‘I was running with Dana, until I saw you and decided to stop.’ She exhaled loudly. ‘She has too much stamina for my standards.’ Alba glanced at her surroundings, was somehow extremely pleased at a certain sight. ‘Cool, gypsies.’ 

‘Do you know anything about them? Do you understand what they’re saying?’ Patricia queried, hopeful. 

The girl tilted her head to the side, a thoughtful expression on her face. After a while she nodded to no one in particular and turned back to the two women. ‘They are speaking caló. By the tongue and the way they behave, I’d say that they’re not roma, but gitanos, true gypsies from Spain.’ 

Ms. Arpino sighed in relief. ‘No wonder I couldn’t pick up on what they were saying.’ 

‘Can you speak caló?’ T. asked, thanking whatever force of destiny that had brought the girl to them. 

‘Not really. Gitanos are usually very closed, restricted. It’s a "tribe against everyone else" policy that mostly guides their actions. Personally, I don’t blame them. They’ve been expelled from India, abused, excluded and killed in Spain… it’s a pretty bloody history.’ 

‘You don’t have even the smallest impression on what they’re talking about, then?’ 

‘I can comprehend caló, I just can’t speak it. Let’s see…’ She brooded over what she had heard. ‘They were discussing the loss of a child… no, of an unborn baby. Apparently, one of the women suffered an abortion and now has a hard time dealing with it.’ 

Tina was careful to keep her expression neutral, even though her insides churned. A fresh stab of pain coursed through her body, an electrical current that made physical what was an emotional trauma.  

She remembered the intense desolation and helplessness that had completely taken over, still kept a tight grip in her fluttering heart. 

She turned to glance at the gypsies and her eyes fell on a young woman who could be in her early twenties. Her skin was very tanned, eyes huge and vacant, black irises listlessly focused on the children of her tribe. T. had no doubts that she was the one who’d lost her baby. She felt an instant kinship to the stranger as tears gathered in her lids. 

‘Do you think you could communicate with them?’ Ms. Kennard queried in a small voice. She thought that it was her duty to help them, no matter what. To make the woman’s hollowness and her own disappear. ‘Talk them into agreeing to our offer of help?’