Diego strode up to the half-completed building. The chain of children stopped their relay and stared at him.
‘Are you our new helper?’ one of the boys asked him. ‘Father Tomaso told us we would have one today.’
‘Did he?’ echoed Diego grimly. ‘I might have guessed.’
A girl spoke up, maybe eleven or twelve.
‘You look too rich to work. Your shoes are polished.’
‘Don’t worry—they’ll soon get scuffed. Tell me, where do these tiles go?’
He picked up an armful, hunkering down on his haunches to do so.
‘You take them round to the other side, where the grownups are working. Do not drop any—they cost good money,’ the first boy warned him.
‘I shall try not to,’ answered Diego. He stood up, bracing his weight.
One of the younger boys was staring at him.
‘You speak like us,’ he said.
Diego stilled. He had answered them in their own street accents. He had not even realised he had done so. Had not even realised he still knew such patois.
He looked at the children. They were staring at him.
‘I lived here once,’ he said slowly.
Their stares of curiosity turned to open disbelief.
‘But you’re rich,’ said the girl who had spoken.
‘I was not rich when I lived here,’ he answered.
Another child spoke.
‘Father Tomaso says we are all rich. We eat every day and we have a bed to sleep in and clean clothes to wear. That makes us rich, he says.’
Diego looked at them, at their neatly cut hair, their bright eyes, not dulled now by hunger, or by alcohol, or solvents.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘I think Father Tomaso is right.’
‘He’s always right—he tells us he is,’ said the boy who had warned him against dropping any of the tiles. ‘Are you going to take those tiles to where they are needed, or just stand with them all day? They all have to be moved today.’
‘Whatever you say, boss,’ said Diego, and set off with his load.
It did not seem to be as heavy as he had thought.
Portia heard the call for the midday meal—a wooden spoon being noisily banged on the back of an iron pot—and drew her lesson to its close. Dismissing the children with an adjuration to wash their hands before going into the dining room, she put away her well-worn teaching books and headed for her own small bedroom. She needed to freshen up and change her top—she was sticky with heat.
The volunteers’ rooms were in a side block across the courtyard to the rear. As she emerged into the bright sunlight she blinked, momentarily blinded. When her eyes cleared she saw the morning shift of volunteers and children come across the roadway from the building site.
She blinked again.
And then froze.
Faintness drummed through her. Denial seared in her head.
No! This isn’t true! It can’t be!