With our head-sized ice-creams, we stopped in the middle of a busy square to lick them down to manageable dimensions. A few paces away, two street fiddlers were playing: a girl my age, and a slightly older man. They were pretty good, but they were also plain pretty in a wild, hippy way: a treat for both ears and eyes.

“I hope she doesn’t miss any notes,” Abel mumbled through a mountain of chocolate.

I hoped so too, for her sake. Because if she did, her partner wouldn’t skip a beat, but would give her a significant look over his fiddle. When they finished for the night, he would wait until she finished packing away her instrument.

“Come along. You know we have something to discuss.”

They live in an artists’ commune, with people coming and going, and sleeping spaces separated with no more than a gauze sheets criss-crossing an abandoned, draughty hall.

People pretend that they don’t notice or care. Still, when it’s time for the girl to go over her partner’s lap, paying for the skipped notes and mangled songs, she knows that several pairs of ears are following her misfortune.

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