It was too green to burn. But someone doused the vines with petrol and that caught alight. Evening had fallen. Red flames and black smoke billowed up, and a woman screamed. They probably say it was me. I still wake up and think I’ve heard it—but this was all a long time ago. Even grief gets tired.

It kept the firies busy for a while. “It was an idea,” said Terrence, wandering back. “Nobody else was doing anything.”

Someone was sobbing, “They’ll kill them, they’ll kill them.” But no one talked more about burning.

Even a rescue helicopter came—the first we’d seen. It had a searchlight. The vines tangled and thrashed in the downrush of air. The flowers shone ghastly white in its beam. Later, I heard the pilot said the hedge must have been there for years. It covered the whole paddock, with only an old water tank, spindly-legged on its timber stand, sticking above it. Fire trap, he said. That would be the story. Even the newspaper couldn’t think of another way to run it, although Terrence had been right there and saw it clear as I did.

Next day, the singed bushes were already greening up. The grocer seized a shovel and ran at them. He howled, beating the branches; most of us joined him. I still think if the bloody aloof Damsons had deigned to help instead of letting things take their course …

For a minute, that hedge shrank back. Then it reared up and crashed down, coiling and thrashing. Most of us got clear, although some were badly cut and whipped about. Terrence dragged me away, telling me not to make an exhibition of myself—he had the nerve, later, to tell me I didn’t seem to care.

But the grocer had beaten his way in further than the others and didn’t even try to get free. Next, he was a metre deep behind leaves and spines and flowers. He didn’t scream, even though his feet left the ground—he just fought forward until he disappeared. Only a little blood on a few yellow flowers remained.

After that, even the birds kept away.

It was a fire, they said. They kept saying it, even while lantern-flowers bloomed bright as flame. I suppose there are things police aren’t trained to deal with. Though there are others, if they’d cared to get involved.

A fire. If you say things often enough, people believe it. Even parents calling the names of their children near the school. Even the grocer’s wife leaving plates of food among the bunches of garden flowers, the lonely dew-drenched toys. The next morning, the plates were broken and empty.