I get angry then and we fight for a while. Emmy holds strong but eventually throws herself back against the pillows weeping piteously.

‘It’s okay,’ I say, prising her face off the damp sheets, ‘it’s just that you can’t always lose your temper like that. What will people think of you if they see you losing your temper all the time?’

‘They’ll think I’m a bad person.’

‘Not a bad person, no, but they’ll think you’re spoilt and not very nice.’

Her face crumples. Two enormous liquid pear drops roll down her cheeks in faultless synchronicity and I wonder why children’s tears always seem so big and round and single until it strikes me that adults, adept at hiding their misery, cry with their hands over their faces.

‘You don’t see grown-ups screeching and hitting people and beating their fists against the pillow, do you?’ I wonder why on earth I’m bothering with this but it just seems better to go through the motions of normality.

‘But grown-ups are all nearly forty and I’m only five . . . just turned five,’ she whispers.

‘Well that’s old enough to learn to control your temper.’

‘I’m trying to, Mummy, but I’ve only just started and I’m not very good at it yet.’ She lays her head on my shoulder, her face red and raw. ‘I’ll get the hang of it soon. I will. I promise.’

‘Is your face stinging, Emmy?’ I ask. She nods and I fetch a damp flannel and hold it to her eyes. ‘Better now?’ She smiles and settles back against the pillows and I stay with her, holding her hand till she falls asleep.

The night drags on. Restlessly, I pace the room, do my teeth, move objects from one place to the other. I lie on the bed and listen to the ticking of the watch on my wrist, but every few seconds I find myself looking up and out of the big window as though the black screen of glass might spontaneously fizzle and splutter into a picture of what’s happening out there. My stomach dips and steadies as I veer from one extreme to another. Duval and Benjamín will be caught. Duval and Benjamín will slip through the desert like phantoms. Hogan and his vigilantes will never find the cabin. Hogan’s men have night goggles, radios, torches. And there are so many of them – well . . . only twelve. Twelve people spread out over a huge expanse of land. Their net would be thin at best and surely full of holes big enough for two men and one woman to slip through. I look at my watch for the hundredth time.

‘Mummy,’ Emmy calls drowsily. ‘I want to sleep in my own room.’

I scoop her up and put her in her own bed.