‘Benjamín, eh?’ Robert says with forced heartiness. ‘Benjamín seems quite a favourite round here.’

‘Oh, Daddy, I love him most outside anyone in my family. He’s my best friend.’

‘That’s great, Emmy,’ he replies hollowly. ‘I want to talk to this Benjamín.’ He turns back to me. ‘Where is he?’

‘Picking up building materials,’ I lie effortlessly. ‘He’ll be back later.’ Benjamín had taken Dolores to the safety of the schoolroom, to Duval. ‘Tell him my husband’s here, tell him . . .’ I’d faltered under Benjamín’s expression and suddenly pictured him shouting bitter words at his own faithless wife as he stood on the doorstep of her lover’s house.

‘I’m sorry, Benjamín,’ I said quietly. ‘You must think I’m a terrible person.’

‘Noh, Alice, noh. I will take Dolores.’ He took my hand and briefly held it to his ruined jaw as though it were a comforting ice pack. ‘Be careful, Alice,’ he’d said.

‘I don’t like the idea of him alone with the children,’ Robert says and there’s a throb of aggression in his voice. ‘I don’t trust him, I never have, right from the word go. Hogan says—’

‘I’m sorry, but I have no interest in anything Hogan says.’

‘Well he’s been my only means of finding out what’s going on here,’ Robert says robustly. ‘In fact I get to speak to him more than I get to speak to my wife these days.

‘Hogan’s a dentist from Houston. He has no clue what’s going on anywhere.’

‘He says Temerosa is being used as a smuggling route, that somebody local is helping bring Mexicans, drugs and God only knows what else across. He says unless we act now it’s going to wreck the value of the property.’

‘Well, he’s wrong.’

‘He doesn’t seem to trust this builder of yours, Duval, or whatever his name is. Says he’s dishonest, says he’s been ripping you off—’

‘Robert . . . enough, please!’

‘Alice, don’t you understand? I’ve been worried sick! You and the children here on your own. That’s not unreasonable, is it? Surely that’s not unreasonable. Anyone would be worried. It would have been thoroughly irresponsible not to have come.’ He looks at me beseechingly now. ‘I didn’t warn you, because I knew you’d just put me off. I’m sorry.’ He stretches out a tentative hand.

I take a deep breath. Of course it’s not unreasonable. Not only is everything he says perfectly reasonable, it’s also true. But it changes nothing. I take his hand in mine. His palm is soft, clammy. I close my eyes, try to find some thread of decency to hang on to, but it’s no good. It’s Duval’s hand I’m holding. Duval’s rough, dry fingers intertwined with mine.