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Emma wakes up facing the window. She hears a bicycle bell and sees sunlight through a crack in the curtains. She turns over, and Dan says hello. Emma scrambles out of bed, astonished, scaring Dan with her reaction. He invites her back to bed, saying she has time. She stares at him, confused, but is relieved he isn’t dead and glad to have him back. Then she looks at her phone and sees the date: Monday, December 3. Several text messages are the same.
Emma wonders if she’s having a psychotic episode: Everything is the same as yesterday. She gets the same messages. She wears the same clothes. She checks on the children, upsetting her daughter, and has breakfast with her family, thinking, “I couldn’t remember the last time when we had all sat together like this” (110). She’s disoriented but decides that she has been granted a miracle. She bangs on the bike as she leaves for work. Familiar text messages arrive, including Hattie asking about lunch.
On December 3, 2011, Dan’s letter reveals that he and Emma have separated and he’s devastated. He realizes he let his grief immobilize him and says he wants to do better: He wants to be the man Emma deserves.
Emma almost gets hit by a cyclist in the street and sees the same people on the tube. She orders an orange juice at the café and chats with the barista. She responds to Hattie, thinking of all the times that Hattie has been there for her. At the agency, Emma looks into Linda’s office and thinks of the meeting she scheduled for Friday, at which she hopes to introduce some suggestions that will improve her job. Linda and Arthur arrive, having the same conversation at yesterday, and Emma realizes that if everything goes exactly the same way, Dan will die again.
Emma wants to confide in Hayley, her friend at the publisher. However, Hayley is too busy to talk, so Emma tries making the same points she did the previous day, but the meeting doesn’t go well. Texts come in, including from Lou, the anxious author, but Emma checks in on Dan.
Emma is relieved to see Hattie. Though Hattie seems on edge, Emma wants to talk about what’s happening to her. Then she realizes she can’t reveal that Dan died; Hattie would be devastated, as she was when Dan was in the hospital 10 years ago. Emma and Dan reunited after that event. Emma wonders if this repeat is a reminder to not mess up, to “[w]rite the letter, pay attention, fix the promise” (136). Hattie observes that Emma has been really busy. As Emma reflects on all the things tugging at her, she realizes, “I had to bring about change, and yet I was terrified to upset things” (136). Texts follow from Lou and from Denise in the playgroup.
On December 3, 2012, Dan’s letter reflects on the fall from a balcony that landed him in the hospital. The paramedics couldn’t believe he survived. He writes, “Life looked different after that night. I’d wanted to change but that night gave me the strength to do it” (139). He got therapy, helped take care of Poppy, and was proving he was worthy of Emma. He felt that shapes and colors were vivid once more, and he had things to look forward to. His letter expresses his deep love for Emma.
Hattie doesn’t talk about herself, and Emma decides that she can follow up tomorrow. Back at her office, Emma tries to tell Jas what’s happening. Jas says it sounds like Groundhog Day. As she tells Jas that Dan died, Emma realizes she has a chance to stop it. Hattie texts again, asking if they can talk again.
As Jas urged her to do, Emma calls Dan to make sure he’s still alive and tell him she loves him. She ignores her other messages to follow up with him.
On December 3, 2013, Dan writes about taking care of baby Miles. Hattie is moving out to go back to Ed, and Dan wants to buy a new house. He lists all the things he loves about Emma.
Emma, arriving home, squeezes past the bike and sees the vomit on the floor. She remembers how she used to go with Dan on walks with Gus, holding his hand. She writes her letter and reflects on how she feels about being with Dan. Miles seems subdued when he comes home from school. He says he wants a best friend, and he says that Emma has one: Dad. When Poppy bursts in, Emma grasps that something’s going on that she doesn’t know about. She’s always the parent on top of everything and wonders, “Would it all unravel if I could sometimes just let the small stuff slide?” (166). In the kitchen she hugs Dan, sure that everything will be fine. Texts come from others in the playgroup.
Emma attends the playgroup meeting and talks back to Alan. She realizes that she has been wasting her time on the wrong things, letting her important relationships slide to meet the needs of strangers, so she quits the playgroup and walks out. She has a missed call from the school office.
