Hal thinks about the lawyers’ letter. She examines a photograph of herself and her mother, taken on Brighton beach years before. Though she does not like the person she becomes when she drinks, Hal savors the “little addictive buzz” (16) of a shot of vodka. She then drinks a hot cup of tea in bed while using her phone to research the estate of Hester Mary Westaway, known as Trepassen House. She feels a little hope for the first time in years, as even a small portion of any such inheritance could ameliorate her quickly-escalating financial problems.

The next day, Hal worries about the bills but feels excited by the prospect of a large inheritance. However, she knows that she is not related to Hester Westaway. She resolves to contact the lawyers and clear up the confusion. Pondering the issue, she examines her collection of treasured possessions. She checks her documents for any possibility that she might be related to Hester Westaway, and the documents prove that her mother’s side of the family have no relation. However, Hal momentarily fantasizes that her father might be the relation in question. She has never known her father’s identity and spent her childhood inventing wild stories “to cover her own ignorance and her anger at her mother for telling her so little” (19). She was always told that her father was a man with a Spanish accent whom her mother met one night and never saw again. Hal knows that her skillset—cold reading skills developed through her tarot services—puts her in a unique position to be able to claim the inheritance, but she struggles with the morality of doing so.

In a diary entry from 1994, the unnamed narrator describes a sense of dread while reading the future using tarot cards. She feels confused by the message given to her by the familiar cards. She reminds herself that the “cards do not predict the future” (22), but only reveal one possible version of events.

Hal walks to work, holding her jacket tight to keep out the cold. She is skilled at cold reading—the ability to discern a person’s minuscule signals and physical movements to then accurately guess information about their life. She works in a small booth on Brighton pier, providing tarot readings and telling fortunes. These supposedly psychic predictions are based on careful research, tricks, and people’s credulity. She occasionally feels guilty about her work, but also believes she provides a vital public service to some. She eschews the more immoral traditions of divination. Hal does not believe her tarot cards contain any “mystical power, beyond her own ability to reveal what people had not admitted even to themselves” (25); She mostly tells people what they want to hear and tries to entertain them. The job does not pay well, but the same talents which help her cold read would be perfectly suited to tricking people that she is the rightful Westaway heir.

Hal purchases a cup of tea from Reg, the cockney owner of the café near her fortune telling booth. She hesitantly tells him about the inheritance and he warns her about potential scams. If the inheritance is real, however, Reg advises Hal to “take the money and run” (27).

Hal finishes work at 9pm. Just as she is about to close her booth, a skeptical customer arrives and demands to have her fortune told. The woman complains that Hal’s frayed jeans and tattoos conjure a very different image than the name written on the front of the booth—“Madame Margarida” (29). Hal struggles for rapport with the woman, who wants help with a decision. As the cards are drawn, Hal correctly deduces that the woman is worried about her young son, who has struggled with a substance use disorder. With some reluctance, Hal interprets the cards. She tells the woman to trust her intuition but tries to avoid giving any specific advice. The woman pays and leaves quickly, overcome with emotion. Hal, noticing that the woman overpaid, chases after her but loses her in the cold, wet night. Feeling guilty and worrying about her unpaid bills, Hal places the money in a collection box for a local charity (a drug rehabilitation center). Hal returns to her booth.

Hal finds the door of her booth closed. She enters, turns on the light, and is surprised to find an unknown man waiting for her. Hal asks the man to leave, but he insists he is an old friend of her mother. The man is a representative of a loan shark named Mr. Smith. In desperation, Hal borrowed money from Mr. Smith and has now paid back more than four times the original loan—but Mr. Smith believes she still owes him. He demands she pay £1,000 within a week, or else there will be consequences. On his way out, he smashes the objects on a nearby shelf. Alone in the booth, Hal feels scared, desperate, and alone. She remembers taking the loan in the wake of her mother’s death, after giving up all hope of finishing school to take over her mother’s small fortune telling business. She drank heavily to cope with the pain and loneliness, becoming almost unrecognizable as she drifted apart from her friends. As she struggled with the business, she missed loan repayments to Mr. Smith, and the extortionate interest rate turned her relatively small initial loan into an impossible debt. She returns home and discovers that someone snuck into her house. The intruder burned the threatening letters from Mr. Smith and smashed a photograph of Hal and her mother. Overcome with emotion, Hal recalls the Westaway inheritance. She books a train ticket to Cornwall and packs everything needed to convince the lawyers that she is the rightful heir. Impulsively, she reads her own fortune from the tarot deck. The cards seem to suggest that she should act, but she remembers her mother’s advice to “never believe” (43) that the cards are magical. She goes to bed, still thinking about her trip to Cornwall.

Hal learned about tarot cards “almost before she could walk” (44). She spent much of her childhood sitting in the back of her mother’s fortune telling booth, unconsciously learning how to cold read a person. When her mother was killed in a hit-and-run attack when Hal was just 18, Hal was thrust into the fortune telling role. She learned quickly, especially by combining her mother’s teachings with a talent for internet research on any clients who booked in advance. Hal now uses these research skills to look up the Westaway family. Through Hester Westaway’s obituary, she tracks down the social media for Hester’s sons: Harding, Abel, and Ezra. Harding and Abel seem to show signs of “comfortable wealth” (45). They are in happy relationships and professionally successful. Ezra is missing from social media, as is any mention of Hester’s unnamed daughter. As she continues her research, she lies to the ticket inspector and tells him she is traveling to Cornwall for her grandmother’s funeral (telling herself the lie is good practice for her role). As she researches, she feels a sting of unfairness that one family should have so much wealth while she has so little. She begins to feel excited.

Hal arrives in Penzance, Cornwall. She spends more than half of her remaining money on a taxi to the church hosting Hester Westaway’s funeral, knowing that there is “no way back” (48) from this point. She commits to her plan. At the church, she meets Mr. Treswick, the lawyer who wrote to her about the inheritance. After a worrying pause, Treswick seems relieved that Hal received the letter in time. He leads her into the church, hinting that her connection to Hester is through Hester’s mysterious daughter. He offers to introduce her to her supposed uncles. Hal surveys the funeral guests as Treswick is called away. She sits at the rear of the church, cold and shivering. The funeral procession enters the church with Treswick, Harding, Abel, and Ezra as the pallbearers. Hal sees Ezra smile at her and is shocked by “something flirtatious in his grin” (53). The funeral service begins.

The service lasts almost an hour. The congregation file out of the church into the rain and watch the coffin lowered into the grave. Hal remembers her mother’s funeral and is stricken by emotion. She accepts Treswick’s offer of a lift to Trepassen House for the wake. He also asks whether she will be staying at the house; Hal agrees to do so, even though she is warned that the big old building has no modern heating system. Hal allows Treswick to talk, using her cold reading skills to learn more about the situation. She learns that Hester’s daughter was called Maud, who once considered children to be “padlocks on the patriarchal shackles of marriage” (56). They arrive at Trepassen House—which is not only more rundown than Hal’s research suggested, but “absolutely plagued” (58) by magpies. Treswick is somewhat phobic of birds and he complains of the magpies’ aggression. He recalls a nursery rhyme about magpies.

In a diary entry in 1994, an unnamed narrator complains that she was “sick again this morning” (60). She recalls Maud judging her afterward and seemingly pitying her. The narrator is not sure how much she can trust Maud.