‘Yes.’ Emmy starts crying. ‘I just wanted to know if there’s a shop. That’s not unreasonable, is it? Surely that’s not unreasonable?’ I turn my head away to hide a smile. What is unreasonable is how endearing it is in a five-year-old, when it’s so annoying in Robert.

‘Look, it’s a ghost town,’ Jack says wearily. ‘There are no shops in ghost towns.’

‘Why?’

‘Ghosts don’t have any pocket money.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they don’t have chores.’

‘But I’m hungry. I want breakfast.’

‘I know, me too,’ I pacify her.

‘I’m sorry. We’ll get some breakfast soon.’

I smooth-talk the children on. Temerosa consists of seven cabins apart from ours, each separated by windy stretches of path covered in twisted desiccated leaves which crackle noisily under our feet. The cabins are different sizes, but all variations on a common vernacular of porch, deck and gabled windows. The first two we explore have stone foundations and outside walls covered in reddish cedar-wood shingles, most of which have warped and flipped up at the bottom revealing longer horizontal wooden planks beneath. Although at some point there appears to have been a cursory attempt at decoration, no one paint colour has been used to finish any one cabin. Some walls are whitewashed, some raw wood, others have remnants of a faded turquoise around the door frames. To the back of the second cabin, we climb down a dry wash and short-cut our way to the third. An enormous cottonwood tree is growing at the bottom of the wash, its branches drooping tiredly towards the ground like an overworked giant. I touch my hand to the trunk, which is carved with graffiti: initials, nicknames; ‘Li’l Foozy’ and ‘Pearl’ linked forever by arrows piercing a roughly scratched wooden heart.

‘Mummy, I’m so hungry,’ Emmy says again.

‘I don’t understand why we can’t have breakfast now,’ Jack says. ‘Why do we have to wait till later?’

‘Because we don’t have any food right now.’

‘But without food we’ll starve,’ Emmy whimpers.

‘Eat Jack then,’ I suggest and she giggles. Jack is less easily diverted. He has smelt blood and prepares to close in for the kill.

‘And why,’ he eyes me meditatively, ‘do we not have any food?’

‘Because I forgot to buy any.’

‘So how are we going to have breakfast, for God’s sake?’

‘Don’t say “for God’s sake”,’ I say automatically. ‘In a bit, we’ll borrow a truck and go to town.’

‘Why can’t we borrow the truck now?’

I take a deep breath. Currently, I am the fly whose wings Jack likes to pull off.

‘Cos it’s a little early and I don’t want to wake up the man who drove us here.’

‘But I’m hungry now,’ says Emmy.