Emma is relieved that Dan is at the house and everything feels normal. Miles needs her, but she herds him to bed so that she can be with Dan. She hears voices in Poppy’s room and looks in, but Poppy doesn’t want to talk. Dan reminds Emma that she’s often on her phone when the kids are around. They enjoy dinner, and Emma reads her letter from Dan; she then sees the old letter, with the heart over the “a,” in the trash. Dan says he’ll walk Gus, and Emma says she’ll go with him, but he steps outside while she’s looking for her boots. Emma hears the bang. Miles asks where Dad is. Emma has a missed call from an unknown number.
On December 3, 2014, Dan’s letter reflects on Emma’s new job with Linda’s agency. He knows that she frets about being away from the children, but he assures her that they’re the least neglected children in London. He’s looking forward to moving into their new house.
This section introduces the premise and chief plot device: that Emma will relive December 3, likely multiple times. Conflict builds around the question of what’s happening and whether Emma can prevent Dan’s death. The second version of the day is a parallel but also an attempted revision of the first, adding humor and poignancy as Emma reflects on her own actions, and building tension when she attempts to fix everything that went wrong the day before (or the previous iteration of the day). Heightening Emma’s internal conflict is her inability to understand or explain why the day is repeating, but she’s so relieved to have Dan back that she doesn’t question the mechanism, which helps readers accept this element of fantasy too.
Jas alludes to the 1993 film Groundhog Day, which features a man stuck in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over. In the film, the time loop ends when the protagonist, Phil Connors, falls in love and becomes less cynical, learning to be a better person and using his foreknowledge to help others by preventing accidents. This allusion substantiates Emma’s hope that she can create positive results in her own time loop. The fact that she doesn’t raises the stakes of the novel and introduces suspense about what will happen next.
The repeat of her day affords Emma several moments of epiphany, in which she increasingly realizes that she has been making poor choices around Prioritizing Tasks and Time, one of the novel’s primary themes; she has been devoting her time and attention to people and things that matter less to her, in the long term, than those who are most important. Hattie and Dan, the two adults Emma is closest to, both remind Emma that she lets work and other commitments take her away from the people she loves. The redo of her day lets different elements of Emma’s personality surface, like rebelliousness and sarcasm when she confronts Arthur and Alan in the playgroup. She isn’t the same conciliatory Emma, trying to please everyone, which suggests that her character is growing and changing.
In attempting to correct her priorities, however, Emma overcompensates and puts too much focus on Dan. This shows that, in terms of her character arc, she’s still relatively self-absorbed and her perspective is still skewed: She focuses on getting what she wants rather than on Building Relationships, another of the novel’s primary themes. Her friend Hayley’s dismissal of her need to focus on work mirrors what Emma has been doing, which shows her the impact of her choices on others. Even so, she doesn’t put this knowledge into action right away; at lunch with Hattie, she dwells on her own problems and doesn’t ask about Hattie’s well-being, though something is clearly bothering Hattie. Emma’s character growth is beginning, but she still has a journey ahead of her.
Emma’s reflections on how she feels about Dan, recalling cherished memories and the feeling that they belong together, show that she recognizes her true values and priorities. In addition, she wants to be a better parent to her children, helping them find their way through distress. Her realization that her kids are hiding something from her is another wake-up call, since she wants to be a present and supportive parent, but these relationships have likewise suffered from her misplacement of attention. Emma’s ambitions to do well at her job and her love for her career make her relatable and sympathetic; the pleasure of having a fulfilling professional life is evident in Hattie’s career and Dan’s job move, which increases his life satisfaction as well. However, the novel centers the question of where the boundaries are and how one achieves balance while juggling many commitments, which most readers can relate to.
While hints of other problems continue to appear, such as the missed calls from the school office and the unknown number, this section reveals an important plot point that doesn’t initially surface as a plot point at all: Dan, while separated from Emma, fell off a balcony at a party. The fall didn’t kill him, but the accident led to his reconciling with Emma and returning to help her raise baby Poppy. This was 10 years ago, and the date of the event, though the novel doesn’t emphasize it, was December 3—their anniversary.
The bike in the hallway continues to be an obstacle representing the things that prevent Emma from prioritizing what really matters. In addition, this second iteration of the day reveals new bits of information that contribute to later plot events and Emma’s evolution: Hattie’s relationship with Ed is difficult, and Linda isn’t an understanding boss. Also, Emma experiences moments of connection with Jas and the barista at the café. The new house referred to in the Dan’s letter at the end of this section symbolizes the transformation that Emma needs to undergo. The questions of how she’ll do this and whether her choices will save Dan drive the story forward.
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