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2. Serafina

Long black hair. Sometimes it fell across her face like a raven’s wing. Even in repose she seemed to be standing on some bleak northern strand, howling at the grey waves with her hair whipping in the wind. There is a Scottish expression: ‘to dree one’s weird’. To undergo one’s destiny is what it means and you could see that happening in the long beauty of her face that was sometimes softly rounded and sometimes like the blade of a knife. Her great dark eyes under the flare of their black brows seemed always to be looking into a darkness beyond the light; her elegant mouth seemed murmurous with spells, succulent with kisses, speechless with sadness. She bought her clothes at cancer and multiple-sclerosis charity shops — droopy jumpers and long swinging print skirts worn with steel-toed boots. She looked thin in her clothes but the nakedness of her long body offered surprising curves and pearly roundnesses, aloof and exciting. So beautiful and strange she was, my Serafina, so magical. How could I have hoped not to lose her!