Or maybe, I think privately, it’s mutually exclusive to have a great passion for a man and give unconditional love to your children. Maybe every woman secretly wonders whether – if it ever came down to it – she’d be capable of walking away, leaving everything she loves behind, but dismisses the idea because she knows she will never be tested. An enduring passion is rare, like a shark bite or a plane crash – and pretty much just as devastating.

The trout spit in the pan, their skin shrinking and curling, releasing a skein of greasy smoke. Duval flips two of the tortillas on to the metal grille.

‘In the world I live in,’ I watch as the surface of the tortillas blackens and bubbles up, ‘people aren’t often asked to make life or death decisions. There are no causes to die for. You can go through life never knowing which of your friends would really come through for you.’

Duval touches the tip of the knife to my arm. ‘You, however, bled for every man in Temerosa.’

‘That’s different.’ I fiddle self-consciously with my sleeve. ‘That was hardly life or death. If it had been a rattlesnake, believe me, I wouldn’t have stroked it.’

‘If the stakes had been high enough you might have.’ Duval lifts the pan off the fire, then opens two bottles of Dos Equis and hands me one.

I lean back against the rock. ‘Can you remember when it was,’ I ask him curiously, ‘the moment you first decided to run?’

He looks into the fire and for a long moment I think he’s not going to answer.

‘I was sitting in the INS building in Los Angeles,’ he says eventually, ‘and on the other side of the table was this stranger, Benjamín, and he was wearing one of those shirts he likes so much, you know, the ones that are too tight for him? And it was covered in dust and stains from whatever fruit he’d been picking and Benjamín himself was a mess – his hands torn up and ingrained with pesticide but in them he held this letter, my letter, which he’d been carrying around for thirteen years and yet it was in perfect condition . . .’ He shovels some of the cooked fish into a tortilla and squeezes on some lime before handing it to me. ‘He sat there, at rock bottom, no money, about to be deported, and yet there was something about him, God only knows what, that represented freedom to me.’

‘That makes no sense.’ I sprinkle the chillies into my tortilla and take a bite.