'The Woman in the Wall's Bifurcated "Back to Life" Kicks Off a Strange Mystery

Most people, upon waking to find a dead body in their house, would be justifiably upset, calling the police, demanding answers, and generally deciding this was a bad way to start the day. However, for Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson), it is merely yet another inconvenience in a string of bad moments that started her morning one day in 2015 in Western Ireland's Kilkinure. The day before, Lorna began by waking in the middle of the road surrounded by dairy cows and had to hoof it back to town in nothing but her nightdress and found she'd stabbed her painting of Jesus in the eye on the way out, damaging the plumbing in the process. That caused her to be late to work at Mrs. Moran's (Aisling O'Neill), narrowly missing someone who left her a note.

Lorna: I'm sorry Jesus.

But perhaps we should back up. Lorna's string of bad days has been going on for a while, arguably since she was 17 and her parents discovered she was knocked up. Rather than send her to uni, they shipped her off to the Kilkinure Convent at the advice of Father Percy (Michael O'Kelly), where her father, Jacob (Alan Devine), told her (and may have believed) that the nuns would care for her and the baby. (Her mother, Margaret (Fiona Browne) simply never turned and looked her daughter's way again.