Still, they waited in line while Miguel bought a paper cup full of hot, spiced wine for himself. He wasn’t entirely sure where the wine for the pots came from. Perhaps they made their own locally. Or maybe it was salvage – always ‘salvage’ in this country. The gringos were living off their own dead. Looking around in the chill air, he couldn’t imagine that the area was good for grapes, though. Trudi Jessup could probably have explained it. She had led him into wine drinking on the journey up from Texas, although he imagined she would be horrified to find him drinking something like this. Trudi took her wine, as well as her food, very seriously.

‘After this we can see about a cup of hot cocoa perhaps?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, why not.’

The actual marketplace was a series of outer brick buildings formed into a loose square. In the middle of that square stood three long shelters fitted with garage doors that were kept shut in the winter months. Merchants willing to pay a little extra for heated stall space were set up within the shelters, while the frugal or the unlucky toughed it out in the elements.

Miguel found it to be just a little warmer inside the gates than wandering the streets outside. The scent of barbecue in the air warmed him up a notch more as well. Winslow’s Barbecue held one end of the square, serving meat rubbed with a curry-inspired spice that Miguel had come to like. It was hotter than the usual American fare. Under the awning of the barbecue joint sat a jazz band, playing some tune he did not recognise.

‘Louis Armstrong,’ Maive noted.

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,’ the Mexican admitted. However, as he listened to more of it, he thought it might grow on him.

They walked up a gentle slope towards a line of buildings strung out along the western end of the market. Maive seemed to know where she was going. Miguel followed her lead, taking in the sights. It still struck him as odd after all this time to see so many different types of people in one place, some of whom were darker-skinned than he was. One group was missing, or at least harder to spot.

There were not many Latinos like himself at the River Market. Recent woes with the South American Federation fuelled a latent prejudice against his kind that seemed to infect those yanquis who had survived the Disappearance.