Jessica

Jessica is Ben’s wife, and the sudden wealth they acquire through a $22 million lottery win becomes the pressure point around which their marriage and family relationships reorganize. At Tranquillum House, she acknowledges that they were heading for divorce and that she has become too concerned with appearances; she also admits she wants a baby and feared Ben might refuse. The retreat brings their conflict into the open, but it does not resolve every difference: the couple ultimately separate, remaining on good terms as their lives take different paths.

Identity and Introduction

Jessica first appears awake in the middle of the night beside Frances, who has fallen asleep on a yoga mat. She has just missed a falling star, but decides not to wake Frances, thinking that people her age need their sleep. Her thoughts turn to her mother’s appearance and Jessica’s efforts to teach her about concealer. The moment introduces a habit of judging appearance as something that can and should be managed, a concern that later becomes part of Jessica’s own account of her marriage.

The scene also gives a glimpse of Jessica’s family before the lottery altered it. She imagines her father leaving her mother for his personal assistant and thinks her mother would have no one to blame but herself for neglecting her appearance. Jessica’s confidence in cosmetic upkeep is presented alongside the vulnerability of family relationships, establishing a tension between surface presentation and the trouble beneath it.

The Lottery and Its Costs

Two years before the events at Tranquillum House, Jessica rushed home from work hoping to make a 6:30 p.m. spin class. In the small kitchen, she found Ben sitting on the floor against the dishwasher, stunned by a phone call. Her first fear was that someone had died, and she initially thought of Ben’s sister Lucy, whose precarious life meant that her death would not have surprised Jessica. Instead, Ben told her that the lottery ticket his mother had given them after a robbery had won the first-division prize: $22 million. Jessica did not believe him at first; Ben was frightened as well as overwhelmed by the news.

The windfall brings financial security but also makes ordinary family disagreements harder to contain. Jessica recalls several estrangements connected to requests for money. Ben’s cousin wanted a mortgage paid off; the couple first gave him a car, then eventually paid the mortgage, but the relationship had already been damaged. Jessica’s younger sister received a million dollars and continued asking for more. When Jessica once failed to pay for lunch, her sister took offence, and they stopped speaking.

Money also exposes disagreements about who should control it. Ben’s stepfather, a financial planner, expected to manage their finances, but Ben did not trust his judgment and did not want him involved. The couple and Ben’s mother agonized over how to help Lucy. They established a trust fund and avoided giving her cash, but Lucy sold a car they had bought her and rejected the help they offered, including expensive rehabilitation programs. Jessica concluded that Lucy did not want help, while Ben continued to think there must be a solution.

The demands extend beyond close family. Long-lost relatives, people the couple did not know existed, friends, friends of friends, charities, schools, and children’s soccer clubs all sought support. Some framed requests as small relative to the couple’s fortune. Ben’s instinct was to give, but the pressure sometimes made Jessica angry. She finds it bewildering that they argue more about money when they have an abundance than when unexpected bills once caused distress. In her view, sudden wealth is like a glamorous but stressful job for which they had no preparation: it is still a privilege, but not a simple one.

Ben also misses working and tells Jessica that he misses his job. She suggests that he start a business, since their money allows them to do anything, but he says he could not compete with his former boss, Pete. Jessica sees a likeness between Ben’s response and his approach to Lucy: both resist the solutions she proposes. Her frustration suggests that wealth has changed what is possible without automatically changing what either partner knows how to do with their lives.

Marriage in the Open

During a group gathering at Tranquillum House, Jessica says that she and Ben came because they have serious marital troubles. Ben would rather not tell everyone, but she turns to him and agrees that he was right about her obsession with appearances. She then says they were heading for divorce. Her candour unsettles Ben, who falls quiet, while Jessica speaks with earnestness rather than treating the word as a private matter to be concealed.

The couple’s later conversation under MDMA gives that admission a more intimate form. Seated opposite one another and holding each other by the forearms, Ben speaks from the heart while Jessica listens closely. He says that he misses her face and does not recognize her, their relationship, or their life; he also misses their old flat, his job, and the friends they lost after the win. Jessica, in turn, confesses that she scratched Ben’s Lamborghini because she felt he loved the car more than her and imagined it as a rival for his attention. Her confession turns an act of jealousy into evidence of how alienated she feels from the life their money has created.

Jessica does not deny that wealth appeals to her. She says she loves being rich, but wishes they could remain themselves while rich. Ben answers by comparing money to a dog. Their exchange holds the contradiction at the center of their marriage: the money is genuinely pleasurable, yet it has become a force that seems to pull their former identities and relationships out of shape.

Jessica also challenges the circumstances of the retreat itself. When Lars says the guests have been given drugs without permission, she says she feels that doing so must be against the law. Her objection places her concern for consent alongside her willingness to participate in a process that helps her and Ben speak more openly; the two are not presented as the same issue, and emotional candour does not erase her objection to the means used to produce it.

Pregnancy and Separation

After the couple’s emotional conversation, Jessica says that she was not trying to save her marriage. Asked what she was trying to do, she answers that she wanted a baby. She had imagined documenting pregnancy on Instagram, sharing styled images of a baby bump and a gender-reveal party, and hoped for a girl. More seriously, she tells Ben that she was afraid he would say no and thought she should get pregnant quickly if they were going to break up. Her desire for a child therefore emerges both as a genuine wish and as an attempt to secure a future while the marriage felt uncertain.

At one point Jessica tells Heather she is two days pregnant and puts a hand to her stomach. A week later, she tells Ben that she was never pregnant and that it had all been in her head. Ben switches off the television and responds simply. The reversal removes the immediate prospect of a baby without resolving the deeper question Jessica had raised: what she wanted from a shared life, and whether the marriage could provide it.

Change and Ending

The narrative later reveals that Jessica and Ben have separated. When Ben thinks of calling her after Lucy’s overdose, he remembers that they are on very good terms, despite his embarrassment about Jessica’s public Instagram announcement that they had decided to separate lovingly and remain best friends. Their relationship has changed, but the ending does not frame the separation as total estrangement.

Jessica is auditioning for the next season of The Bachelor. She says she is less interested in finding love than in improving her public profile and gaining followers. Her Instagram presents glamorous lunches and social events, while she is also an ambassador for several charities. The public-facing life echoes her earlier emphasis on appearances, but it now belongs to a post-marital identity rather than to an effort to preserve the couple’s shared life.

Ben returns to work with Pete, keeps his car and a comfortable house, and puts much of his money into a foundation his mother runs to support families of addicts. Jessica’s later course is different, but the couple remain on speaking terms. Their story does not make wealth either wholly liberating or simply destructive: the lottery gives them choices while multiplying demands, disagreements, and expectations. Jessica’s wish to be rich and still be herself captures the unresolved cost of that transformation.