As the story continues to unfold and more is revealed about each of the characters, details are becoming more important in understanding the imperfect and disturbing family. After the anniversary dinner, Alison and Charles are laying in bed when Alison asks why they got married. Charles remarks that she became pregnant, and Alison agrees as she lies there crying. This helps the reader to understand why exactly Charles and Alison are so disconnected and why Alison tries so hard to make her family perfect. Charles and Alison clearly got married for the wrong reason, yet they are still together twenty-five years later. In a later chapter of the book, Katie and Roger get together to talk. Attention is brought to the fact that there are no grandchildren yet. None of the six children have produced any offspring, and this disturbs Katie. Katie is the one child out of all of them who is trying to have a baby, and is not successful. She mentions that it is causing trouble in her marriage, and the fact that she seems to be the one with the problem does not help. Roger notes jokingly that she should have inherited some type of fertility, considering the size of their family. The conversation continues around this topic, and how their mother planned to get pregnant without Charles’s consent. This accusation seems incredulous, but it is as if both Katie and Roger know something about the family that is not yet known to the reader. In the same chapter, the family vacation to Crackington Haven is described. Everything is normal until Ingrid, the au pair, mentions that her male friend, Jan, will be visiting them for a couple of days. Not only is this surprising to Alison, but when Jan arrives, everyone is not quite sure of how to act. Alison is very fidgety, and Katie wonders if she minds Ingrid’s relationship. At the dinner table, Charles is indifferent to Jan and does not have much to say. All of these details about fertility, planned (or unplanned) pregnancies, and absurd behavior around Ingrid’s relationship hints something to the reader that there is an underlying family secret. Not only do all these details alone not make sense and are a bit confusing, but they are slowly tying together to reveal something surprising to the reader.