Connor

Connor, Emma Corrigan’s former partner, is a point of comparison in the novel’s conflicts over honesty and intimacy. His confusion about Jack Harper’s knowledge of Emma’s private life contrasts with Emma’s account of having shared so much with Jack, while a later attempt to speak with her shows Connor confronting the possibility that their own relationship had also been marked by concealed truths.

Identity and Role

Connor is identified through his past relationship with Emma and his later efforts to understand what was hidden within it. The available scenes do not provide a wider personal history; instead, they make him significant as someone who encounters the consequences of Emma’s disclosures and eventually questions her about her honesty.

His role develops across two distinct moments: first, he cannot understand how Jack knows so much about Emma; later, he approaches Emma directly to say that he suspects she was not entirely truthful during their relationship. The change is not presented as a complete resolution, but it shifts Connor from puzzled observer to participant in a difficult conversation about their shared past.

Emma’s Disclosures and Connor’s Confusion

When Connor asks how Jack Harper knows so much about Emma, the other people in the room turn their attention toward him and then back toward Emma. Connor’s question registers his confusion, while Emma privately judges him slow to understand what has happened. The scene makes his limited grasp of the situation visible without establishing exactly what he knows about Emma’s secrets.

Emma has told Lissy that her disclosures to Jack went far beyond a few personal details: among other things, she admitted falsifying a grade on her CV and pouring orange juice into Artemis Harrison’s spider plant. Connor’s question therefore sharpens a contrast between Emma’s extensive candour with Jack and the understanding Connor has of her. The contrast does not prove what Emma did or did not tell Connor about any particular secret; it instead frames the broader gap between disclosure and being known.

Relationship and Conflict

At a later gathering, Connor approaches Emma in a suit, holding a glass of wine. Emma immediately notices his new tie, blue with large yellow polka dots, and dislikes it. The small, sharply observed detail sits alongside her nervousness: she has not had a proper conversation with Connor since Jack appeared on television, and she has been hurrying away whenever she glimpsed him.

Connor explains that Lissy sent him a flyer, that he has always been fond of her, and that he is glad to have run into Emma. He asks to speak with her and draws her away from the main crowd toward the door. The choice to seek a more private conversation gives their exchange a different tone from Connor’s earlier public confusion: this time, he brings a direct question about their relationship to Emma herself.

Change and Narrative Significance

Connor says he has the feeling Emma was not always completely honest with him when they were together. Emma immediately accepts the charge and begins apologizing for what happened; Connor raises a hand with a look of dignity. The exchange establishes that both the relationship and Emma’s conduct within it remain consequential, but the excerpt does not show the full conversation or its eventual outcome.

Through Connor, the novel returns to honesty as a reciprocal problem rather than a simple contrast between a secretive person and a candid one. Emma has felt hurt that Jack kept things from her even as she recognizes her own dishonesty toward Connor. Connor’s belated question brings that history into the open, leaving his attempt to talk—and Emma’s shamefaced willingness to acknowledge her fault—as an unresolved reckoning.