Her face was serious. ‘He’s missing, Max. The police special operations group has gone out to find him.’

Max thought of the helicopter he and Lily had seen flying over. ‘Is Leon hurt?’

‘He might be.’

Max was worried now. ‘Can I come too? I need to know what’s happened to him.’

Mum’s eyes locked with his again. She knew how important Leon was to him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to the teacher.’

Outside, the rain had stopped but the sky was murky. Max could smell smoke in the air. Usually rain washed all the wood smoke away, so Max wondered if there was a house fire somewhere: they happened sometimes around here. Mum said it was a bad thing in Tasmania that so many houses burned down. It was because people had open fireplaces and weren’t careful enough—not everyone had fireguards round their hearths. People knew it was a problem, but they thought it wouldn’t happen to them.

Max, Mum and Suzie were walking towards the school gate when he heard the siren go off at the fire station. He raced out the gate and looked up the road. Brown smoke was billowing into the sky.

‘That looks close,’ Mum said. ‘I reckon it might be in town.’

She picked Suzie up, and they walked fast towards the main street. Toby’s ute raced past them to the fire station. Not long after, the fire engine lumbered out, lights flashing, siren wailing.

The cloud of smoke was ballooning up into the sky, and it smelled so bad Max wasn’t sure he wanted to go any closer. But Mum was rushing as though she was being pulled by a magnet. She took a short cut across the park, dragging Suzie like a dog on a lead.

Max jogged along with them, crossing the footbridge and hurrying up the gravel path into town. By the time they reached the main street, he heard roaring as if a dragon had been let loose, like in The Hobbit. The smoke was black and seemed angry.

‘It’s one of the shops,’ Mum said.

Across the road, people were standing on the footpath, watching the fire. Max felt a jerk in his guts like he’d been shot. Miki’s takeaway shop was burning, flames whipping and clawing like a wild beast, dancing in the windows, pouring from under the roof. The fire engine was in the middle of the street, and Toby and the other volunteer firemen were rushing around hooking up hoses.

‘Is anyone inside?’ Mum called out. ‘Has anyone thought about Miki?’ She had Suzie perched on her hip, and Suzie was crying but you could hardly hear her above the noise of the fire.

Shocked faces turned to Mum: Trudi, her eyes as big and sad as an owl’s; Lily’s mum, Liz. Other people too.

‘She might be inside,’ Mum yelled. ‘Kurt locks her in.’