The kitchen, too, is chilly in the stillness of the morning. I pull on jeans and a jumper while the water gathers bubbles in the saucepan. Tiny mouse turds cling to my feet. I brush them off and hurriedly add shoes. There is nothing so useful as a dustpan and brush in the kitchen, but I find two more saucepans, one with a stunted handle, a scratched frying pan, still with a layer of congealed grease from God only knows what, and a few loose pieces of mismatched cutlery the size of gardening tools. Except for the pack of coffee, the fridge is empty and I curse myself for forgetting to ask the Mexican to buy supplies, then reverse this and curse the Mexican instead, adding lack of breakfast-buying initiative to the man’s growing list of crimes, which so far includes indefensible ill temper, poor house-cleaning and, of course, lousy pest control. There’s nothing to feed the children except some fruit bars still in the zip pockets of their aeroplane backpacks which have already been passed over in disgust. So much of my energy in the past few months has been concentrated on pressing the pause button on our lives, that I’d given precious little thought as to what lay ahead, feeling in some superstitious way that to do so might jinx our exit route.

Outside the air is clear and still. I sit cross-legged on the wooden boards of the deck, feeling steam from the coffee condensating against my face. After a while tiny sounds become discernible – the rustle of a leaf, a bird cry, a noise, amplified by silence, of a door banging against its frame. It’s the near light of dawn and all around the whispers of night time are fading as creatures disappear down warrens, drop bottom first into holes, crawl backwards into fissures in the ground. My head starts whirring with all the things I need to do, and I begin making a list – a lifelong solution for keeping panic at bay. For starters, the cabin needs a lot of work if we’re to survive living in it for a whole year. A repaint, a better kitchen, curtains at the very least – abruptly, I put down the pen. A weak orange sun is creeping over the furthest peaks of the mountains to the east. It lights up every successive range, finally sweeping across the immediate landscape, glinting sharply as it touches on the tin roofs of the other cabins, just visible a few hundred yards down the hill.