‘Let me see that.’ She snatches the paper and laughs thickly. ‘Girlie, I haven’t cut hair for twenty years. Which is probably the last time they changed that menu.’ She tosses it back across the table. ‘Why, the green chilli burger has been special of the week for the last four.’

‘I’m sure.’ I shrug, feeling stupid. ‘I just saw the ad, then I happened to see the sign for Wildcat Canyon and . . .’

‘Something wrong with your life that you need a haircut?’

‘No, why? Should something be wrong?’

Nora nudges some bread through the grease on her plate. ‘I cut hair for fifteen years an’ I’ll tell ya one thing I learned. Women only cut their hair in times of crisis. Hell, you ever see a woman used to have long hair who gets herself a short back and sides . . . you gotta know she’s in trouble.’

‘Do you really think that’s true?’

‘Sure it’s true.’ She sweeps the dirty plates aside. ‘It’s somethin’ a woman always has the power to do, even when she loses control over everything else. Cuttin’ hair is a cry for help.’ Nora’s eyes thin. ‘What is it? . . . Your man bin ignorin’ ya?’

‘I—’

She waves her hand dismissively. ‘I don’t wanna know.’ She digs into the recess of her backside for the snappy bag of tobacco. ‘Want some?’ She pinches two fingers-full.

I shake my head. ‘At the meeting you said you left out water for immigrants.’

Nora nudges a filament of stray tobacco from her lip back into her mouth then rubs her front teeth. ‘There’s misery everywhere you look,’ she says eventually. ‘People dyin’, children sufferin’. You can shore up your country with trenches and barbed wire and walls and broken glass on roofs but it only ever leads to one thing and that’s more death an’ more misery. People need to eat and their families need to eat an’ if that makes me a bleeding-heart liberal, so shoot me. Yeah, I put out water, I give medical help when I can and the rest of the folks be damned.’ She spits the tobacco onto the plate. ‘You Australian?’

‘English.’

A small estuary of juice runs down the side of Nora’s mouth. She blots it onto the polyester of her shoulder and leans forward across the table. ‘I found one once.’

‘Found what?’

‘A Mexcin, an Indian. From Honduras or Guatemala, hell them brown folk all look the same from down south. He was sitting under a tree – legs all hiked up, elbows restin’ on his knees.’ Nora lifts the cap off her head, punches its cavity before putting it back on again. ‘Jes’ sitting in a natural position, head back against the trunk, like he was takin’ a rest from the sun,’ she laughs mirthlessly,’ ‘cept out here in summer, there ain’t no rest from the sun.’

‘What happened? Did you bring him here?’