley uses traditional milestones of young adulthood to amplify the novel’s thematic engagement with The Challenges of Complex Family Dynamics and Relationships. As young adults, Will and Rosie are free to make their own choices yet still feel bound by the trauma of their past. Though she knows returning to college isn’t the right choice, Rosie chooses what she perceives to be the safe option—a perspective still rooted in her mother’s expectations of the prescribed path for a woman of her age and social class. Daverley frames the nosebleed on her wedding day as portentous, underscoring Rosie’s decision to chase stability and safety and over a passionate and emotionally fulfilling life. On her wedding day, Rosie “does not feel satisfied, but she feels safe and calm and poised, and that’s okay because that’s what she needed. What she needs” (235). Rosie’s internal self-correction from the past tense “needed” to the present tense “need’ points to the ways her choices remain rooted in her past trauma. Daverley uses Marley’s character as a foil to Rosie as she lives on the edge, chasing her dreams of living in London and practicing medicine. Marley subverts societal expectations and has a baby before getting married, yet, unlike Rosie, Marley is happy and content and doesn’t regret her decisions.
Through Will’s experiences of early adulthood, Daverley continues to explore The Individualized Nature of Mental Health. Joining the Mountain Rescue, a physically demanding job, provides Will with a tool with which to manage his anger and depression, but like Rosie, his guilt, anger, and shame remains rooted in his past trauma. Daverley uses his increasing isolation to highlight the importance of human connection and raise the narrative stakes of Will and Rosie’s romantic arc, building anticipation for their reunion. Meeting Jen gives him a chance at love, yet he continues to resist emotional vulnerability with her, underscoring the singular nature of his romantic connection with Rosie. Similarly, Rosie stays with Simon because he’s safe, not because she loves him. Will searches for the same emotional connection he has with Rosie through physical connection with other women. Daverley follows Amber’s confrontation with Will about his need to seek therapy and support for his mental health with an internal flashback to his struggle with suicidal ideation and self-harm as a teen, emphasizing the importance of seeking professional help to find individualized strategies to manage mental health.
In these chapters, Daverley highlights The Significance of Unspoken Words and Repressed Emotions by demonstrating how lack of communication increases conflict and emotional distance in relationships. For example, when Gran’s illness briefly brings Will and Rosie together, both feel the weight of their emotions but fail to express them. Although they see and empathize with each other in a way no one else does, their inability to articulate those feelings leaves the barriers of grief and shame between them intact. As teens, they build their relationship on emotional intimacy yet fail to find a way back to it as young adults, weighed down by all that has passed between them and unable or unwilling to find a way to overcome it.
