When the shooting started she watched as they both fell to the ground. Screams rang out and there were more shots and a lot of shouting.

She heard a man’s voice order the paramedics to step away from the stretcher. As she turned her head towards the voice she glimpsed a figure in a balaclava holding a sawn-off shotgun.

She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know what was happening. The ambulance was being ambushed and she was being snatched. But why and by whom?

The questions hung in the air as she was picked up off the stretcher by a pair of strong hands. She was carried a short way and placed on a mattress in the back of a van. Two women wearing what looked like surgical gowns sat either side of the mattress.

Rosa tried to speak, but one of the women told her to stay quiet and then started to examine her wound.

At the same time the van jolted forward and it was immediately obvious to Rosa that it was speeding away from the hospital.

She lay on the mattress, her mind reeling as she tried to make sense of what was happening.

Then suddenly a needle was injected into her arm and she fell into a deep, dark pit.

She awoke to find that she was no longer in the back of the van. She was on a bed in a room with white walls and soft lighting.

It was a moment before she realised that her arm was attached to a drip and a man in a white coat was standing next to the bed holding a clipboard. He was tall and middle-aged with jet-black hair and olive skin like hers.

‘Hello, Miss Lopez,’ he said, with an accent that convinced her he was Mexican. ‘My name is Antonio. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. How do you feel?’

She swallowed and blinked away the crust from her eyes.

‘Confused,’ she said. ‘Where am I?’

‘A very private facility,’ he replied. ‘The authorities don’t know you’re here and let me reassure you that we’ve tended to your wound and you’re going to be fine. You lost a significant amount of blood but no organs were damaged. The knife penetrated the soft tissue at the side of your torso below the ribs and above the hip. That’s precisely where your attacker was told to place it so as not to cause a life-threatening injury. You’ll have a scar, but it’s a small price to pay for your freedom. You’ll soon be up and about and on your way back to Mexico.’

For a moment Rosa thought she was dreaming. She closed her eyes briefly and when she opened them the man who called himself Antonio was still standing there, smiling.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.