‘A brown recluse bites you, you won’t have any idea how much trouble you’re in till you start getting feverish and vomiting and your flesh turns black.’

I look at him. ‘Duval, I assume you’re trying to make a point, I’m just not sure what it is.’

‘Do you have any idea of the dangers out here? For a woman like you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean – a woman like me?’ Angrily, I screw the lid back on the water bottle. Under my feet Taco mutters in his sleep.

‘You broke down seven miles from town. What would you have done if I hadn’t come along?’

‘You know what, we would have managed.’

‘With a quarter litre of water? What if it had been daytime? Ground temperatures in summer reach well over one hundred degrees.’

I nearly hit him. I don’t need Duval to make me feel guilty about this evening. ‘Do you really think it’s any more dangerous out here than in London, where they’re asphyxiated by pollution? Where paedophiles lurk behind every post box?’

Duval doesn’t take his eyes from the road. ‘Take your children back home,’ he says evenly. ‘They don’t belong here and neither do you.’

And in the dark cool of the truck I feel my cheeks begin to burn.

Later, once Emmy is safely in bed and asleep, Jack becomes my shadow, refusing to leave my side, not even for a second, going so far as to crouch by the basin while I’m having a pee as though I might suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.

‘I hate snakes,’ he says.

‘Me too.’

‘I don’t want to let you out of my sight,’ he says, as we climb into bed.

‘Okay, don’t then.’

‘Don’t go anywhere without telling me, especially don’t go anywhere after I’m asleep.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Don’t.’

‘I won’t, I promise.’