In a diary entry marked 1994, a narrator remembers seeing several magpies in her garden. She recalls a nursery rhyme about the birds.

In 2016, a young woman named Harriet Westaway, commonly known as Hal, walks home on a wet and windy night in the English seaside town of Brighton. She collects the bills and junk mail from outside her neighbors’ apartment, fumbles with the broken lights, and then climbs the stairs up to her door. Inside her small apartment, she eats dinner while checking despondently through the bills. Hal worries about her dwindling finances, especially when she finds a handwritten letter asking to discuss her “financial situation” (12). Feeling anxious and nauseated, Hal forces herself to finish her food and wishes that her mother was still alive to help and guide her. As she eats, she finds another letter hidden among the junk envelopes. The letter is addressed to a Harriet Westaway. Hal opens the letter and reads about an elderly woman named Hester Mary Westaway. Mrs. Westaway died recently, and her lawyers have been asked to contact her descendants to execute her final will.