Nogales, Mexico. Where am I? Where to go? The road takes me alongside a monstrous green wall – the border actual, I guess, made of corrugated iron, rusted and patched in innumerable places and crowned with two foot of wire netting angled inwards and held in place by metal rods, making it impossible to clamber over. One poster depicting white crosses and unmarked graves reads ‘Don’t go down a road when you can’t come back’. Another with a skull and crossbones instructs ‘Beware the “Polleros”. ¡No les pagues con tu vida!’ written in Hammer Horror lettering with blood dripping from it.

There is nightlife in Nogales, Mexico. Men hang in doorways and step out of shadows. An emaciated drunk leans against a telegraph pole, drinking some home-made brew through a straw stuck into a polythene bag. A car stands stationary, its front door open. The toe of a white ostrich-skin boot taps on the dirt of the road. When I slow down to ask for directions a man looms out of the darkness and, startled, I accelerate again, down to the end of the street, turn right onto a main strip of restaurants and shops and there, barely half a block away, is the comforting white and green neon cross of a pharmacy.

The girl behind the counter is young and heavily made up. Underneath her white coat everything shines and flashes, the tiny sequins and pearls on her boob tube, the gold rings on her fingers. Even her crenellated black hair is covered in a glossy lacquer.

‘Hola.’ She smiles.

‘Necesito un médico.’ I hold out Emmy in my arms like a religious offering. ‘Ella está enferma, una fiebre, muy alta, a fever.’

The girl’s eyes flick to the little television on which Tom and Jerry, dubbed in Spanish, are walloping each other with mallets.

‘I need a doctor, un médico. Do you speak English?’

Her eyes focus on Emmy.

‘Papa! she calls.

An older man, also in a pharmacist’s coat, materializes from the back.

‘Necesito un médico.’ I pull a bundle of American bills from my pocket. ‘Emergencia.’ I’m close to tears. The man listens to my strangulated Spanish then calmly picks up the phone.

‘I will call someone.’

‘You speak English!’

‘Of course,’ he says. He puts his hand on her forehead. ‘She’s hot.’

I tell him she had some kind of fit, but that I don’t know what is wrong with her. Emmy is awake now and crying in a pitifully hoarse voice.

‘Emmy,’ I beg, ‘what is it, where does it hurt?’ I check her chest yet again. ‘Do you think it’s meningitis?’

‘¿La meningitis?’ The pharmacist makes a clucking noise against his teeth with his tongue. ‘Noh, I don’t think so.’

‘What then?’