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‘Juan?’ he tried calling, but the mason was still staring at the devil, Latin still falling from his lips. Sugrañes turned and fled.

* * *

Anji had relaxed into her seat on Las Rambles. The Doctor had agreed to come and find her when he was done in the TARDIS. She was astute enough to know he might be some time and had ordered a carafe of wine to sip at whilst she waited. The hotel in which she had eventually found rooms was at her back and the wide cobbled boulevard was in front of her. Alone with her thoughts, she absently started people-watching. She let her gaze pick up a person and then follow them as they walked down or up the twilit avenue.

The red wine was vinegary, as if it had been opened days before and allowed to breath for far too long. Bargain bin stuff she would normally pass over. She took small sips, trying not to dwell too much on the taste. Two young men walked by with matching blond hair and she speculated briefly: brothers? Lovers? How did two men so alike come to be walking down Las Rambles together?

For a moment, she thought the world had frozen, paused like a still from a movie, then it moved on and she put one hand to her suddenly aching head. Too much cheap wine and sunshine. Hopefully the Doctor would be here soon and she could go for a lie down.

‘Anji?’

She felt her eyes come back into focus and saw Pia frowning at her. The Italian woman was standing in front of her table on the pavement, one hand gripping the strap of a big leather handbag. Anji shook her head slightly, automatically smoothing her hair back into line afterwards.

‘Sorry, Pia. I was miles away.’

‘Wishing you were back home in England?’

Anji smiled and gestured at the empty chair next to her. ‘Do you wish you were back in Italy? Where are you from anyway? Which city?’ Talk to me, she silently begged, distract me from the headache. Give me something to focus on.

Pia dropped her bag on the ground next to the chair and sat, unbuttoning her overcoat. At her glance backwards the waiter brought over a second wine glass, a different shape to Anji’s. Anji idly wondered if any café had a full set of matching glasses any more.

‘I am Roman,’ Pia said, pouring herself some of the sour wine. She took a mouthful and tried not to grimace at it. ‘And I will not go back, not until Il Duce and his boot boys are taken from power. Or if the Party sends me back to fight.’

Anji raised an eyebrow at Pia’s determined, firm tone. ‘You fight?’

Pia frowned, looked suddenly suspicious again. ‘Of course, Anji. I fought the fascists in my home for years, until the Party sent me here.’

‘You mean you campaigned against them?’

‘No, I fought. I am a very good shot. I do not shake under fire, as some of the boys here do.’

‘But you’re...’ Anji trailed off. She had been about to suggest that women weren’t fighters. Honestly, she was the first to argue that women could do any job a man could and yet she’d just assumed that only men could be in the military, ‘... here as a secretary, you said yesterday,’ she finished.

Pia let out a very expressive snort of derision, making it clear what she thought of that. ‘He – my commander – he is Spanish. He talks of fraternity, but women are women. I have faced more bullets than him but I must be typing.’

They both fell silent and took a sip of the wine. Anji squinted up Las Rambles, wondering when the Doctor would find her: her head still had a tight band across it and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. The world felt wrong, as if she was slightly disconnected from it, looking at it from one remove. She put one hand on her temple gingerly and closed her eyes for a second.

‘You are not well?’ Pia was asking, peering at her.

Anji squeezed her eyes tightly shut briefly and then opened them, letting her hand fall on to the arm of the chair and giving the Italian a smile.

‘It is nothing. Just a headache.’

‘Your doctor has gone for some medicine for you?’

‘He’s not that kind of...’ Anji gave up, no one ever listened to