Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses depictions of death.

In 1965, three friends, Frances Adams, Rose Forrester, and Emily Sparrow are at the fair getting their fortunes told. Frances receives an ominous prediction that disturbs her. It says, “Your future contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins right when you hold the queen in the palm of your hand. Beware the bird, for it will betray you. And from that, there’s no coming back. But daughters are the key to justice, find the right one and keep her close. All signs point to your murder” (3). Emily tries to make light of it by buying bird necklaces for all of them, but Francis isn’t appeased. In a year, one of them, not Frances, will disappear.

In the present timeline, 25-year-old Annie Adams walks through London to Chelsea, where she lives with her visual artist mother, Laura. Her friend Jenny meets her at the rundown, large house that belongs to Annie’s Great Aunt Frances. Jenny encourages Annie about her latest detective manuscript. They recently cleaned out the basement of the Chelsea house and sent multiple trunks and boxes to Frances’s mansion in Dorset. Jenny asks about Frances, and Annie says Frances sends her mother a monthly allowance and allows them to live in the house, but Annie has never met her great-aunt despite Laura being the sole inheritor.