‘No, but you have a new birthday. How does it feel to be a year older?’

‘It’s different this year. I don’t think I feel like her yet – the new name – but I definitely don’t feel entirely like my old name either. I guess I’m… somewhere in between the two.’

Paco turned up about eleven, on his own this time, and tried his best to keep needling me about stuff – about the doppelgangers showing up on my sister’s doorstep, harassing her in the street and outside her son’s school, about Ivy again and he even showed me a news article where some obsessed fan had sent a detailed letter to the Bristol Evening Post claiming to have killed the guy found in the sand dunes in Mallorca.

She had signed it ‘Sweetpea’.

But the information in the letter was in the public domain and, therefore, could not be verified.

‘You should write your own letter, Sweetpea,’ Paco grinned, following me as I walked my bike down Spiky Plant Alley. ‘Tell the world in detail how you killed that guy. Give them details only the killer would know.’

‘Why would I do that?’ I said. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

‘I would be,’ he smirked.

‘I’m not you. We are not the same. I can stop this at any time.’

‘It doesn’t matter how many times a snake sheds its skin, chica. It always gonna be a snake.’

I stared into his eyes – he was a clear foot taller than me but I held my ground. ‘Is that so?’ I said, swinging my leg over the saddle as the gates opened for me. ‘Well, have a nice day.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I know you want to kill me for beating the shit out of that kid, don’t you? You don’t like it when I hurt kids, do you?’

One foot on the pedal, one on the ground, I stared out at the bright Mexico morning, inhaling the breeze. I looked back at Paco and I could see it there in his face – how much he wanted me to leap off that bike, run back to the gates and barrel into him. To beat him, to swear, to strike, to stab.

How many times had Celestina wanted to do that? I wondered. But she hadn’t. She was still biding her time. Serving it ice cold. And I would too.

I was pedalling into the distance when I heard him scream after me. ‘I don’t know what he sees in you, fat skanky English puta! You’ll fucking get yours!’

Sunday, 5 May – Hacienda Santuario