‘Actually, I love death.’ She stuffs the end of her braid in her mouth and sucks on it thoughtfully.

‘Emmy!’

‘I’m so evil.’ She sighs, and after a further minute of reflection adds, ‘You know I don’t really care if Jack dies because I don’t really like him but if you died, Mummy, I would keep all your jewellery in a bottle so I wouldn’t forget you.’

‘How were people invented?’ Emmy asks later when I put the children to bed.

‘Big Bang,’ Jack says, spitting toothpaste into the sink. ‘Some people believe in the Big Bang and some people believe in those naked people.’

‘Adam and Eve?’ I offer helpfully.

‘Adam and Eve,’ Jack repeats. ‘They had children, then the children had children and the whole world got born.’

‘Who invented the naked ones?’ Emmy asks.

‘God.’

‘So who did the Big Bang invent?’

‘Apes.’

‘Apes,’ Emmy shrieks. ‘That’s so funny! What’s the point of inventing apes?’

Night lightens to morning, morning stretches to noon. Shadows lengthen and afternoons linger on as the sun works harder and burns longer. The pain in my leg collects in a solid block between knee and ankle and, for a couple of days, keeping it horizontal seems the best option so I pass the days sitting at the kitchen table, ears like tuning forks, waiting for the vibration of an engine, or languishing on top of my bed, eyes straying from my Plumbing Manual, Volume 11 to check for the headlights of a truck swinging through the turn. I wait for Duval, because I know that he will come and I want him to come because . . . well because he damn well owes me an explanation. While the children are around, I hide this strangely mercurial mood of anger/anticipation but once Benjamín has got them off to school, I find myself unable to focus on anything much and eventually give in to a sort of helpless daydreaming, which though very pleasant is not the slightest bit constructive. Still, all the anxiety and suspicions of the last few weeks have gone and whatever Duval’s so-called reasons turn out to be, it’s as though someone has lifted a great rock off my chest. Instead, I feel more like the child who has set fire to the bathmat out of nothing more than curiosity and my only real fear is how strongly and out of control it will burn.

20

The morning kicks off a deep cobalt blue. A clear sun shines down on a landscape of wild flowers. I sit on the ground, back against the cabin wall, and look out over the hills. It seems almost impossible that everything before me, Mexican gold poppies, purple scorpion weed, the tangled lupine and desert marigolds, germinated on their minuscule ration of water from last fall’s rainy season, have now sprung up as potent and lovely as any rain-drenched English rose.