‘I think women sign on for some ideal when they get married, and when they realize they haven’t got anything close to what they want, they bury their disappointment. Discontented women are like pressure cookers. The steam rises and one day they just reach boiling point.’

‘Have you ever been married?’

‘Yes.’ He uses the word deliberately. As full stop, and obediently I change the subject.

‘So how did it begin . . . the schoolroom, the workers? How do people find you?’

‘I keep a radio on, I get tip-offs from the Border Patrol.’

‘From Winfred?’

He nods. ‘In the beginning I just wanted to understand. Estella, all the others, how it could have happened, why it still happens so often. I began to stumble across people and I realized they had no idea what they’d let themselves in for. Men who’d never before left their home town. Women crossing in high-heeled shoes. Children. Not enough water for even half the journey they were undertaking.’ He shrugs. ‘I took to keeping supplies in the schoolhouse and after a while Temerosa became an open secret, a place people could head for if they got into trouble.’ He collects his cigarettes off the table. ‘The problem was I started to see the same faces, over and over again. So many of them got caught and sent back. The greener they were, the more they stood out. Out of frustration more than anything, I taught them a few words of English. I got rid of their Mexican clothes and dressed them in more invisible American ones. I gave them a background, a home town in the US, a sports team they could root for. They earned a little money working on the town and sometimes that was all it took for them to stay under the radar.’

‘So, a one-man rescue team—’

‘One man? No.’ He shakes his head. ‘For every law-abiding American citizen who believes the most constructive use of their firearms is to shoot a Hispanic, there are others who know they can’t get by without their Mexican workers. There are ranchers who cook up pig roasts to welcome them back and help them fill out applications for US citizenship. There are people dotted all along the border who build water towers and worry themselves sick about doing the right thing.’

‘Nora?’

‘Nora, yes.’ He hesitates.

‘What?’

‘Border politics comes in murky shades of grey. The good, the bad and the ugly can all end up on the same side at different times. Nora’s well meaning, but she’s a wild card. There’s something not quite right.’ He shakes his head again. ‘I tend give her a wide berth.’

‘Not the most fortunate choice of words.’

He chuckles. ‘They say she used to be a great beauty.’

I picture the mottled flesh of Nora’s backside spilling over her trousers, the tobacco-streaked teeth.