Harvest: Occult Britain

By Robert Weaver

When a human skull is found in the woods in a small town in northern England, a local sergeant, a writer, and a psychic's daughter get pulled into a crime that's as dark as the surrounding moor. Some cases aren't meant to be solved. Some secrets aren't meant to be revealed. Some lives aren't meant to be.

 

This is where the witches were hanged. This is Lancashire – land of abbeys and warriors and witchcraft. Set during the three months of autumn, Harvest follows the intrepid lives of residents of Barrow Fells while a local sergeant helps with a murder investigation. Sometimes it's a story about love and hate and all the bits in between. By the end of this harvest season, nothing will be the same again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ex Luce Veritas
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201831387

Robert Weaver

From the literary tradition of Romanticism and Gothic fiction to contemporary media sources such as video games and rock and heavy metal music, Robert Weaver builds worlds in words with a promise that no matter the genre, there will always be mystery to unravel or inequity to overcome.

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Chapter 1: The Fading of Empire Dreams

LAURA BELIEVED SHE WAS LOSING HIM. When she had told her husband John that she wanted his child, he walked away from her, and last night when she wanted to make love to him he ignored her, as though her essence he found repugnant. But the worst thing was that she somehow felt responsible, as if it were she that had planted in him the seeds of disgust, ugliness, inadequacy.

The downstairs light was on and she’d got out of bed to peer down at him dressing in the lamplight. She thought about the day they’d met and the relationship that had blossomed afterwards. Topics related to family and children and sometimes even intimacy transformed John into another John, one that she barely recognised, but one that Laura believed came to be from the childhood he’d lived, fostered in the foster homes that sucked him in and spat him out.

Laura wondered now after all these years whether she had made the mistake of misplacing herself in a man that didn’t love her back. Like a kerosene fire in her chest, it was a fear that had her questioning whether her John would continue to be the John that made her laugh, the John who made her feel part of the world, the John who had shed a tear the day they married, the John who loved her more than she loved herself. That fear, naturally, was kindled by a deeper, darker fear: if John were to leave her, then perhaps, like a gardener pulling out a plant by its roots, he could take with him the core of the person she had grown to be.

She slinked downstairs and stood looking at the man who resembled her husband. He was fastening his utility belt. The sound of his AP radio still crackled in her mind, the beep it made when he held down the trigger.

He’d be right over. Domestic dispute.

John glanced at Laura’s face, the worry-lines, the fear.

‘Is it bad?’ she asked.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ John said, putting on the blue windbreaker with Police across the back.

‘You haven’t had an early morning call out for a long time.’

‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Is it her?’

‘I’ll be back for breakfast.’

‘She’s got problems, John.’

‘We’ve all got our problems.’

‘She won’t admit she does.’

John picked up the radio and walked to the front door.

‘This isn’t a personal visit, is it?’ she asked, the desperation now cracking her voice, her words lashing out like a snake’s tongue might.

‘I’m on duty,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’

‘We have to talk. About us. About last night. About everything.’

‘I love you, Laura,’ he said and went out the door, closing it behind him. Laura knew exactly where he was going. To see Rory Wake.

Someone once told Laura that you can’t have love without hate, and she knew deep inside she could never hate John, not completely.

I love you, Laura.

And that was the problem.

OUTSIDE, THE NEON LIGHTS of the pharmacy a few houses down smoked through the mist and against the asphalt like ink in water. The street lamps glowed orange like filthy halos on the footpath. John got into a Hyundai patrol car, started the engine and, turning on the heater, looked out the window. He and Laura lived in the stucco house made of sandstone and roofed with slate, as the architecture in Lancashire offers, which was leased to them free of charge by the county on account of its proximity to the Barrow Fells police station. The balcony on the second floor had hanging pots in which Laura grew flowers that during springtime blossomed red, yellow, white. The bedroom light was on. He could see her silhouette behind the curtains, her form, her figure. Then the light turned off. He should have known that never again would the beautiful flowers bloom.

A mile outside of town, beside the burbling Fox Brook, a hectare of undeveloped land stretched out in front of woodlands jagged against the dark sky, interspersed with gorse bushes and scattered with heath. An oak tree sheltered a cottage whose windows were foggy with cobwebs and whose roof, along the western end, was covered in a blue polyethylene tarpaulin.

