The Woman In The Wall episode 3 recap: Lorna's revelation
The Woman In The Wall episode 3 picks up with the Kilkinure community dealing with the death of Clemence, Lorna's best friend from the laundry.
David found her dead at the end of The Woman In The Wall's second episode, before Lorna could meet her and ask for any more info about the fate of their children. The latest episode then sees Lorna's mental state continuing to deteriorate as the sleeplessness she's suffering takes its toll. Meanwhile, Detective Colman Akande moves to close in on Lorna as a prime suspect behind Aoife Cassidy's disappearance, though he finds himself coming up against resistance from Sergeant Aidan Massey.
Here's what happened in The Woman In The Wall episode 3.
Clemence's funeral
Episode three opens with Lorna standing over Clemence's body in her casket, remembering a time when they lay side-by-side talking about their hopes for their babies.
Meanwhile, Colman wakes from a nightmare; rewatching the CCTV footage from the shop, he recognizes the figure as Lorna Brady and is determined to go to Clemence's funeral to corner Lorna, though Massey cautions him against it. He says they will speak to Lorna, but not on the day of Clemence's funeral.
Lorna is not coping well and has started to see and hear things that aren't there, including visions of Aoife Cassidy. At the wake, Lorna approaches Clemence's brother, David, so she can ask if she'd told him anything about what Aoife had told her.
David rebuffs Lorna whilst he's grieving. Colman then crosses her path and asks Lorna to come back to the station in the morning; Michael comes to her defense, and Massey is forced to step in to apologize for Colman's lack of tact on his behalf.
Later on, Amy and Lorna get into an argument, and David intervenes by asking Lorna to walk him home. Colman finds Amy crying off by herself; he asks what's wrong, and she tells her that she saw Lorna setting Father Percy's car on fire, and she only previously lied because she was trying to protect her.
At David's house, he shows Lorna a photo of a little girl whom Lorna mistakes for a young Clemence. However, David explains the girl is actually Clemence's daughter, Breda, and that his sister once met a Sister of the Seven Joys who gave her that same photo. David feels like his sister would have wanted Lorna to see the image, and Lorna takes it to mean that someone might know what happened to her daughter, too.
Under suspicion
Lorna arrives the following morning for questioning; before she sits down, she puts hot sauce in her eyes to help her stay awake, a trick Michael told her that soldiers use to fend off sleep.
Colman puts a lot of pressure on her and tries to connect her to the disappearance of Aoife Cassidy, but Lorna resists. Massey stops the interview when Lorna's eyes start bleeding, and he tries to tell Colman to cool off again. Lorna, meanwhile, leaves the station and follows a vision of a woman she thinks is Aoife Cassidy down the street... and nearly gets hit by a car in the process. Luckily, Michael is passing and steps in to save her.
Lorna ends up showing the photo of Breda to Michael and tells him she thinks it could be proof her own child lived, too. He encourages her to get some sleep after she complains about her visions; she asks if he'll watch her sleep because she does 'bad stuff' when she nods off on her own.
Reluctantly, Michael agrees. But when he wakes up later on, he finds Lorna standing in the kitchen; as he approaches, she grabs a pair of scissors, snips up the photo, and lashes out at him, but he finally wakes her by splashing her with water. Michael then heads to the hospital to get the cut she gave him checked out.
Colman and Massey are out following up on reported sightings of Aoife Cassidy, though Colman believes the reports they're following up on are a 'waste of time'. Instead, he goes to visit Dara in prison and convinces him to help him search for his missing wife.
Dara confirms that the woman in the CCTV footage with the axe is Lorna, and tells Colman to look into an organization called "The House of The Sacred Shepherd", as he says Aoife was afraid of them
Olivia's arrival
Back at home, Lorna is visited by a woman claiming to be Olivia Cassidy. She tells her that Aoife had gone looking for Lorna, and believes that her mother knew where Lorna's child might be.
Aoife had apparently been speaking to a journalist about the laundries, though the reporter had asked for "evidence" (of what, Olivia doesn't know) before they went to press. Lorna hands over the photo, asking if Aoife might have a photo of her own child, too.
Olivia recognizes the hogweed burns on Lorna's wrists, and this prompts her to consider that Aoife might've hidden the evidence of what had happened to the children from the convent, so she takes Olivia back to the wailing woman's house to investigate.
Colman finds out that the House of the Sacred Shepherd was an adoption agency that worked with Kilkinure convent, and he thinks they might be the thing that connects Aoife's disappearance, Lorna, and the death of Father Percy together. Unfortunately, the House officially ceased its operation in 1979, and Lorna didn't give birth until the 80s. He's confused as to why Dara would've mentioned it, but the rest of the Garda don't seem convinced to follow this thread.
They then received a call from a local who said he saw Aoife getting a taxi on Halloween. As Kilkinure's a small town, this can only mean John Farrell, the only taxi driver, could have picked them up. Colman meets John in a pub, and he reveals that he gave both Aoife and Lorna a lift back to her house on that fateful evening. So, Colman goes to Lorna's house; he gets no answer, so picks the lock so he can search for clues.
A painful truth
In the old building, Lorna finds a hidden stash of envelopes beneath a loose floorboard, but she doesn't reveal her findings to Olivia. The young woman gives herself away as an unknown person, as she refuses to answer a phone call.
When Lorna tells her she can answer if she needs to, Olivia just says it's from her father who's stayed in Dublin... except, if she really was Dara's daughter, she'd know her dad was in prison. Olivia later asks if she could stay with Lorna since she doesn't know anyone else in town; Lorna agrees and tells her to search downstairs; whilst she's distracted, Lorna escapes to her car and drives off with the bag.
She pulls over a way down the road and looks through the stack, finding an envelope with her name on it. She opens it, finding a death certificate for Agnes Brady, who died of shivering after only a few days.
Distraught, Lorna returns home to find Colman snooping around. He is shocked when she simply offers him a cup of tea and asks if he found what he was looking for.
Colman lays out his theories: Aoife Cassidy murdered Father Percy in Dublin, then she and Dara drove down to Kilkinure, and he thinks Lorna helped Aoife hide out in the town, but he can't figure out why.
She says she isn't helping Aoife, and he calls her a barefaced liar. When he brings up the disappearance of her baby, she produces the death certificate, (signed by Aoife Cassidy) and laments how she couldn't be there to keep her own daughter warm and safe.
Lorna starts hearing a banging sound, and her paranoia grows even worse. Perturbed, Colman keeps asking what's wrong, but Lorna eventually explodes and starts shouting a confession: she killed Lorna, and she hid her in the walls of her house.
In a dramatic conclusion, Lorna smashes the wall down where she hid Aoife's body...finding nothing behind it.
The Woman In The Wall continues Sunday at 9 pm on BBC One. Previous episodes are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
