Temerosa is a ghost town, one of hundreds of abandoned mining communities which sprang up out of the silver rush of the nineteenth century and consequently died in the glut of the twentieth. The town is built into the cleft of a hill on a small rocky plateau from where the landscape extends back as far as the eye can see, which is, in fact, forever. To the south lies Mexico. To the north are the flat plains and hazy peaks of the Patagonia Mountains beyond which lies the great American West, a strange and wild country representing an escape and freedom so great that, for a long moment, I find it hard to breathe.

‘Where are we going?’ Jack asks.

‘To see the town.’

‘I’m cold.’ This from Emmy.

‘Come on, don’t be silly, it’s not that bad.’ But she’s right; despite the sun, it is cold and the air is dry. I can feel it greedily siphoning the moisture out of my skin, pore by pore. I touch a finger to my lips, already chapped and rough.

‘I want to go home,’ Emmy says.

‘Let’s walk quickly then.’ I take her hand.

She snatches it back. ‘No, home, London.’

‘Why do we have to see the town?’ Jack says, trudging two steps behind us.

‘Because it’s so pretty here! It’s so different! We’re going to have such fun!’

‘How?’ This last one from Jack, of course.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question. How are we going to have fun? Right this second, with the children grouchy, listless and hungry, with no food in the fridge, no truck to get us to a shop, I haven’t the faintest idea. How are we going to have fun in the long term? How will this adventure pan out? What will it be like to be alone with Jack and Emmy for the foreseeable future? I don’t know either, but the hanging of curtains aside, I’ve been making plans. They may not be practical enough to ensure eggs in fridges but they’re plans all the same: we’re going to read a hundred books and complete 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, we will jog up mountains, learn to speak Spanish and make chipotle sauce. We are going to buy a pickup truck and head off west of the sun and east of the moon – stop in one-horse towns with names like Rattlesnake and Fort Defiance. But before we do any of these things, we will search out the most shamelessly greasy bacon ‘n’ cheese burger in the whole of America and kiss the bow-legged short-order cook who has grilled it.

‘Will there be a shop?’ Emmy asks.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Jack snaps.

‘Mummy said it was a town.’ Emmy’s mouth turns down; close to tears, she’s clutching the top of her arm.

‘Jack! Did you pinch her?’

‘Certainly did not!’ Jack says furiously.

‘Did Jack pinch you, Emmy?’