‘Who are you?’ I asked, a little catch in my voice. The question surprised both of us. I just blurted it out. I don’t like to put myself forward. Don’t like to pry. But things were so far from normal that I thought I might as well just start being Flick rather than Felicity. And Flick would damn well ask.

‘Sera Avendano,’ she said, in the same soft voice. John hissed as she started sitting him up, gauze and a cotton wool pad pressed against the open wound. ‘My brother is Kaapo. And you?’

‘Felicity Goose,’ I said, automatically. ‘I was Felicity Eagles before I was married. This is John.’

‘A pleasure to meet you both,’ she said, as if we were guests at a tea party and all on best behaviour. She gave me a warm smile. Her eyes were really lovely. Skin too. ‘This place – we are in Scotland, si?’

I shook my head, concentrating on the question so as not to be scared by the pain on John’s face. ‘Scotland’s up the road. We’re halfway between Newcastle and Carlisle. It’s on the edge of everywhere. Gilsland.’

‘Gilsland?’ She tried the word out in her mouth. Said it again. ‘I saw a lot of green. The fields are very bright. It looked like a tapestry – no, a, quilt, si – a patchwork quilt thrown over a table that is still covered in dirty plates.’

I liked that. Liked the way she spoke. I tried the image out in my mind and realized that she must have seen it from the air to think of it in such terms. It all felt too big, suddenly. I’ve never flown. Never been anywhere really. The idea that she’d arrived here by plane and that she was better equipped to look after my husband than I was made me feel almost resentful. Here was another bugger better than me. There were plenty of those already in my life and now we were flying them in from overseas!

‘When did you get here? Where are you from?’ I felt a tear threaten to come down my cheek and my lip gave a real little-girl wobble. I felt bad at once for thinking such things about this lovely kind lady. She must feel awful, far from wherever home was. It all got too much in that second and it came out in a silly little screech of frustration. ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ I said when I was done. Then I whispered it again, feeling like a daft old woman, and it was hard not to just slide down the wall and start wailing.

‘I am from Guatemala,’ she said, working on John all the while and not showing the slightest reaction to my tantrum. ‘La Libertad. El Petén. Perhaps sixty kilometres from San Benito.’