Cogs were turning in my brain. My daughter’s tears. A conversation on the beach. A tribute page on Facebook. Ethan sprawled in the grass, staring up at the night sky. Jake so drunk he couldn’t stand. Izzy bringing him back from the gorge.

Every time we stopped for him to be sick, he wanted to have a chat, she had said.

About what?

All kinds of stuff.

All kinds of stuff.

‘I was wondering,’ I said, ‘what Jake told Izzy last night. When he was drunk?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Really? No idea at all?’

It was almost imperceptible. Almost invisible, but not quite: a slight twitch of the muscle under her eye.

‘You saw how bad he was,’ she said. ‘Absolutely blasted, he was almost incoherent most of the time.’

‘He was “looking for oblivion”, according to his brother. Why would he be doing that?’

‘They’re teenage boys. They’re testing boundaries, looking for new experiences.’

I changed tack.

‘Do the boys know someone called Alex Bayley?’

I thought I caught a flash of something crossing her face, just for a split second. Then it was gone. My judgement had been so wide of the mark this week that I almost dismissed it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. Did he go to their school?’

Something about that didn’t quite ring true either, but I let it go for now.

‘How about the fire?’ I continued. ‘Why today? How did it start?’

She held her hands up in exasperation. ‘We’ve been through that already. What is this, twenty questions?’

‘Because one fire could conceivably have been an accident. But it looked to me like the fire had been started in two different places, and I started out thinking that Jake and Ethan had—’

Jennifer stood up, eyes brimming with tears.

‘Enough! How long have we been friends? I can’t believe all of you think it’s OK to attack my children like this. Again. It’s just so hurtful and horrible, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We’re all devastated and heartbroken about what happened to Izzy, me just as much as you.’

I raised my hands in a calming gesture.

‘Let me finish, Jen. I was thinking that two boys meant two fires. But what if it wasn’t that – what if it meant something different?’

‘Like what?’ Russ asked.

‘Two fires to make sure it caught. To make sure it got going, make sure there was lots of smoke. To make sure it couldn’t be put out straightaway.’

‘What would be the point of that?’

‘To cause a distraction,’ I said. ‘A diversion.’

‘An actual smokescreen,’ he said.

‘Exactly.’ I turned to his wife. ‘Do you remember, Rowan, when we first saw the smoke and the three of us were running down through the vineyard? Me, you and Izzy?’

‘I remember being terrified.’