Winfred considers this at some length. ‘Mrs Coleman, I’m letting you off the bald eagle offence.’

‘Very decent of you.’

‘But I am going to have to fine you for speeding.’

‘Oh, come on, Winfred!’ I bang the steering wheel again. ‘Considering that we’re old friends, considering you’ve already had a hundred dollars off me, don’t you think you should let me off this time?’

‘You’re a very funny lady, Mrs Coleman, and I like you, but you better pay me the seventy dollars anyway.’

‘Oh, so it’s seventy this time, is it?’

‘It’s ten dollars for every mile over the limit, ma’am.’

‘Tell me something, Winfred,’ I ask, clawing at the money in my wallet. ‘How did you know I lived down the Temerosa road when you stopped me before?’

For the quickest second his eyebrows pull together and pucker up the smooth skin of his forehead. ‘Hey, everyone’s been saying how an English lady’s bought up the town.’ He tears off the ticket and hands it to me. ‘I just figured out it was you.’

‘Really,’ I regard him doubtfully, ‘you just figured it out.’

‘Yes, ma’am, that’s right.’

‘I guess that was pretty clever of you then.’ But as I watch him making his leisurely way back to his patrol truck, I wonder, just as I had wondered with Benjamín, what reason Winfred could possibly have for lying.

Crawling along at the prescribed forty-five mph makes me late for pick-up. By the time I arrive, school is well and truly out and Emmy is swinging on the giant tyre, flirting languidly with a couple of older boys. As I hurry up to her, one tugs the shirt of the other and says darkly, ‘So here’s the mom now,’ and they both nudge Emmy.

Jack is nowhere to be found.

Sue is at her desk in the main classroom reading a copy of Defenders of Wildlife magazine. ‘Oh yeah, the little English boy, sure, sure.’ She cocks her head to one side in faint recognition at his name. ‘Funny little kid.’

‘Well yes, maybe,’ I concede, ‘but I’d like him back nonetheless. Where is he?’

Sue is slight and almost pretty but I already suspect her of being one of those women who always manage to look at the world with weary eyes, irrespective of how much sleep they get. She rests her pencil on an article entitled ‘The Air We Breathe’ before looking up. ‘He went home with Travis on the school bus.’

‘He did what!’

Her neck snaps straight at my tone. ‘Went home with Travis?’ she hazards more cautiously.

‘And you let him go, just like that?’

‘Is there a problem?’ She’s now blinking out a hurt expression, but I’m in no mood for emotional Morse code.