That’s why I checked the forums and threads and articles about me – I wanted the hate and the love. To make myself angry but to feel what it was like to be adored as well. The two sides of me, co-existing, fighting all the time like sisters. I was perpetuating a cycle, never breaking out of it.

Paco did his best to goad me, that day of all days. He knew I was jittery and he was my jitter bug, feeding off my low-level panic like a tick.

‘Hey, Rhiannon,’ he’d shout from the living room with the laptop balanced on his knees. ‘You have a thing for fucking dead gringos. That true?’

‘One dead Australian,’ I called back, kneading my bread dough.

‘Hey, Rhiannon, is it true you have a lampshade made of human skin?’

‘Fake news.’

‘Hey, Rhiannon, is it true you don’t like the taste of tattooed flesh?’

‘Nah, bit stringy.’

‘Hey, Rhiannon, where did you hide all their dicks, eh?’

‘I ONLY CUT OFF ONE DICK, ALL RIGHT? AND I DIDN’T EAT IT OR MOUNT IT OR USE IT TO PLAY PIN THE TAIL ON THE FUCKING DONKEY!’

‘Paco, basta!’ Tenoch, give him his due, knew exactly when Paco had brought me to boiling point and had the ability to call him off with one word, almost like a whistle to a well-trained Rottweiler.

Paco wasn’t alone that day – there were three other uninvited guests at the Hacienda – Ming, Arturo and Stuzzy. I recognised Arturo as my driver from the airport – sent by Tenoch to ensure nobody else brought me to his secret lair. He was the least irksome of the four – bald, loud and the only one who habitually read a newspaper. He was also a boxer – I could tell by the knuckles and the ears.

Ming was shorter than Arturo with a shock of sticky-up black hair, like a hedgehog, and body odour that smelled like something between gravy and the grave. Stuzzy had shiny, floppy hair, a thick moustache and burn marks over the back of his neck. On his face sat a permanent scowl and I rarely heard him speak.

They were hanging around snorting coke and playing Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto even when I went outside to transfer some new seedlings. There was no place inside where I could escape from their drinking games and loud conversations, deafening music, impromptu stripteases for my benefit or lines of cocaine on the coffee table.

‘Why are they even here?’ I snipped at Tenoch when he came out to the pool terrace where I was pinching out some new seedlings.

‘They are pulling an all-nighter for me later. They’re just kicking back before they go. Boys will be boys.’