Obviously, I take the fifth.

‘Mummy’s having a romantic dinner, Mummy’s having a romantic dinner,’ Emmy chants.

I sigh. When did my children get so savvy or do all kids, from birth, have some extra-sensory perception that informs them of an approaching opportunity for blackmail? I look at them suspiciously. They’re both wearing that familiar expression, the one that invariably precedes public parental humiliation and is usually adopted on aeroplanes or in the confectionery aisle of the local supermarket checkout. They smile back sweetly. They fully recognize the signs of distraction and know full well how to exploit them.

‘Can we stay up, Mummy, can we? Jack, ask Mummy . . .’

They go on, cawing away at me, but I cannot keep my mind from wandering back to those white crosses in the sand, back to Duval and his story, back twenty years to the desert one hot and terrible June . . .

Benjamín had left the body of the girl where it lay. He’d taken the strip of cloth El Turrón had torn from the hem of her dress, then in one swift, agonizing movement, lifted the loose shelf of his jaw back into place and tied it with the cloth, knotting the ends on top of his head. Looking like an old-fashioned ad for a man with a toothache, he headed north, or his nearest approximation of it, the stabbing pain in his relocated jawbone keeping him conscious, keeping one foot in front of the other, keeping him alive. Eventually, when he could walk no further, he leant against a rock and closed his eyes. He slept fitfully through the night and part of the morning until the buzz of the helicopter entered his brain like a wasp, and when he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was a pair of black shiny boots. The cop shouted something then knelt down in front of him and put a bottle of water to his cracked lips. Two hours later he was back on the other side of the line. And that had been only the beginning . . .

Years passed and Benjamín crossed the border in every way imaginable. Under the wire, over the fence, along the tunnel, through the river – just another peripatetic soul, drifting like a phantom in the dust of the desert, not dead, but yet not alive either, belonging neither to this country nor to any other – simply going round and round, back and forth through the revolving doors from Mexico to the US. It was a life of relentless low-intensity conflict with the authorities, a deadly serious game characterized by childish names: Touch Tag, Hide and Seek, Snakes and Ladders, Cat and Mouse.