She was sitting on the top step watching John pull into the muddy driveway, the light of the porch pointing out all her imperfections. John cut the engine.

‘He’s gone,’ she said as he approached her. Aurora Wake—known by most as Rory—twenty four years old with a prepaid ticket to the grave. Her boyfriend of four months had been giving her grief, as they all did, because it’s all they ever knew or cared to know. And there were more. When one got bored another was ready to step into the previous man’s shoes, and the cycle was certain to continue until one snuffed out her candle for good.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘To bother someone else.’

John felt the wind on his face. He wanted to be back at home wrapped up in blankets. Despite what was happening between him and Laura, he wanted Laura beside him, feeling her warmth and her touch and her fingernails against his skin, to hear her breathe, to smell the soap on her skin, the shampoo in her hair.

John looked up at Rory, a purple plum where her eye was supposed to be, the swelling already noticeable in the dark. She was wearing stockings and a pair of denim shorts and a big fluffy coat. Her hair was washed, he could tell, and it fell softly on her shoulders, cut in a way that made the tips look as sharp as needles.

‘Tell me what happened,’ said John. She then invited him inside. Looking right at him, her hands fitted on her hips, she asked, ‘You still drink coffee, Mr Constable?’

‘It’s Sergeant now,’ he replied. ‘Equal parts coffee and milk.’ Rory took a kettle from the top cupboard and looked into it, made a face at the dust and rat droppings within, maybe a dead cockroach. She washed the kettle in the sink and filled it up and set it to boil on the hob. On the carpet in the living room were an upturned ashtray and a scattering of cigarette butts.

John asked, ‘Is this the last time you’re going to see him?’

‘I sure hope so.’

‘You said the exact same thing last time.’

‘I’m still hoping.’

‘Do I have to go track him down?’

‘I called you after he hit me. Everything were fine and dandy, until he went outside and walked round in the dark, grumbling the way he does when he’s angry or drunk or both. The kinda grumble that makes the wind bugger off. I watched him out the window a while. What was I supposed to do? Stand there waiting for him to come back in and clean my clock? So I turned on the TV and lay on the sofa. I figured I could go out doing something more interesting than just being scared. You notice how bad TV is these days? For the life of me I couldn’t find anything good to watch.’

‘Get to it, Rory.’

‘Eventually he came back in and stood in front of the damn TV.’

‘Then he hit you?’

‘I threw the ashtray at him. I told the prick in advance if he didn’t move out of the way I’d hurl it at him. I warned him first, John. That’s got to count for something, right? If it means anything, I could smell her on him. I don’t want him coming back this time. He doesn’t make me feel good. He makes me a bad person.’

‘He took all his stuff? Has he ever done that before?’

‘I think he’s had enough of me.’

‘Men don’t get tired of places to sleep and women who feed them. Besides, there’s never an excuse for violence.’

‘Well, I ain’t like other women. Maybe I tire men. Maybe I don’t cook too good either.’

John was looking at the shadowed room. The bathroom door was closed. Pillows and blankets lay on the sofa. A bucket half-filled with rain water on the living room floor. Dirty plates and knives and forks and cups and crisp wrappers. An empty ziplock bag, a couple rolled joints, a needle on the coffee table.

‘You could have tidied up,’ said John.

‘What?’ She was pouring hot water into two cups of instant coffee. She handed him one. He nodded at the dark room, light from the kitchen picking out the salient things.

‘Uh-huh. You’re going to bust me, Mr Sergeant?’

‘I could.’

‘Will you?’

‘I just wish you treated me with a bit more respect, is all.’

‘I forgot about it, and I weren’t expecting company. I didn’t wake up thinking, Oh boy can’t wait for Jerry to beat the shit out of me. They belong to him.’ She’d crossed her arms and was nodding at the drugs on the coffee table. ‘Most anyway. That’s the truth, John. I do respect you.’

‘Where’s Harriet?’

‘God knows. She doesn’t tell me anything. I think she went to the festival. That were twelve hours ago.’

‘She hasn’t been back?’

‘She does everything except what I tell her.’

‘You ever think about getting some help?’

‘I don’t need any. Plus you’re only a phone call away.’

