I tried to explain, but what to say? Please, Emmy, try to understand. Your mother is harbouring an undocumented worker in the cabin and a dozen or so more down the road – oh, and also, pretty much on a daily basis, she’s aiding and abetting a habitual felon so, you know, your cooperation in this matter would really be greatly appreciated. Sure, I could claim that Duval, his comings and goings, his sympathies and morality had nothing to do with me. Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. But my blind eye was all-seeing, and, poor little thing, how could she help but give the game away? Emmy, who’s passionate about all things Mexican. Emmy, who has taken to printing off little white ticker tapes of Spanish translations and sticking them onto random household items . . . lamps, blinds, tables, even the orange slab of Monterey Jack cheese in the fridge, so she, too, can learn the language. Emmy, who on some days follows Benjamín around so closely you’d think she’d grown out of one of his legs.

She’d cried for a full hour about the dress. I gave it to her straight. ‘We don’t want anyone asking us questions about where it came from. We’re not allowed to talk about Dolores. Dolores is not really allowed to cook for us. She’s not really allowed to be in America. If she got caught, it would be really bad. She’d get into trouble. She’d have to go back home!’

‘That’s not bad!’ Emmy howled. ‘Why is that bad? I want to go back home too. I want to go home all the time. ALL THE TIME, do you hear?’

‘Do you, Emmy?’ I looked searchingly into her face. ‘Do you?’

‘No, not really.’ She scratched a spot on her arm distractedly. ‘Not all the time, just when I’m tired. And when Jack hurts me.’

‘So don’t tell anyone about Dolores, okay? Promise me?’ I knelt down and held her shoulders. ‘And I know you can keep a secret because . . . well because . . .’ I wondered what to say which would adequately impress upon her the gravity of the situation, and then it came to me, ‘because you kept the secret about Granny, didn’t you?’

It couldn’t have been a more direct hit.

‘Mummy,’ she whispered awfully, ‘I said I was sorry.’ Then she looked up at me with an expression of such remorse that my heart contracted with guilt. Making Emmy cry, making Emmy lie. ‘I won’t tell anyone about Dolores.’ She drew a zipper over her lips with one grimy finger. ‘Jinx personal padlock, I swear.’