SPOILERS!!!
Polly and Jess receive Nora's solicitor, and the man explains that Nora's assets are divided equally between Polly and Jess. Then he tells them that not long ago Nora left a letter for Jess. In this letter Nora says that in the attic there is a secret room behind some shelves. In that room there is a trunk that Jess is to destroy. When the solicitor leaves, Jess rushes to find the room, and she discovers the trunk, which has Isabel's name engraved. Even though her grandmother instructred not to see what was inside, Jess reasons that she also kept too many secrets, and she has a reason to know what is inside. The trunk contains different objects that had belonged to the children who died, and then Jess discovers Isabel's journal, but the most interesting thing is that the missing pages that Daniel Miller explained in her book were missing. In those pages Isabel mentions giving the figurine to Becky and how she was trying to find a way to leave Australia. The most shocking thing is that Isabel mentions having an affair with someone, and that someone was Thea's father. Isabel also wrote that he wouldn't leave his wife, so that was why Isabel planned to leave Australia.
When Jess takes the journal to Polly, the latter has a look at the pages. Jess is convinced that the man who Isabel had an affair with was Henrik Drumming, whose wife was in a mental hospital. Then Polly discovers a piece of paper, an anonymous note telling Isabel that they knew what she was doing, and she should stop bothering a man who was a good husband and father. This note shows that Henrik was not the man Isabel had an affair with, and Polly says that she knows who the man may have been.
Polly thinks that the man was Percy, the man who found the family dead. Polly reminisces the time when she visited Tabilla, and she ran into Kurt Summers. Kurt told her that he was a groundsman and he was married and had two children. Kurt invited her to have dinner with him and his family at the hotel, and Percy was there. Despite her shyness, Polly felt welcomed and at home during dinner. The perspective in that chapter changes to Percy, who realises that Polly is Thea because she looks just like Isabel. Then he reminisces when he and Marcus had a drink a few years ago, and Marcus confessed that he had seen him and Isabel together, and then he had written a note to Isabel, ordering her to stay put. He also told him that he had learnt that a puffer could be poisonous, and he had caught one, imagining using it to give Isabel a lesson. Then he told his mother everything, and she took the puffer from him and told him not to worry about anything.
Percy then remembers when Meg was dying and she was delirous, saying that she always said that she never shared her pate with anyone. So this means that Meg used the fish intending to harm Isabel for having an affair with her husband, and Isabel gave all her children the fish pate, and that is what killed them.
Even though they have no evidence, Jess and Polly suspect that Meg had something to do with the deaths because she knew things. The last chapter of the book shows Polly and Jess visiting the house where Polly had lived as a baby. It seems that Jess has made her peace with Polly, and she knows that not everything that Nora told her was true.
I really enjoyed the book, and I didn't expect the surprises that the novel threw. Wonderful.
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