John stood beneath the hole in the ceiling, looking up and occasionally running his hands over his bandaged side. The fabric was already stained an unhealthy pink and I could see how much pain he was in. Whatever strength he’d found over the past couple of hours was draining out of him in front of me. There was no way he was going to have the fight in him to climb into the roof space and wriggle through the dark and the filth towards something or someone who could help.

‘It was a shot in the air,’ said John, again. ‘Somebody was making a fuss and one of the buggers with the guns fired a warning shot. I’d put money on it.’

Sera, her hand in mine, gave a weak little smile. Her eyes hadn’t stopped pouring with tears since we heard the crack of the gunshot. All she could picture was her brother, laid out in the room at the end of the corridor, sightless eyes staring out at a distant, darkened land.

‘I wish I knew why this was happening,’ I muttered. ‘I’m a grandma, you know. First bairn just out of nappies. Our eldest, he’s living in Carlisle with a nice young lass. That’s the way of it now, isn’t it? Nobody marries any more, or that’s how it seems. But they’re a lovely little family. I’ve got their Christmas presents wrapped. We haven’t got our tree up yet. Do you have Christmas trees in your country?’

I heard myself prattling on but couldn’t seem to stop myself. I just whittered like we were old friends who hadn’t caught up in an age. I don’t even know how much of what I was saying she really understood, but she seemed to find the sound of my voice oddly soothing and told me to keep talking when I ran out of nonsense to say.

‘We have Christmas trees in our church,’ she said, quietly. ‘There are mahogany trees near my home.’

‘Mahogany?’ asked John, surprised. ‘Like the furniture?’

‘I think the name comes from the tree,’ said Sera, with that faint smile of hers. ‘I too had planned a splendid Christmas. We had celebrated La Quema del Diablo – the burning of the devil, casting out the bad in preparation for the coming of Christ. We had begun the Nacimiento – the finest we had ever created.’

‘The what?’ I asked.

‘The … I suppose you would call it a Christmas scene? Father told me the word. The … nativity?’

I nodded, catching up. ‘You make them too, do you? We do this thing with candles and goose feathers and a red ribbon. We do something at Easter with hard-boiled eggs too. Steep them in onion skins and leaves and make pretty patterns on the shells. I don’t really know why.’