Chapter 26 Summary: Amelia

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with Amelia waking Adam from a nightmare. She has to call out to him three times and gently shake him before he opens his eyes. He's disoriented and starts talking about a woman in a red kimono. Amelia reassures him the woman isn't real, that it was just a dream, and that he's safe with her. She reflects that lies can heal as well as hurt.

Earlier that evening, they had come down from the bell tower, where Adam nearly fell when a wall crumbled. He barely spoke to Amelia afterward—whether from the shock of the near-fall, the bats, or too much red wine—and went straight to sleep without a word.

Amelia notes that it's been a while since Adam had one of his nightmares, but they happen often enough and are always the same, except that he sees the accident from a different point of view each time. Sometimes he's in the car, sometimes walking along the street, sometimes watching from the window of a council flat on the thirteenth floor of a tower block, banging his fists on the glass. After these nightmares, he never recognizes Amelia right away—which is normal given his face blindness—but sometimes he thinks she's someone else. It takes several minutes to calm him down and convince him she's not.

The grandfather clock in the corner of the bedroom plays a creepy tune and then chimes midnight. Adam apologizes for waking her, but Amelia does what she always does: takes out her pad and pencil and writes everything down as soon as possible afterward, because it isn't just a dream—it's a memory. Adam protests that they don't have to do this tonight, but Amelia insists. She takes a silent register of his emotions: fear, regret, sorrow, and guilt—the same pattern every time.

The nightmares always begin the same way: with the woman in the red kimono. Despite the attire, she is not Japanese. Adam struggles to describe her face—he struggles with features in dreams the same way he does in real life—but they know she is a British woman in her early forties, around the same age Amelia is now. She's attractive, with red lipstick in the exact same shade as her kimono, and long blonde hair like Amelia's, though shorter, shoulder length. He doesn't say her name tonight, but they both know what it is.

The order of events in the dream sometimes changes, but the woman in red is always there, as is the car in the rain. This is why Adam doesn't own a car and never learned to drive. There's also a terrified teenage boy in the nightmares. Adam saw it happen—the woman, the car, the accident—not just in a dream, but in real life. It was the night his mother died. He was thirteen.

Adam couldn't recognize the person in the car twenty-five years ago when it mounted the pavement and collided with his mother as he watched. But that doesn't mean he didn't know who they were—it could have been a friend, a teacher, a neighbor—all faces look the same to him. Amelia reflects on the horror of not knowing if someone you knew was responsible for killing someone you loved, and how this explains why Adam struggles to trust people, even her. If he didn't suffer from prosopagnosia, his whole life might have unfolded differently, but he wasn't able to describe who he had seen to the police. Not then, not now. And he still blames himself—his mother was walking his dog when it happened because he was too lazy to do it.

Amelia reflects on how Adam idolizes a ghost. By all accounts, his mother was a nice enough woman—a nurse, popular on the estate where they lived—but she wasn't perfect, and she definitely wasn't a saint. Amelia finds it strange how Adam compares every other woman in his life to her, including Amelia herself. The pedestal he put his dead mother on isn't just wonky, it's broken. For example, he seems to have conveniently forgotten why she was wearing the red kimono—it's what she always wore, along with the matching lipstick, whenever male friends came to visit the little council flat they lived in. The place had thin walls, thin enough for Adam to hear that his mother had a different friend stay in her bed almost every week.

Amelia reflects that memories are shapeshifters and dreams are not bound by truth, which is why she writes everything he chooses to remember down. She wants to fix him, and she wants him to love her for it. But not everything that gets broken can be repaired. She's tried herbal remedies, mindfulness podcasts before bed, special tea—nothing seems to help. One day he might remember the face he saw that night, and the unanswered questions that have haunted him for years might finally get answered.

When everything is written down, Amelia turns off the light and hopes Adam will get back to sleep. He does—soon gently snoring—but Amelia can't switch off. She swallows a prescription sleeping pill, noting she's been popping more than usual lately. She's preoccupied with the growing number of cracks in their relationship, the ones too big to fill in or skim over. She knows exactly why and when their marriage started to unravel.

