‘It’s not a… woman. Is it?’ ‘No,’ said the crone, turned her back to the young moth, and grabbed a large hunk of dry root, from a shelve. ...��So… An ugly man,’ concluded Lei, to herself. Lost in thought she didn’t notice the shiver running through the crone’s body. ‘I guess there are worse things than being ugly,’ added Lei. ‘There are worse things than being ugly,’ said the crone. Lei turned her attention back to her. The seer, being an ugly old crone, should know better than anyone. ‘What else. Each of them opened and laid out side by side, the keys in the locks, waiting for my fingers to return them to where they should never have been removed. I stared at them and I knew that this had been decided long before I’d come back to a place where I could bring myself to look at them.I drew a deep breath and my fingers trembled as I reached out to run my fingertips over their surfaces. They felt cool to the touch, but strangely warm at the same time. They felt ... welcoming. Like I was. June came over later. It was not long until she found out about all the excitement. Women seem to sense something and they looked at me more and more. Lillian was the only one that seemed to only be interested in me as a person.Mom and Pop helped Dad home or possibly they helped each other. The gang and June made sure Lillian and Bert got upstairs safely. We went back to Gail's home. She wanted sex and was taking her clothes off. The guys and I helped her strip and put to bed. She hugged the. I suppose I felt quite paternal towards her. She had, strangely, never been out of Scotland before she came to work for us and from conversation over the months I had gathered that her upbringing was not only relatively sheltered but also, in many ways, remarkably deprived. Falling catches and increasingly strict European quotas had put the local fishing industry into terminal decline, and for boat owners like Fran’s father the times were desperately hard, but these troubles scarcely.