The Joke Was Real to Me8.2

At Josephine’s wedding, Chiara takes the bouquet and jokes about leaving with the groom, Rhys. He dismisses it as harmless, just as he dismissed resting on Chiara’s lap at his bachelor party. Josephine decides to walk away, despite the bond created when her parents died saving him.

Leaving brings further attacks on her life: a deepfake, charges for Chiara’s handbag on her card and public hostility that costs Josephine her job. Auden remains beside her while she confronts the damage. Rhys’s eventual apologies arrive after she has stopped accepting the humiliations he calls jokes.