I grip the handle, blinded by splashing water. My head feels swollen fit to explode. Inexplicably, I get the giggles. ‘Pull me up,’ I shout. I can see the fish in the net now, three of them, flip-flopping over each other in oxygen-deprived desperation.

‘Pull, for God’s sake.’ I’m laughing so hard that choking threatens.

Duval gives a bark of laughter too, as hand over hand he hauls me up. My elbows graze against the stone of the bridge but finally the inside of my knee connects with the ledge and I wrap my legs around it. Duval shifts one hand to my waist and with the other grabs my arm and yanks me over the edge. I collapse onto the ground at his feet, soaked, hysterical with laughter and clutching, for dear life, the net with its wriggling contents.

Duval rests his boot against a rock and scrapes at the flesh of the trout with his knife.

I sit close to him on the sandy ground and feed the fire. A ball of brush catches alight and shoots sparks into the sky like fireflies on a mission to space. We’re far from Hogan’s ranch now, high up in the mountains, camped out on a wide flat ridge overlooking the desert below. The panorama from up here is so enormous that each slice of the sky has its own competing weather. To the east, grey clouds close over a remaining patch of blue, to the west a solitary needle of lightning flickers. Above us, the first stars wink anaemically.

‘My father used to take me sea fishing.’ I position the metal grille over the flame. ‘It’s just like netting, you know, requires no skill at all. When you go sea-fishing you catch monsters, quickly, any number of them.’

Duval looks up and smiles. He lays the gutted trout on the rock and takes a second from the net. ‘There’s a pack of Dolores’s tortillas in there if you want to get them out.’

I reach into the canvas bag. The tortillas are freshly made and wrapped in cloth. There are two limes and a bag of finely chopped chillies to go with them. ‘We went with Roddy, the local fisherman. He had a rowing boat with a tiny outboard motor and I was always terrified it was going to run out of juice and leave us stranded in the middle of the ocean.’