'I did it for the revolution,' she said.

'I didn't imagine you did it for a coconut.'

'He was a bastard and he had it coming and I did it for-'

'I know, you did it for the revolution.'

'Don't you think Cuba needs a revolution?'

'I won't deny that things could be better. But every revolution smokes well before it turns to ash. Yours will be like all the others that went before. I guarantee it.'

Melba was shaking her pretty head but, warming to my subject, I kept on going: 'Because when someone talks about building a better society you can bet he's planning to use a couple of sticks of dynamite.'

After that she remained silent and so did I.

We stopped for a while in Santa Clara. About one hundred and eighty miles east of Havana, it was a picturesque, unremarkable little town with a central park faced by several old buildings and hotels. Melba went off by herself. I sat outside the Central Hotel and had lunch on my own, which suited me fine. When she reappeared we set off again.

In the early evening we reached Camaguey, which was full of triangular houses and large earthenware jars filled with flowers. I didn't know why and it never occurred to me to ask. Parallel to the highway a goods train moving in the opposite direction was loaded with timber cut from the region's many forests.

'We're stopping here,' I announced.

'Surely it would be better to keep going.'

'Can you drive?'

'No.'

'Neither can I. Not any more. I'm beat. It's another two hundred miles to Santiago and if we don't stop soon we'll both wake up in the morgue.'

Near a brewery – one of the few on the island – we passed a police car, which got me thinking again about Melba and the crime she had committed.

'If you shot a cop, then they must want you bad,' I said.

'Very bad. They bombed the casa where I was working. Several other girls were killed or seriously injured.'