I don’t think I made out any of it when she said it the first time. It was good of her to go on repeating it until the words went in. It was double Dutch, and Spanish and sounded like she was playing castanets in her mouth.

‘Guatemala,’ I said at last, the word unfamiliar in my mouth. ‘Is that Spain?’

She gave me a funny little look. ‘Central America.’

I pulled a face. I can’t read a map and I only know that on a picture of the world, Britain’s in the middle. I can’t even watch the weather forecast without finding the thin bit of the island and moving halfway across to find out where I live. ‘America? I know New York’s on one side and Hollywood’s on the other,’ I said. ‘We watched a programme.’

She stopped what she was doing. Looked at me as if I were a little bit soft between the ears. ‘Latin America,’ she said, and lifted a hand to draw a picture in the air. ‘Mexico is here, yes. Beneath America. Then look, here you have Honduras and El Salvador. Belize is up at the top here. And in the middle – Guatemala.’

I said it again, just to show willing, but she’d have had as much luck telling me she lived at the bottom of the sea or on the far side of the moon. I felt a right wally for not knowing where places were, but then, she didn’t know she wasn’t in Scotland, did she? And hadn’t given so much as a flicker of recognition when I’d mentioned Carlisle. We were proper strangers in one another’s worlds.

‘So what are you doing here then?’ I asked, surprising myself by suddenly changing my voice and starting to whisper, as if the answer was probably secret.

She stopped what she was doing again. Shifted position and looked at me for longer than felt comfortable. She looked a bit exasperated, like she didn’t even know where to start. ‘My country is at war,’ she said, at last. ‘It has been at war for many years. Perhaps it is a civil war – perhaps it is an uprising. It is several revolutions happening at once. Those who ascend … they promise much and deliver nothing more than disappearances and bloodshed. I am …’ She swirled a hand in the air as if looking for the right selection of words. ‘I am trying to make things better, somehow. So too my brother. We have truths to speak that some important people need to hear. There are many lies in my country. I dislike lies. I have had to speak many lies in the name of a greater truth. Now we are come to a place where the lying can stop.’