I get close, coughing. My eyes water but I can make out the steel pot in his hands. He’s hopelessly trying to douse the flames. A rage comes over me, swift as thunderclap. I catch his arm as he turns to head back to the sink. He’s coughing too. ‘Gabe! Get out right now!’

‘Our home …’ he says, followed by another fit of coughing.

‘It’s insured,’ I scream. ‘Don’t be an idiot, get out.’ I don’t need to tell him it doesn’t matter about the house if we’re dead. I try to drag him, but he resists, pushing me off.

‘You stubborn shit, get out now!’ He gives in, grabbing my arm, and running with me for the door. We both emerge, tears streaming. My eyeballs sting and my throat feels full of steel wool. I cough, hunching over my knees. Now Gabe rushes for the garden hose. In the dark of the night, with only the fire and the streetlights, I stand with one hand clamped to my forehead and the other on my hip watching my husband rushing back towards the window of my study. His shadow stretches back over the lawn as a fire rages in my home.

He aims the hose inside, spraying the flames. The fire is so loud, so bright that at first I don’t register the sirens, the red and blue lights strobing the empty street. Then I notice something. We’d run straight over it when we left. A sheet of paper on our front step. I move towards the door. It was open. Why was it wide open? Gabe had locked it before we went to bed.

‘Mum!’ July calls. ‘What are you doing?’

I turn back. She’s near the front gate, the spaghetti straps of her top are dark like the lines dividing a doll’s limbs. Evan is beside her and they’re both watching me. I continue on, the heat overwhelming. I crouch and snatch the sheet of paper, then rush back towards them. Across the road, a light has come on inside a house. Soon enough, neighbours will be emerging. Our fire alarms continue to howl. I look down at the sheet of paper and a cold finger runs over the back of my neck.

‘What?’ July asks, but before she can see, I press the sheet to my chest, hiding the image. ‘What is it?’

I’m trying to think what to tell her when I fold. I can feel something rush up my throat. I spray the Alfredo and pinot noir from dinner over our lawn. My throat burns and it’s hard to breathe. The piece of paper shows a man. Or the body of a man – but where his head should be, there’s – it’s gone. There’s blood, bone, the inside of a skull all splattered on the wall behind him. It has to be fake, but it seems so real.