‘¡Pinche, puta!’ Turrón is swearing. He wants my trousers down now but he doesn’t know to depress the elastic clips at the side. He takes the gun out of my mouth and fumbles with the small button at the top, but he can’t undo it. The buttonhole has always been tight. Frustrated, he raises his arm again, a great swinging movement. The sun glints off the metal in his hand. I turn my head away, and I try to think that death is only pain, it’s only pain. I wait for the blow, but it doesn’t come. Instead a shadow passes across the sun as the weight is dragged off me, and unexpectedly I experience a strange insecurity. The two men are flailing in the dirt close by and I feel a sort of weary anger directed at Benjamín because it’s no longer as easy as acquiescing any more. My world has broadened again to include the three of us and this means I must take action, help Benjamín in some way, but then I realize that it’s Benjamín’s arm and not Turrón’s raised high and poised. Down it comes, again and again and again and again. The rock in his hand glistens with blood. And he is not my Benjamín but some freakish creature, lips drawn back in primordial animal rage, and still the rock comes down, smashing skin and bone until Turrón’s face begins to disappear altogether in a mess of gristle and blood and I’ve never seen anything more frightening in my life.

Benjamín falls off the body, his eyes closed. When I crawl towards him, I feel like I am rising up and stepping out of Estella’s dying body. Benjamín tries to hold me but collapses sideways against the rocks, and shivering uncontrollably I take him in my arms as though he were one of the children. His heart is pounding, his every breath rasps through burning lungs, and how much time we stay like this, together against the rocks, the sun beating down on our heads, I have no way of telling, but I do know that in this moment there is a large part of me that would stay forever. Then I cough. My throat feels like sandpaper. I try to find enough moisture to swallow but there is none and some spark of a warning connects.