‘Santi, where are you going?’ his father called after him as they jumped to the ground.

‘We are just taking a walk.’

His father hesitated, looking first at his son and then at her. An uncertain look flickered in his kind eyes. ‘You must stay near, you hear me? I will need you shortly.’

‘I will, Papa. We won’t be long.’

His father looked unconvinced, concern still stretched across his lined face, but he gave a polite nod as his eyes met hers.

‘I’ll make sure he comes straight back, Señor Esperanza,’ Nene smiled at him, and it must have been infectious for his face split into a friendly grin too, as though suddenly reassured.

‘Thank you, Nene, you are a good girl,’ he nodded, pretending, like the other farmers, not to notice her unladylike, leggy display.

That was another reason she loved hiding out up here, she didn’t have to be something she wasn’t. She could be free, be herself for once.

‘Why does he always look so worried?’ she asked as they walked off. ‘Does he think I will hurt you?’

‘He knows you could never hurt me! You’re a girl!’ Santi scoffed.

‘I’m bigger than you!’ she said scornfully. Her shadow was taller than his now, even though he was already thirteen by four months and it would be another season before it was her turn. But her shape was changing faster than his, becoming more rounded, undulating whilst he remained stick-thin and twiggy. Santi had pointed and mocked her when he had glimpsed the hair under her arms the last time they had swum together – it was after the last rain in May, when the lake was still full and the almond trees shook with pink blossom – and she hadn’t spoken to him for a full eight days afterwards. But she never could stay mad at him for long and she knew his contrition was sincere when he left, in their secret hiding hole in the jacaranda tree, his most treasured possession – a shark’s tooth given to him by a passing-through fisherman. She wasn’t sure she particularly wanted it, for it had given him the ambition to see the sea one day and that always made her stomach feel funny. What if he sailed away and never came back? They were of the earth, both of them, scrambling up trees, racing in the dust—

‘Anyway, it’s not you. He’s always worried,’ he said, looking wistfully out to the horizon, arms swinging high as they strode through the long grass. He paused, hesitated, as though he had something to say but didn’t know how. ‘. . . He says I must go to live with my cousins in Oviedo.’

‘Oviedo?’ she cried, her feet coming to a stop. ‘But that is almost another country! Why must you go there?’

He gave a hapless shrug. ‘Because they have rain. And crops. And land we can work. He says I must learn.’

She stared at his face – that impish, thin, naughty face that belonged to the joint-first most important person in the world to her. ‘You must say no!’