‘Hey, go through the town if you want,’ Benjamín says and I hear the studied shrug in his voice. ‘But we will have to walk maybe two hours. Go from the Mexican side and we can drive. Yo no quiero desangrarme hasta la muerta porque la gringa se pierda.’ He speaks slowly enough for me to understand. I don’t want to bleed to death because the woman gets lost.

El Turrón looks from Benjamín to me and sneers, ‘So it’s like that, is it?’ He grazes the gun against my cheek-bone and sniggers when I flinch. ‘Hey, girl, don’t expect your house pet Mexican here to take a bullet for you!’ He waves his gun towards the checkpoint, ‘Go .. . go then,’ and winding down his window he holds out his badge as we drive through.

On the Nogales main strip, it’s business as usual. A hard orange sun is already roasting the bare arms of tourists, the air is rich with the smell of frying meat, of jasmine and hot tar. I’m overcome with a sense of unreality. It’s barely four hours since the children left. They could be in the sky, or waiting to board the plane, perched on the plastic booths of the airport’s food emporium, gobbling down warm cinnamon rolls. My stomach turns hollowly. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. A half-full water bottle is wedged in the truck’s centre divide but I am unwilling to draw attention to it. I’m not sure what Benjamín has in mind, but if the day promises to be as hot as it looks, it won’t help to have Turrón pouring what’s left of our supply down his own throat.

I drive. Left out of the port of entry and up into the hills of Nogales, left again, and along the road to Douglas. The atmosphere in the truck is jumpy but, far from noticing it, Turrón seems almost bored. He drums his fingers on the dashboard, he fiddles with the radio. He takes another square of nougat from his pocket and pushes it into his mouth, dropping the wrapper out of the window. Every so often I feel his eyes roaming over my body with a lazy insolence that makes my heart somersault and I’m tempted to say his name out loud if only to relieve the tension, but I stop myself, remembering that he has no idea of what we know. Certainly, he hasn’t recognized Benjamín and therefore right now we are only dealing with his desire to reach Duval, and the longer it stays that way, the safer we will surely be.

‘Turn left,’ Benjamín says eventually and I veer clumsily off the main road.