‘Night night, Maw,’ Jack and Emmy chirrup back even though the joke sails way over their heads, even though they have never seen The Waltons, a television show, hailing as it does from those days of yore when I was young and dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

‘Lights out, Granny Walton,’ they chorus, and I am grateful that despite Jack’s swinging moods, despite Emmy’s geographical confusion (Can we walk to London today?) they are trying their best, they really are, to like their new little house on the prairie.

Benjamín tears his eyes away from the window and dutifully takes the book from my hand.

‘Really, Benjamín, take anything you want,’ I press. ‘I mean I don’t even have bookshelves yet.’

‘Thank you, Alice.’

Why am I pushing this? I don’t want to embarrass him. I have no desire to make him in any way uncomfortable because, quite apart from the way he speaks, there are a host of other things I like about Benjamín: the tightly fitted shirts he wears tucked into his jeans; the stiff leather belt with the steer engraved on its oval buckle. I’m fascinated by the length of his legs (very short), and the fact that he takes a smaller shoe size than me (5 English). I like that his eyes turn down at the corners and the way his nose, disproportionately large compared to his other features, cuts through the topography of his face until it hovers over his lopsided mouth, another feature which I find charming, though one I have not yet dared ask how he came by – but then I haven’t yet dared ask much in the way of personal questions because those I tentatively lob into the conversation, ‘Which part of Mexico do you come from?’, ‘How long have you been living in America?’, are met with evasive answers, ones which imply, ever so cordially, that I am downright nosy and should mind my own business.