'Strangely enough,' she said, 'I don't mind. The bed is quite comfortable. And there's room for two.'

This was certainly true. The bed was as big as a small farm with one goat. I was pretty sure about the goat because of the way she took me by the hand and led me over to the bed. There was something erotic and alluring about that; or maybe it was just the fact she left the sheet on the floor. It was a hot night of course but that didn't bother me. I do some of my best thinking when I'm as naked as she was. I tried to picture myself asleep in that bed, only it didn't work because by now I'd seen what she had displayed in the window and I was about ready to press my nose up against the glass and take a better look. It wasn't that she wanted me. I can never figure why a woman wants a man at all – not when women look the way they do. It was just that she was young and scared and lonely and wanted someone – anyone would have done, probably – to hold her and make her feel like the world cared about her. I get like that myself sometimes: you're born alone and you die alone and the rest of the time you're on your own.

By the time we got to Santiago the next day the dark orchid of her head had been resting on my shoulder almost a hundred miles. We were behaving like any young courting couple when one of them happens to be more than twice as old as the other, who also happens to be a murderer. Perhaps that's a little unfair. Melba wasn't the only one of us who'd pulled the trigger on someone. I had some experience of murder myself. Quite a lot of experience as it happens, only I hardly wanted to tell her about that. I was trying to keep my thoughts on what lay ahead of us. Sometimes the future seems a little dark and frightening, but the past is even worse. My past most of all. But now it was the very present danger of the Santiago police I was worried about. They had a reputation for brutality that was probably well deserved and easily explained by the truth of Dona Marina's remark that all of Cuba's revolutions got started in Santiago.