When I lived in the Allegheny Valley, near Pittsburgh, there used to be a pair of old ladies locally called the Cheswick Twins. They were indeed twins, and they looked and dressed identically. They seemed to be everywhere, you could see them riding on buses, hanging out in all-night diners on snowy nights where the staff would keep them supplied with tea and snacks until the manager would throw them out.

No one seemed to know where they lived, or who kept them provided with the odd nun-like garb they wore. They seemed to be clean, well-clothed, groomed and fed, but it was not obvious where their “base” was. Except for their neat appearance, as far as anyone knew, they were homeless.

The Cheswick twins were terrified of strangers, refused any contact or conversation (no one was sure if they even knew English) and spoke to each other in what sounded to me like some kind of improvised “twin language” that no one else in the world spoke. I could hear them chattering in restaurants and on street corners, and sometimes they even got into wild arguments, but I somehow knew they were not speaking in any known human tongue.

After I met my wife, her family filled me in on the Twins, who they called Frick and Frack. A huge body of folklore had been built up around them in the valley towns of Cheswick, Springdale, Harmarville, Oakmont, and New Kensington. But it seemed clear to me that nobody really knew much about them. All anyone really knew was that they had been around for years. No one knew who their benefactor was, but it was assumed it was one of the many Catholic or Orthodox churches in the area.

It was sad that whatever tragedy had isolated them from human community and contact seemed no longer reversible, but it was still reassuring that someone or some institution had taken the trouble to help them, and that the community itself embraced them as some of their own, even if an odd and quirky part of itself. Everybody liked the Twins, was even proud of them, in a way. The Pittsburgh area is made up of small, ethnic neighborhoods, still keeping much of their European culture and customs. That world is fast unravelling now, but I felt at home there, I spent my childhood in just such an immigrant community.

The “girl in the window” story was much more tragic, and although it does not have a happy ending, at least, through human kindness and decency, the equally human ignorance and cruelty that created Dani is at least partially made up for. Her story unfolded in my home town, too.