For the children, at least.

Caleb stayed in his room but I visited the school site a couple of times over the next few days, ensuring the demountable had arrived and everything was arranged properly. Friday would be my biggest test yet.

I prepared for the day as I always did. Getting up early, I dressed in my preferred casual clothes, suitable for tasks as varied as climbing through a window to rescue a locked-in boy and sitting on the floor cradling a girl with a broken wrist awaiting the ambulance (both had happened at Brunton Primary). Still at home, in honour of it being a Friday, when prep students’ mothers brought younger siblings, I made scones the way Claire taught me. I rubbed butter with my fingertips so my body-warmth melted it, adding a precise teaspoon of sugar and pinch of salt, stirring a hole to pour in the milk, cutting the mixture with a knife. I kneaded the dough exactly ten times before rolling it out and cutting circles with an antique glass. There was something reassuring about using this particular recipe in Claire’s kitchen, where scones had been made so often. The scones were Caleb’s favourite. I left him some on a plate.

What I wanted was a day of normal summer heat where all that blistered were the bare feet of children running over melting asphalt. This was a connection to my old life.

Setback Mountain was visible between wafts of smoke when I arrived. The classroom had been trucked in and waited behind a hastily erected fence and low gate. Painted an ocean blue, perhaps it had recently been located at the seaside. I parked beneath a surviving eucalypt in a field near the old burned building. Jeannie’s car was already here.

I trudged through dead grass and bark to the stairs. Jeannie’s head popped around the internal doorframe. ‘I had to escape my mother. Got here early.’

Jeannie had arranged an eclectic collection of desks into the circular groups the children usually worked in. I walked to the small room behind the classroom, which I had assumed would be my office. Jeannie’s bag and laptop were on the desk beside the cardboard box of photographs she’d been carrying at the community meeting. Our office, then. I could cope with a shared space.

I pointed at the box. ‘What’s this?’

‘I started to explain at the meeting,’ Jeannie said. ‘So many people lost all their photos. Their memories. I thought the school could produce a book of donated pictures. It won’t replace people’s lost albums but it’s the closest thing. I grabbed mine when I evacuated. Lots of kids are in them. I’ve been teaching here a fair while.’