Outside, colours were so much brighter. The air was easier to breathe and the sun was beginning to dip in the sky, a violent orange glow that bathed everything beneath it in gold. I walked towards my flower beds. I’d almost reached the salvia when my legs went from under me and I thumped down to the grass. There was no way I was ever getting back up. I was dead weight.

Celestina knelt beside me. ‘You are a mother too? I can tell.’ She tilted the glass of water to my mouth. The intoxicating scent of the cempasuchil swirled around my head like a choir. ‘We are given a super strength when we become mothers. A strength we don’t even know we have until we need it.’

Mátilda brought me out a blanket and covered me with it – it was a hot day but I was cold, close to shivering. My eyes opened, momentarily, and I saw their faces. The two children, leaning down, crying. Asking if I was OK.

‘David?’ I said. ‘Is David all right?’

‘Mama is putting a bandage on his head,’ said Saúl.

‘Is he awake?’

‘Yeah, he’s awake now,’ said Mátilda.

The adrenaline had begun to leave me, along with a fair amount of blood. I kept counting them – one, two, three, one, two, three, and their mother. All alive. Definitely all still alive.

‘It’s OK. It’s all OK now,’ I whispered.

I tried hard to stay awake, forcing my eyes open to see the vast blue sky, mosquitoes dancing across it. Children’s faces. Snatches of conversation – Spanish and English. Voices. Children. Men. A woman. Three men.

Someone saying my name, my new name. Again and again and again.

Fuck, they cut off her hand? Jesus Christ—

Policía. Did you call them? Call them…

Where is it? Don’t lose that bag.

It’s here. Are we gonna make it?

We will if I drive.

I felt the ground leave me – I was being moved. In my mind I thought this was death. This was what happened – you were scooped up by an angel or something. Your brain activity still registers stuff – voices, last confessions, the life support machine being turned off. You have a vague sense of what’s happening but you’re down the tunnel and you can’t turn back. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t open my mouth to speak. I heard Nico’s voice, Raf’s brother.

‘Hospital, vamos. Yo manejare.’

‘Stay with me, baby. Please stay with me. I can’t lose her!’

That was the voice I’d needed to hear. We were moving – in a car. My head in Raf’s lap. I still couldn’t open my eyes. But I found my voice.

‘Is it still there?’

‘What did you say, honey?’ said Raf, stroking my head. ‘She’s awake!’

‘Is it still attached?’

‘Is what attached, baby?’

‘My head,’ I said.