Amelia must have dozed off at some point—the pill finally kicking in—because she wakes with an unsettling sense of déjà vu. It takes a few seconds to remember where she is: Blackwater Chapel. A sliver of moonlight between the window blind and the wall illuminates a tiny corner of the room. She strains to see the time on the grandfather clock—its slender metal hands suggest it's only half past midnight, meaning she hasn't been asleep for very long. Her mind feels fuzzy, but then she remembers what woke her because she hears it again: there is a noise downstairs.

Key Events

Amelia wakes Adam from a recurring nightmare about a woman in a red kimono.
Adam's nightmare is revealed to be a memory of his mother's hit-and-run death when he was thirteen.
Amelia records the dream details in her notebook, as she always does.
Amelia reveals that Adam's mother wore the red kimono when entertaining male visitors at their council flat.
Adam's prosopagnosia prevented him from identifying the driver to police, and he still blames himself for his mother's death.
Amelia takes a sleeping pill and wakes to a mysterious noise downstairs at Blackwater Chapel.

Character Development

Amelia: Her role as caretaker and recorder of Adam's memories is deepened. Her motivations are revealed—she wants to fix him and wants him to love her for it. Her own secrets begin to surface: she knows exactly why and when their marriage started to unravel, and she's been taking more sleeping pills than usual.
Adam: His trauma is fully contextualized. His face blindness, his guilt over his mother's death (he was too lazy to walk the dog), his inability to trust people, and his idolization of a mother who was far from perfect are all laid bare.
Adam's mother: Though dead, she looms large. The revelation about the red kimono and her weekly male visitors complicates the idealized portrait Adam carries.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

The red kimono: A symbol of hidden truths and the gap between Adam's idealized memory of his mother and the reality Amelia knows. It's also the recurring image that anchors his nightmares.
Prosopagnosia as metaphor: Adam's face blindness extends beyond the literal—he can't read people, can't trust, can't identify who hurt him. It's both a medical condition and a metaphor for the blindness in his relationships.
Memory excavation: Amelia's notebook is a tool for digging up buried memories, but she admits the heaviest memories sink rather than rise. The chapter questions whether excavating trauma helps or harms.
Lies that heal: Amelia's reassurance that the woman in the red kimono isn't real is itself a lie—the woman was real, and the memory is real. The chapter explores how deception can be both harmful and protective.
The grandfather clock: Timekeeping and the passage of time, chiming midnight as a boundary marker between the past (dreams and memories) and the present (the mystery noise downstairs).
The noise downstairs: A classic thriller beat that shifts the chapter from psychological introspection to suspense.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a major reveal chapter. It provides the backstory that explains Adam's behavior throughout the novel—his distrust, his nightmares, his avoidance of cars, his comparison of every woman to his mother. It also complicates the reader's sympathy: Adam's mother was not the saint he remembers, and the red kimono has a darker meaning than the dream suggests. Amelia's own unreliability is hinted at—she knows exactly when and why their marriage started to unravel, and she's been taking more sleeping pills. The chapter ends on a suspenseful note with the noise downstairs, transitioning from past trauma to present danger.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the chapter use the red kimono to complicate Adam's memory of his mother?

The red kimono serves as a symbol of the gap between Adam's idealized memory and the reality of his mother's life. In his nightmares, the woman in the red kimono is a haunting figure associated with his mother's death. But Amelia reveals that the kimono was what his mother wore whenever male friends came to visit their council flat—and the thin walls meant Adam could hear that she had a different friend stay in her bed almost every week. The kimono thus represents both the trauma of his mother's death and the hidden truths about her life that Adam has conveniently forgotten or repressed.

2. What does Amelia reveal about her own motivations and state of mind in this chapter?

Amelia reveals that she writes down Adam's dreams because she wants to fix him and wants him to love her for it. She admits that not everything that gets broken can be repaired. She's been taking more prescription sleeping pills than usual, preoccupied with the growing cracks in their relationship. She states that she knows exactly why and when their marriage started to unravel—though she doesn't yet share that information with the reader. Her reflection that lies can heal as well as hurt suggests she may be keeping her own secrets.

3. How does the chapter's ending shift the reader's expectations?

The chapter begins as an intimate psychological portrait of a marriage and a man's trauma, but the ending—Amelia waking to a noise downstairs at Blackwater Chapel—shifts the register to suspense and thriller. The grandfather clock's chime at midnight and the mysterious sound create a sense of impending danger, suggesting that the past trauma Adam carries may be about to collide with present threats. The chapter ends on a cliffhanger that propels the reader into the next chapter.