‘Your boyfriend uses you as a punching bag and you’ve got drugs out in the living room. Harriet’s fourteen years old.’

‘And despite all that I’m still looking out for her. Who else is going to? Those foster homes ain’t a place to grow up in. Plus she knows what’s mine and what she shouldn’t touch. She’s smart, even though she does dumb things. Mum will be out of prison soon. She’ll be able to keep an eye on Harriet then.’

‘She’s not here, you are. Tidy up the house, Rory.’

Rory stared at John for a while. Her fingernails were painted purple, chipped along the edges. She was one to argue but only until she found her dignity. She said, ‘You’re right. Place is a bloody mess and it’s going to take a couple months at least to get Jerry’s odour out. I’ll clean up the house. I promise.’

‘You have to clean up everything, not just the house. You still playing your guitar?’

‘I look at it every now and again.’

‘Looking at it isn’t going to get you anywhere.’

‘Let’s start with this: when do I have time to do anything for myself? Between working and Harriet there’s only so many minutes in a day.’

‘I remember when you had dreams. You told me you’d never quit, never give up.’

‘Life had other plans. I’m trying to hold together what’s left of my family.’

‘I could talk to Owen. I can get you a spot at the Casket.’

‘That’s kind of you, John, but there’s no way he’d let me play there.’

‘Let me talk to him.’

She had moved closer to him and he hadn’t realised until now that he could smell the perfume she’d put on right before he arrived. ‘If you want to do me a favour you could maybe stay a while longer,’ she said. ‘Rest on the sofa. I’ll make us breakfast. I think I might even have some eggs left to make pancakes.’

‘I can’t stay and you know that.’

‘She must be a great woman. A woman better than me, at least.’

‘Start practising your music. I’ll talk to Owen. It’s not over yet for Rory Wake.’

‘You mean that woman with her sister living out by the woods next to the palm reader? The one got all those men who come and go like she’s running a brothel? That Rory Wake? I don’t think she’s got much left in the tank.’

‘You’ve got to start somewhere. Next stop is London.’

‘You’re a real nice man, John. I hope Laura sees it as much as I do.’

‘You call me again if Jerry shows up.’

‘You think he’ll be back?’

‘As sure as the sun will rise above those trees over there.’

She whistled. ‘I don’t doubt your experience with villains.’

‘Find someone better, Rory. Someone who cares about you, someone you deserve.’

‘I wonder, John, how can a woman be responsible for the sins of her lover?’

She shouldn’t be, John thought. But he knew others thought differently.

Like how at this very moment, shrouded in night, out where the trees met the moor, a human skull was being carried delicately in an ornate bag, on its way to be presented for the world to see and to judge and to pity.

Chapter 2: Valley of the Mystics

SHE WAS HOME AFTER FIVE in the morning, before dawn was even a thought on the horizon’s mind.

She was Celia Wilber, sixteen, still waiting for her prettiness to bloom. She wore knitted sweaters she’d made herself, full of purples and greens and reds and any other colour she could get her hands on. At the onset of autumn through to spring she accompanied her sweaters with hand-knitted scarves. Sometimes she wore skirts, other times trousers, but whatever she didn’t knit originated in a goodwill store, her mother carrying her clothes home in cardboard boxes.

Celia picked up a glass from the drying rack and filled it with water from the kitchen tap. In the dark she stood drinking, watching tiny moths flutter in the chrome moonlight printing on the linoleum floor. The fear she had carried all the way home was now fleeting, the last trace of it observed only by the increased pulse at the touch of her neck.

She raised the glass again and finished it off, then went to her bedroom where she heard Mother snoring through the walls. Celia shook out the contents of her school bag and filled it again with whatever clothes she found in the drawers. This was it, she was telling herself. Time to kiss this town goodbye. Au revoir. A big, fat middle finger to the losers stuck here like crap on your shoe. Calm, calculated, the big moment. Like that time she got out after her step-father locked her up in her room all night, then went out and drank everything at the Blue Casket. He had crashed into the tree outside and brought a jerrycan sloshing with petrol into the cottage, saying he was going to burn down the whole damn house with everyone inside it. And when the police came and took away her step-father in cuffs, her mother cried and blamed Celia for it all. So Celia ran away for two days and hid in the national park where the trees didn't judge her or expect anything from her.

