Summary
After his meeting with Veronica, Tony wonders why she didn’t mail him the envelope she gave him. He assumes she didn’t want to say over email that she burned the diary because saying it in person meant she could deny it later. Two days pass before he opens the envelope. It is a photocopied letter—the one he sent Adrian and Veronica forty years earlier. Tony drinks a large glass of whisky as he reads the letter.
In it, he calls Veronica a bitch and says she and Adrian deserve each other. He says he hopes they regret the day he introduced them, and even wishes they have a child because he is a “great believer in time’s revenge, yea unto the next generation and the next.” He warns Adrian that she is a “cockteaser,” and suggests he ask her mother about “damage a long way back.” He says he can’t do anything now, but time can. “Time will tell. It always does.”
The alcohol “reduces pain” and has the added benefit of making Tony drunk. He can’t deny that he wrote it, and that it is awful. He considers it to be an unwelcome confirmation of the person he was. He thinks about Veronica receiving it, and giving it to him. And then Adrian receiving it as their last communication before he killed himself. He also remembers how his affirming, “fake-cool” postcard had featured an image of Clifton Suspension Bridge—a well-known spot for people to jump to their deaths.
The next day, when sober, Tony considers the paradox of young people being their most hurtful when they are also their most sensitive. In old age, one treads more carefully. He emails Veronica to apologize for the cruel letter. He reflects on how his life has shown him to be completely average in every pursuit. Her reply is short: “You just don’t get it, do you? But then you never did.” Some time later, he gets drunk and emails her again, asking if she thinks he was in love with her back then. She says if he needs to ask, then the answer is no.
More time passes as Tony considers how to figure out what he’s not understanding. He considers reaching out to Colin and Alex, but can imagine they won’t have anything worthwhile to say. He emails Veronica again, in a gentler tone, and asks about her father and mother. She replies by explaining that her father died of esophageal cancer and her mother a stroke after years of dementia. He re-reads the reply in search of traps or insults but finds it is straightforward.
Tony recalls more memories from his weekend at the Ford household. Now he can see Mrs. Ford’s look of concern as she threw out the egg whose yolk she broke. He remembers declining an offer of brandy from Veronica’s father. He remembers Veronica kissing him goodnight and then him immediately masturbating into the sink in his room.
Tony suggests they meet again. Veronica agrees to meet him at the restaurant inside the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street. On the way there, Tony sees a young woman listening to music and recalls that Veronica did dance with him once, despite claiming she never danced. When they meet, he asks how the last forty years have treated her. She tells him to go first. After he tells the story of his life, Veronica pays for her pasta and leaves.
The time that comes afterward is devoid of anything noteworthy. His daughter doesn’t call, nor does his ex-wife. He tends to things around his flat. He remembers the night he watched the Severn Bore, realizing now that Veronica had been there with him but he had erased her from that memory. They talked about how impossible things happen, things you never believe unless you witnessed them yourself. At least this is how he remembers it.
Analysis
The theme of memory’s mutability arises with the revelation of what Tony actually said to Veronica and Adrian in the letter he sent them forty years earlier. In contrast to the cursory summary Tony provides for the reader in Part 1, his language is far more cruel, immature, and misogynistic than he cared to remember. Beyond calling Veronica a “bitch” and “cockteaser,” and suggesting she has been sexually abused, Tony wishes a curse upon his ex-girlfriend and former pal.
To soothe his mind as he is forced to recalibrate his opinion of himself, Tony drinks until drunk, claiming it “reduces pain.” The pain he refers to is remorse—another of the novel’s major themes. Until this point, Tony has been entrenched in his victimhood, perceiving the people he made the mistake of trusting as enemies. With the evidence in his hands, Tony must think about the hurt he caused Veronica and Adrian. He even realizes the coded message in his initial postcard to Adrian: a photograph of a bridge famous for suicides.
Distracted by the need to reorient his memory, Tony momentarily forgets about the diary and apologizes to Veronica. When she replies tersely and without elaboration, he remains in damage-control, asking her questions about her family. Meanwhile, he continues to look for evidence that she is trying to “trap” him, a defensiveness that harkens back to Sarah’s comment that Tony shouldn’t “let Veronica get away with too much.” However, he is surprised to find that Veronica, in a rare instance of exposing herself directly, is answering his questions sincerely.
With the fresh memories provoked by the letter come fuller memories of his visit to Veronica’s parents’ house, including the arousal Veronica induced in him. Despite having claimed earlier in his narration that she never danced—an attitude that suggested a certain rigidity in her being—Tony rewrites his memory, remembering a time when she moved to music freely and gracefully. With these recreated memories, Barnes makes it clear that Tony is rethinking his antagonistic attitude toward Veronica and is having renewed feelings of affection.
But despite Tony’s rekindled interest in his first girlfriend, Veronica remains typically reticent during their next in-person meeting. After prompting him to talk about his life, Veronica leaves before he can turn the question on her. Tony is left in a listless state, waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, his mind is busy going back in time to remember things anew. Tony realizes Veronica had been with him the night he witnessed the Severn Bore. It was a moment of happiness and excitement they shared as a couple and that he later expunged from memory to make it easier to strip her of nuance and view her as purely a villain.
