Lucas discovers Barbara Spinner unconscious in the bathroom after her suicide attempt, an emergency that makes him the first to act and leaves him caught between relief at his father’s return and the abrupt break-up of his home. The episode turns a frightening discovery into a defining separation: Dickie Spinner comes back, but only long enough to take Lucas away.

The discovery

Lucas arrives home expecting the ordinary comforts of adulthood: he has let himself in with the key from his coat pocket and imagined coming home to dinner and slippers by the fire. Instead, the hallway is cold, the Christmas decorations are still not up, and he climbs the stairs trying not to be frightened.

A light is on in the bathroom. Lucas initially mistakes the red liquid for wine, recalling that he has seen his mother use wine in cooking. The comparison breaks down when he sees that Barbara is naked and unconscious. The domestic image of dinner being prepared has become a scene of danger, and the child who had felt grown-up moments earlier must respond to a crisis involving his mother.

Lucas calls for help

Lucas phones the police. They tell him that he has been clever and brave, while a neighbour stays with him until Dickie arrives. The sequence establishes Lucas not as a passive witness but as the person who summons help and remains at home through the immediate emergency.

Dickie tells Lucas that he is there and will take care of things. But while Lucas is relieved to have his father back in the house, Dickie has no intention of staying under its roof. His reassurance is therefore temporary: the crisis reunites father and son for a moment, then becomes the occasion for their departure.

Leaving the house

Dickie tells Lucas to fetch a case and pack pyjamas and spare clothes so that they can leave. While Lucas packs, Dickie tries to clean the bathroom. The effort does not remove every trace of what happened: the room is still pink when they go, and drops of blood mark the landing carpet and the stairs.

By the time they reach Kennington, it is very dark. Dickie introduces Lucas to Edwina Treadaway, who is waiting at the door and tries to hug him. Lucas gets away from her. His arrival at her house thus follows directly on the bathroom emergency, but the move does not immediately feel like welcome or comfort to him; even an offered embrace is something he evades.

Significance in Lucas’s recollection

The episode is remembered through the sharp contrast between Lucas’s childish idea of being a man—opening his own door and coming home to dinner—and the responsibility he actually faces when he finds Barbara. His competence in calling the police is followed by circumstances he cannot control: Dickie leaves the house, and Lucas is taken elsewhere with only a case of clothes.

The bathroom’s lingering pinkness and the blood on the stairs make the departure materially inseparable from the attempt. The family does not simply resume its former routine after the emergency; Lucas leaves with Dickie while the traces remain behind. The scene therefore joins Barbara’s crisis to Lucas’s sudden displacement from home and to the complicated arrival at Edwina Treadaway’s door.