‘Look, Daddy!’ The children point out landmarks as the butterscotch truck winds its familiar way along the mountain road. The mess of fallen rock. A deadly looking bayonet plant. The small khaki-coloured shrubs on the roadside, their leaves made brittle by the sun. ‘Nearly there, nearly there,’ Emmy crows with excitement as the cattle grids rumble beneath us.

‘What if he’s right, Alice?’ Robert asks.

I ease my hand free. ‘Why don’t you just wait and see for yourself? And for a glimmer of a moment, I try to imagine a way for this all to work out: Robert will come, Robert will be reassured, Robert will quickly have his fill of the children and return home. There will be other nights to follow and other fires to build.

Outside the cabin three Border Patrol trucks are parked in front of the deck.

‘What the—?’ Robert squints through the cloudy windscreen. ‘Who’s this?’

‘It’s Winfred!’ Emmy shouts.

‘Who’s Winfred? Who are all these people?’ Robert strains against his seatbelt and I begin to feel sick. None of these cars belongs to Winfred. I slow the truck down. Dolores, I think irrationally. They’ve come for Dolores.

‘Who are they? Why are they here?’ Robert knuckles his eyes as though the strangers might disappear with a blink.

‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know. I cut the engine and help the children out of the car. If the Border Patrol had found out about Dolores, they surely wouldn’t have sent three cars with a posse of six, no . . . seven armed border guards. I count them, two on the deck, three tramping along the path from the boarding house and two more approaching us from the side of the cabin, and it’s only now that I picture the guard lying prostrate on the cobblestones of a Nogales street and suddenly remember the weight of his gun in my hand.

‘Mrs Coleman?’ The nearest man approaches.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll handle this.’ Robert steps in front of me and holds out his hand. ‘I’m Robert Coleman,’ he says, ‘owner of this place.’

Inside the cabin they ask questions. Do I know where he is? Do I know where he lives? ‘He’s been supervising building operations on the town for over four months but you don’t know where he lives?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a number for him?’

‘No.’

‘How do I get in touch with him then?’

I tell them I’ve never really needed to, that he shows up when he says he will, that he’s very reliable.

‘Then why isn’t he in the town now? And why isn’t there any work going on in the town?’

‘Because there’s a break in the schedule,’ I say charily. ‘Look, what’s going on?’

‘Did you see him yesterday, ma’am?’

I try to think straight. Had anyone seen us together apart from Reuben? Esteban?