I buried the dead men in the back field, like I’d done before, taking my radio out for company, and doing little else but dig and ache for the full three days. Except this time, the hole took less time and was almost big enough at the end of the second day. Maybe I was stronger or maybe it was the old school Madonna marathon one radio station was playing that put fire into my arms one afternoon, I don’t know, but it was a lot less arduous than before. It was even kind of enjoyable.

I’d almost reached the bottom of my trough when my shovel clanked against something hard – another stone, I figured at first, scraping around it to reveal and dislodge it. But the more I scraped, the bigger the stone got.

Turned out – not a stone, but a skull.

Fuck knows how many people were buried in that field. But here’s a weird thing – the sight made me puke. Made me scramble out of the hole and leap over the side and barf right up. Like, for once, the sight of death was abhorrent to me. It was a normal person’s reaction.

And I got to think that perhaps there was such a thing as a normal existence for me. That the Hacienda wasn’t where I belonged at all.

Early on the morning of the third day, I was awoken by the sound of a key in the front door. It was Ming, closely followed by Stuzzy and Arturo, and all of them were carrying in a piece of medical equipment – a trolley stuffed with new packets of syringes, bundles of clean bandages, IV bags and a defibrillator and a cool box labelled ‘SANGRE HUMANA’ and plastered in a load of warning labels – taking it all upstairs to Tenoch’s bedroom

‘What’s going on?’ I said as they all walked past me. ‘Where’s Tenoch?’

‘I’m here, gatita,’ said a voice at the door. And there he was, uneasy on his feet and leaning heavily on Paco who was helping him from the back seat of the BMW, looking much paler. ‘I’m here. I’m home.’ He reached out and cupped my face as I went to greet him.

‘What’s going on? How come they let you out?’

‘I wanted to come home,’ he panted, obviously in some pain.

‘This is his house, remember?’ said Paco, with his doggiest glare, practically carrying Tenoch straight past me.

The last man in was one I instantly recognised – my surgeon, Dr Gonzales from the medical centre.

‘Rhiannon, it’s so nice to see you again!’ he beamed, shaking my hand with both of his. ‘I only wish it could have been in better circumstances.’

‘What’s happening? He doesn’t look well enough to be home so soon.’ Paco helped Tenoch up each individual stair in turn.