Elizabeth is not a very science-oriented person, though her father is a geneticist and her mother is a pediatrician. She is currently living with her father in Oxford while her mother is practicing in New York. Her father is giving weekly lectures at the Institute in Bath for the summer. At a duck pond, Elizabeth befriends a red-haired woman seven years older than her who happens to work as a lab technician in Elizabeth's father's lab. The woman, named Clara, is enthralled with Elizabeth's father George, and eventually Clara and George become lovers. Clara is unhappy that George calls her his friend at parties and even occasionally refers to her as Elizabeth's friend. Clara comes to live with Elizabeth and her father for a while but moves out when her moods become intolerable. Though their relationship continues through the summer, George and Clara drift apart with the knowledge that George will be returning to the U.S. in the future. When the father and daughter return home to live with Elizabeth's mother, she reports that she knows about Clara through a friend who saw them together. The mother is angry, but George is determined to win her back. George all of a sudden has horrible pains in his chest. He thinks he is having a heart attack, but it turns out to be heart palpitations from stress. Elizabeth struggles to get in contact with her mother. She senses that her father wishes he had had a heart attack, which would have gained his wife's sympathy. Elizabeth hates her father for what he did to her mother, but she is glad that he does not die. Not long after she finds out the news, Elizabeth's mother dresses nicely and informs her daughter that she is going to go by the lab to surprise George.