But a girl who knew nothing of wilderness survival, who didn't know how to hunt and couldn’t tolerate the taste of insects and worms couldn’t possibly stay away. With no money or education or any skill besides knitting, she knew the whole running away act was a sham. When she had returned home she learnt that her step-father was dead, hanged himself in the drunk tank with his own belt, and Celia's mother didn’t talk to her for a month.

So even if she ran away now she wouldn’t get far. Maybe as far as Liverpool, and then what?

When she got to the kitchen, her hand reaching for the front door, she paused, and sighed to herself; and there she stood unmoving, surrounded by the soft dripping of the tap and the snoring of her mother. Colours burst in the dark like primitive fireworks, some moving like water, others like ribbons of light. It was like the visions her mother talked about, and that appeared whenever she thought from her heart and not her head. Celia sensed herself in a long future fading from this earth with nothing left behind. She’d been conquered. Conquered before there was ever a chance to fight.

So she undid everything she had done in the bedroom, returning her school books to her bag, like having to re-cross a river after burning down the bridge.

She sat at the edge of the bed and tried to cry, but couldn’t.

Sleep came faster than she thought it would. When she woke two hours later, the sky out her window above the jagged forest canopy was the colour of ash from an old, intense fire.

She got up and put on a kettle and filled a bowl with cereal—unfortunately, when she opened the fridge she found only a bottle of curdled milk and the repugnant smell of week-old spaghetti.

Mother stood by the bedroom door in a crudely short nightgown that revealed her long, thin legs that resembled vines running down the trunk of a tree.

‘I heard you come in,’ Mother said. ‘It must have been five, five thirty.’

‘You want a cup of tea?’

Mother opened a cupboard and found a medicine bottle, shook out a couple of white pills and downed them. She then sat at the round, yellow table, and crossed her legs. Thank God. She’d picked up the end of a cigarette from the ashtray and was lighting the tip when she said, ‘I need you to do a reading this afternoon.’

‘I can’t. I have to study.’

‘I need to get my nails done.’

‘Can’t you get them done at the weekend?’

Mother waved away the smoke curling from the cigarette. ‘I had a dream last night. A dream I was young and pretty again. I was in a place with palm trees and muscular men in Speedos. What I wouldn’t do to take it all back. Don’t get married, Celia. Don’t have children. All they do is ruin your life. Rob you of your greatest assets.’ She was staring at the back of her hands, at her long fingers, the rings, the fake emerald. ‘In the dream my nails were freshly painted and manicured. Absolutely gorgeous. You know I can’t ignore my dreams, Celia. It’s another sign. You know I can’t ignore the signs. Beverly will be here at about four.’

‘I told you I have to study.’

‘I need some help holding this home together.’ The cigarette crisped as she breathed in. ‘All I ask of you is to do a reading here and there. Is that so hard?’ Mother tipped ash into an empty mug. ‘What happens if they turn off our lights? What do we do then?’

Celia took her bowl of dry cereal with her toward her bedroom, Mother saying, ‘Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.’

‘I have to get ready for school.’

‘You have to listen to me.’

‘I don’t have to listen to anybody.’

Celia slammed the door shut behind her, yet Mother continued, her voice beating through the door and walls: ‘Why do you treat me like this, Celia? Your mother of all people. You think me a consort of worms?’

Celia sat on the floor and stared at the bowl in her hands, feeling the paper house falling down around her. The need to run away returned, but like a dog tethered to a post, she knew it was futile.

Mother was still in the same position at the table when Celia walked out of her bedroom. She had lit another cigarette and was staring out the dirty window whose sill was scattered with dead moths.

‘Turn on the sign,’ said Mother, dreamily; often, when yelling didn’t do the trick, her way of being angry was to be cold and distant.

‘You turn it on,’ was Celia’s response as she stepped out of the cottage. She was walking quickly across the grass when at the corner of her eye she saw the red neon sign illuminate: a picture of a left hand, palm facing forward, and a flickering red tube shaped into a human eye in the centre. Her mother stood beside the sign at the open door, staring at Celia, raising the cigarette to her lips, softly puffing. Just staring. Just smoking. Just being.

