"It's declined. Can I get a selfie, please?"
As ever, this is a thought-provoking episode with lots to unpick, centred around Terri's birthday party and the fact that Bella, still needing to earn a living despite the rapes, is broke.
Bella's treatment by the publishing boss she'd previously idolised is horribly, patronisingly casual: an advance isn't forthcoming. And she's to fulfil the contract, not write things about rape. All of which follows from humiliation in the supermarket.
We also see Kwame beginning to process what has happened to him, telling Terri about it. And we get some awkwardly racialised stuff about climate change. The pastor spouts absurd climate sceptic conspiracy theories bases on colonialism and white exploitation of resources which is, on the face of it, absurd and harmful..,. but then Theo confesses she got paid more for introducing Bella as an influencer because she's a "person of colour". Yet Theo is honest, and very frank about the ethical problems. She very much seems a decent person... but, as Terri mentions, the sins of the past have yet to be acknowledged. There are no easy answers here.
Terri and Bella pronounce their undying, and rather drunken, love for each other at the party... but an earlier conversation with an aggrieved Simon indicates that Terri may have more to do with the abandonment of Arabella to her eventual rape that night than previously thought. The plot thickens. Again, this is good, ethically nuanced, uncomfortable yet sublime telly.
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