Summary

The Epigraph is a portion of a diary set in November of 1994. The writer remembered a rhyme her mother had told her as she sat looking at the magpies outside. She at first saw three, which she took for an omen that her baby would be a girl, but then saw there were really a total of seven birds. In the rhyme, seven magpies indicated “a secret / never to be told” (1). The writer knew that the secret she was pregnant would soon come out. After a fox scared away the other birds, only one magpie remained, a single bird was supposed to represent sorrow, but the writer indicated she planned to change the rhyme so that one would represent joy and love.

In Chapter 1, Hal arrived home in the attic flat she had once shared with her mother. It had been her...