Celia followed the brook until she reached a small wooden bridge and crossed it. On the other side there was a cottage much like her own. Fresh tyre tracks were in the grass and mud leading to the road.

Celia knocked on the front door. Rory Wake opened it an inch, hiding her bad eye behind the door.

‘Is Harriet home?’ Celia asked, her lips, cheeks, and nose red. She rubbed her hands together, trying to keep away the cold.

Rory said, ‘I thought she was with you.’

‘She was, then she wasn’t. We went separate ways.’

‘She hasn’t come home. Did you two have a fight?’

‘No. No fight.’

They stared at each other for a short time. The wind had stopped and the only sounds came from the gentle moving of the brook and the morning songs of birds in the pines.

Celia fitted her hands in her pockets and asked, ‘What about you, Rory?’

‘About me what?’

‘You had a fight?’

‘Get to school, Celia.’

Celia turned away and walked down the stairs. She put a foot on the grass, turned back up and said, ‘I’ll see Harriet at school, won’t I?’

Maybe Rory flinched, maybe she frowned. Her single eye narrowed. ‘Of course,’ she said, and already she wanted to close the door. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

Celia started along the grass toward the muddy tyre tracks and puddles and followed them to the road, beside which a rusty mailbox stood on the property line. Someone had put a sticker on it: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Rory called after Celia, asking, ‘If something happened, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’

But Celia was too preoccupied by the return of the wind to answer. When she had looked at the puddle she had seen another face staring up at her, one that was decomposing, its skin hanging off the bone like lichen. She knew that the dead face staring back at her wasn’t her own, and although she couldn’t be sure whose it was exactly, she was fairly certain it also didn’t belong to Harriet. Often these images appeared both in her dreams and in her waking life, each one with its own truth, each truth making her uneasy.

She pulled her coat tighter and walked off into the wind, too scared to look back at the cottage, too scared to look at any more muddy puddles.

THE SUN WAS BURSTING on the horizon when John Haugh parked the police car outside his house. The living room light was on, burning behind the closed curtains. Laura was up. Probably sitting on the sofa, reading a book, or listening to music—the only time of the day she could be alone with her own thoughts, that half hour window before her son, Shane, would wake.

John had legally adopted Shane a year after he started dating Laura; it was his idea, and she agreed to it, happy to see John’s commitment, his love for them both.

John picked up the two paper cups of coffee in the centre console, got out of the patrol car, closed the door with his knee, and went into the police station. The corridor light was on, and Janet Bentley was behind the front desk watching John walk up to her. He nudged over a coffee cup.

‘Morning,’ John said. ‘Is Sutcliffe in?’

‘She’s in the office. Arrived five minutes before you.’

Bentley picked up the paper cup and sipped from it, her eyes on a paper pad in front of her.

‘Bill Warren called about a disturbance last night,’ she said, reading. ‘Out in the woods. He wants to make a complaint.’

‘You can tell him to come in and fill out a form.’

‘Well I said that. Then he said if he did, you’d have to come out anyway so you might as well bring the form and do it all there.’

‘Did he say what it was about?’

‘Kids out in the woods lighting fires.’

‘I’ll drive out after breakfast.’

Sutcliffe was at her desk when John opened the door.

‘Sutcliffe, have you had breakfast?’

Constable Vashti Sutcliffe stood up too fast and knocked a Manila folder off the desk, spilling it across the floor. ‘I have, John.’

‘Go for seconds. I’ll take you out to Bill Warren’s farm at nine and show you how we deal with local farmers.’

‘Something happened at the Warren farm?’

‘You can’t imagine. Absolute tragedy out there. See you outside in half an hour. Oh, and tidy up your desk. You’ve got paper strewn everywhere.’

Out in the reception, a blonde woman was standing at the counter with Bentley. It was Heather Berkeley, the mother of  an old friend. She was wearing a brown dress and a silver necklace tracing the curve of her collarbone. Her eyes had the sheen of opals and were on the brink of tears. Bentley looked up at John and said, ‘Mrs Berkeley wants to report a missing person.’

‘It’s my son, Sergeant,’ said Heather. ‘It’s Alan. He’s gone.’

‘Slow down, Mrs Berkeley. Where’s he gone?’

‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be here telling you he’s missing. He’s been gone three days. He hasn’t called. Not even a note. He’s just up and went.’

‘It’s Monday morning.’

‘So?’

‘So, he probably went away for the weekend.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Listen to me. I know my son; I know when something’s wrong. I can feel it inside me, here, in my stomach.’

‘Follow me.’

When John got to his desk he motioned to a padded chair and said, ‘Take a seat, please.’

He sat down before Heather did, his swivel chair groaning under his weight. From the desk drawer he removed a missing persons form and dropped it on the desk.

‘Run it through for me,’ John was saying. ‘Start at the beginning.’

Heather seemed anxious and upset about something beyond the disappearance of her son; John believed it was a result of his presence, that he and Alan were friends in high school, that they had drifted apart.

Heather had also known John’s adoptive parents, spent afternoons with his foster mother at the garden club. That was until she was killed in a car wreck the same day a fire gutted his old high school.

‘There’s nothing I can tell you,’ said Heather Berkeley, ‘other than Alan’s not where he’s supposed to be. Not one day in his life has he disappeared without telling me something. A phone call. A text message. Mum, I’ll be gone a few days. But this time, nothing. It’s a feeling. A bad one at that.’

‘Is he still working for Big Bear?’

She nodded.

‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Does Alan take any sort of medication that we should know of?’

‘He was on antidepressants for a while. I think he stopped.’

John wrote it down on the form. He then asked her for personal information such as Alan’s full name, address, date of birth, phone and mobile numbers.

Heather clutched at her purse. ‘I have to mention it. That incident last year. He told me it was you who arrested him.’

‘Could you tell me some of Alan’s habits?’

‘He admitted he hit you first. I never thanked you for not pursuing assault charges. I don’t want to lose my boy, John. He forgot the heart he was born with, but there’s still hope.’

John put his hands on the desk, palms down. ‘It’d be best if we kept this focused, Mrs Berkeley. If I believe his previous drug charges are relevant to his disappearance, I’ll deal with it at the appropriate time.’

John recorded the information Heather dictated and then put the paper into a Manila folder with Alan Berkeley’s name written on it in blue ink—he was going to check it out sometime that morning. Afterwards he walked Heather outside and waited at the curb for her to get into her car and drive away. The sun was rising and staining the tips of the rooftops red. He took a moment to appreciate the dawn of a new day. He had her son’s folder in his hands, and he stared at Alan’s face—a photograph she had given him. It was paper clipped at the top corner. He felt uneasy about what was staring at him. He was uneasy about his disappearance. It was just a bender, he told himself. He’d be back. But there was an illness in his chest and stomach and throat that made him want to throw up. He held it in, leaned against the police car, held his face in his hands.

It wasn’t until he looked up the street, where the green neon light of the pharmacy spilled onto the pavement, did he see a man with long blond hair, a pair of denim jeans, and a brown jacket, walk into the building. John drove up and parked hard up against the curb outside, the engine loping, his hands sweating on the steering wheel. He turned down the heater but couldn’t turn down the flame behind his eyes. Jerry walked out of the pharmacy, a cigarette fitted behind his ear where his blond hair curled over it like waves, a paper bag in his hand. John switched on the police lights. Red and blue strobed on the pavement. He rolled down the window and called him over.

‘Morning, Jerry,’ said John. ‘You’re up early.’

The man narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you want?’

‘I saw you in the pharmacy.’

‘Far out. I think I have a prize for you somewhere here.’ He reached into his jacket and brought out his middle finger.

‘How about you jump in and we can have a chat?’ John said.

‘Chat about what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure we can think of something.’

‘I’m going to pass, Constable.’

‘It’s Sergeant now. And I insist.’

John had already reached over and opened the passenger door. Jerry had the sort of odour of vinegar dried into clothes. He smelled wet and moth-ball ridden, as though the lint on his clothes had begun to grow saprotrophic fungi. Back on the road, John killed the lights and headed north toward the moorland while the sun veined its light through the clouds.

‘You know who I saw this morning?’ asked John.

‘What is this, twenty questions?’

‘Come on. Guess.’

‘Rory.’

‘That’s right. I saw Rory this morning. I prefer seeing her without the black eye.’

‘She ought to be