Claudia was married. Ivy was five months old and she had a family. A mum and a dad. There was no mention of her anywhere else and still no pictures online but this news gave me an uneasy realisation: a sense that my daughter really did belong to other people now. She had a daddy now too. I hoped he loved her like the one I took away from her. I couldn’t dwell on it for long – the gnawing in my chest grew the more I thought about it.

I closed the laptop and went outside. Right about now, having hit such a peak of frustration, I’d have gone out and catfished some pervert or stabbed Tenoch’s punch bag or something. But, for once, rage wasn’t the feeling that crackled through me. I was just sad.

I went to my plants. I sat on the edge of a raised bed, between two poinsettias, resting my face on the cool petals.

‘Calm minds make better decisions,’ I said, getting myself into a cross-legged position. ‘Focus on the breaths… focus on what matters. Deep in… deep out. Focus on what matters. I am here. I am breathing. I am loved… deep in… deep out… she’s safe now. She’s safe.’

Monday, 3 June (early) – Hacienda Santuaria

1. People who use the phrase ‘a hundred years young’
2. People who bang on about hot box yoga
3. People who don’t let you know when you have something in your teeth
4. Paco
5. Paco
6. Paco

I lay there, in between sleeping and waking, searching for an explanation for the noise. Sometimes a caracara would be chirping in a cactus somewhere and that would wake me up. Or a brush rabbit would trip the security lights. Other times, like that night, a noise couldn’t be explained. Hearing voices, I crept downstairs. In the living room was your average midnight vision – my 60-something Mexican renegade roommate Tenoch, wearing a Kevlar vest and brandishing an assault rifle.

‘Get back upstairs,’ he whispered. ‘Lock yourself in the bathroom. I will whistle when it’s safe.’

‘What is it?’ I whispered back, pulling my dressing gown tight.

‘Uninvited company.’

‘Who?’

His phone app security system had nudged him in the early hours to let him know someone had been captured on video climbing over the front gates. ‘Paco said we would get a warning this week. He couldn’t be sure when.’

‘The cartel? They’re here?’

He didn’t answer. ‘Take the Glock from my desk and get back upstairs, go now!’

‘How many of them?’

‘Enough. Now go!’

I caught a movement on the pool terrace and hunkered down. A figure had crept out of the bushes and hid behind the stone temazcal. I caught the flash of a white skull bandana in the glint of the security light and I saw he had a gun as well, and not a little one either – an AR-15, like Tenoch.