Amy is hid­ing in the boot of Gary Gough’s Land Rover while he dri­ves her to Lon­don. Gary has a lunch meet­ing with an amphet­a­mine deal­er from Liv­er­pool, so he has no issue with the detour. The police are active­ly search­ing for her in Axley and the sur­round­ing areas, which is why she’s stay­ing con­cealed. Last night, an offi­cer knocked on Gary’s door, prompt­ing him to redi­rect the inquiry with the name of his house, an art­ful­ly carved log named No Com­ment, which Amy hadn’t noticed before.

Although Amy could get out of the boot as they trav­el along the M3, she finds it sur­pris­ing­ly com­fort­able. Gary sent her a text from the front seat check­ing on her, to which she respond­ed with a thumbs-up and a “Zzz,” allow­ing him to leave her undis­turbed. She feels guilty about send­ing Steve and Rosie off to Dubai alone, but feels it’s nec­es­sary to stay out of sight. She fears any new evi­dence relat­ed to the three crimes could impli­cate her, and her only hope lies in uncov­er­ing the iden­ti­ty of François Lou­bet and putting an end to him.

Amy also wor­ries about Steve and Rosie being in Dubai togeth­er. With­out her calm­ing influ­ence, she’s unsure how they will behave. Gary is set to drop her off at the under­ground park­ing of Max­i­mum Impact, where she plans to spend the night. The next day, she and Jeff will scru­ti­nize the François Lou­bet files togeth­er, even though they aren’t adept at han­dling such files.

While in the boot, Amy dis­cov­ers a met­al case con­tain­ing two hand­guns and texts Gary for per­mis­sion to take one. He agrees with a thumbs-up and a gun emo­ji, and she feels more secure hav­ing both guns with her.

Anoth­er wor­ry on her mind is the sit­u­a­tion with Steve, who is stay­ing with Adam at a vil­la. The two seemed embar­rassed when they real­ized it would be just the two of them. Although Rosie offered Steve a room at her hotel, Amy stopped her, believ­ing that it would be ben­e­fi­cial for father and son to spend time togeth­er. Yet, she finds her­self won­der­ing what they’ll dis­cuss, espe­cial­ly about Deb­bie, as they nev­er talk about her when togeth­er. As they approach Lon­don, Amy hopes they are final­ly dis­cussing her.

In Chap­ter 83 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint spends an anx­ious hour in Miss Kline’s store on Main Street. The store remains open past busi­ness hours thanks to Miss Kline, who rec­og­nizes the plead­ing look in Norma’s eyes as Saint steps into the fit­ting room with a cream cor­duroy midi dress. From behind the cur­tain, Saint express­es her frus­tra­tion, feel­ing unat­trac­tive: “I look like a tart­let.” Miss Kline responds with anoth­er option: a water­col­or house dress, which Saint dis­miss­es, wish­ing she could show up as the “birth­day girl’s moth­er.” After a series of gar­ments, includ­ing an abstract red psy­che­del­ic print and a red and blue maxi that lacks the nec­es­sary fig­ure to fill it out, they final­ly choose a black flo­ral dress with a white col­lar.

As Saint tries on the dress, Nor­ma com­ments on its length, and Saint quips about her own height. As they pre­pare, Saint inspects her grandmother’s out­dat­ed make­up box, gri­mac­ing at the con­di­tion of the prod­ucts, par­tic­u­lar­ly a foun­da­tion dat­ing back to 1955. Nor­ma has to fetch Mrs. Har­ris from across the street, prompt­ing con­cern from Saint due to Mrs. Harris’s asso­ci­a­tion with mor­tu­ary work, specif­i­cal­ly at Mon­ta Clare Funer­al Par­lor, height­en­ing her anx­i­ety.

Upon Mrs. Har­ris’s arrival, she reas­sures Saint, say­ing she’s capa­ble of han­dling her because she works with corpses. Despite Sain­t’s sar­casm about the sit­u­a­tion becom­ing a “freak show,” Mrs. Har­ris offers to style her hair, to which Saint coun­ters defi­ant­ly, request­ing to leave her braid untouched. After endur­ing twen­ty min­utes of styling mixed with frus­tra­tion, Saint final­ly makes her way down the stairs, at which point her grand­moth­er eager­ly cap­tures the moment with her cam­era, much to Sain­t’s cha­grin as she bat­tles the urge to react wild­ly to the con­tin­u­ous pho­tographs. The chap­ter under­scores the ten­sion between Saint’s inse­cu­ri­ties and her humor­ous yet defen­sive inter­ac­tions with those around her, all set against the back­drop of prepa­ra­tion for a sig­nif­i­cant occa­sion.