‘Sure. There aren’t many tourists around yet. Do what I do – keep your head down, and don’t draw attention to yourself. Borrow one of Marisol’s hats. Anyone asks, you’re my daughter.’

And we went back to watching The Golden Girls and eating our quesadillas and drinking lemonade squeezed from our own lemons.

‘Haha, Rose is going out with a midget,’ he laughed. ‘Typical Rose.’ He shook his head, like he knew the woman intimately. I laughed too. He liked it when I laughed at the same time as him.

As I went up to bed that night, I caught a glimpse of the painting of Marisol on the stairs. His precious daughter, with her scrappy plait trailing behind her, lying among the golden flowers. The girl whose hat I was permitted to borrow, and who he could barely talk about without blubbing. I wondered what had happened to her. I wondered if he’d called her gatita as well. I wondered if I could grow my hair as long as hers.

The coastal highway at the bottom of the hill stretched far into the blue distance. It was bordered by an endless line of tall palms and sprawling hotel complexes, interspersed with taquerias, ice cream parlours or heladerias, supermarkets, tobacconists, liquor stores, boutiques and souvenir kiosks.

Tenoch gave me an hour to look around and get what I needed to at the pharmacy, and said to meet him back at a little panaderia to pick up some of his favourite – apple pie – for a treat that evening. I found the pharmacy in a side street off the beachfront and the guy sold me a giant bottle of calamine, some brown hair dye and a few boxes of antihistamines. With time to kill so I browsed the other shops – I bought a Spiderman comic for David because I learned he loved comics, a football for Saúl and a yarn pig for Mátilda.

As I was walking out of one store, a swinging A-frame on the sidewalk caught my eye:

Galería de Salomé Casta

Open till late. 10 per cent off ceramics while stocks last

There was an arrow pointing along the seafront towards the Distrito de Arte. I had to go and see if Rafael was there – to see if he was as flawless as I remembered.

I found the gallery along a wide cobbled street, nestled between others selling the same kind of stuff – seascapes, glass-blown sculptures, beach scenes, tapestries and bronzes. The original works by ‘Artistas Locales’ bore the most eye-watering price tags but basically all looked that looked like they’d been done by toddlers.