‘Oh you know ... if I’m to send the men into hiding. Post Winfred as lookout on top of the hill to decipher the probable danger of every approaching dust cloud.’ He drew alongside me and I could see he was smiling.

I nodded my head slowly. ‘Okay.’

‘In that case,’ he led the chestnut on, ‘I think it’s time you finally met your crew.’

There had been around fifteen Mexicans in the schoolroom. Some I recognized from their building-site clothes, others were strangers, obvious newcomers, streaked with dirt and sweat, their clothes dirty and crumpled. All talking stopped and curious eyes flicked to us as Duval showed me into the low-ceilinged shack adjoining the schoolroom. ‘Compañeros,’ he said, ‘this is Alice.’

He went on to introduce each man as though hosting some professional dating party at a smart Phoenix venue. Joaquim, this is Alice, two children, temporarily separated from her husband. Alice, this is Joachim. He lost his brother in a border accident some years ago. One by one they told me their stories. Almond growers, peach pickers, porch sweepers, janitors, each a tiny cog in the wheel on which Wall Street and the price of frozen OJ turns. And what I began to understand that afternoon was that if America is the land of opportunity, a country where perseverance and hard work is rewarded by recognition, then an illegal harbours the opposite ambitions. His greatest reward is anonymity, invisibility. Aided and abetted by market forces and the laws of supply and demand, he hones his skill to stand up but make sure he’s never counted.

The men shook my hand, some smiling, most sombre, shy. Of all of them it was Dolores, the only woman, who found it hardest to face me straight on. She stood at the makeshift stove stirring a frying pan of beef and chillies, a high stack of flour tortillas on a paper plate at her elbow. Duval said her name twice before she reluctantly turned. She raised big oval eyes to mine and blurted out something.

‘What did she say?’

‘She says she thinks she’s a lousy housekeeper.’

‘Oh no, she’s great,’ I lied.

Dolores muttered again, rubbing her fingers fretfully over the tiny red roses embroidered on the pockets of her apron.

‘She says it’s better she doesn’t clean the house any more.’

‘Okay, sure, whatever she wants.’ There were beads of perspiration on Dolores’s upper lip. ‘Está bien’ I said to her and, equally embarrassed, made to move on.

‘¡Espera!’ She laid a timid hand on my arm, then – plucking a tortilla off the pile and cradling it into a half shell – she spooned in meat from the pan. The rich smell of beef had been intoxicating and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day.

‘¿Te gusta?’ she asked and I nodded, mouth ablaze with chilli.

Duval chuckled and leant in to hear what Dolores was saying.