As Polly thinks back to this "second set" of memories, the point where they seem to diverge is when she stumbled into a funeral in an old mansion, Hunsdon House, when she was ten and playing with her best friend, Nina. There, she was approached by a man named Thomas Lynn who took her back outside and kept her company. He takes her back inside to help him select six pictures from a large pile, his share of the estate of the deceased; one of them is a photograph called "Fire and Hemlock" (hence the name of the novel), which he gave to her. He then takes her back to her grandmother's house, where she is living.