I left my car outside the CFA building. The building had survived but its fences had not. Their ashes crumbled underfoot. I still smelled smoke. I peered into the semi-darkness, noting doors, frames, wall joists. More ashes floated down, staining my jeans and my hands. I was surprised by things that didn’t burn. Without being sure what I was looking for, I imagined Caleb that morning, sliding open the heavy glass front door, slipping out into heat haze that challenged his lungs. I imagined the heavy rattle of the door closing behind him. I closed my eyes, and remembered the brown and desiccated but not yet burned world, the sky bleached of blue, not yet obscured by smoke. I imagined I was him, carrying a backpack, my pockets stuffed with the cigarettes I lied about, and also a lighter, later in the day. Leaving Penelope at her store. I imagined untying a bicycle from the park bench beneath a Main Road eucalypt. The tree shook its leaves in the hot wind of the last morning of its life. Where was I going? Down to the fossicker’s hut. Why was I leaving Penelope? Why? Because of my sketchbook. Why?

There my imagination faltered. I hated realising I didn’t understand him. I got back into my car. I’d follow his route exactly, as far as I could. Could I be the one who proved the witnesses wrong?

How fast can a bicycle go? It was hard to stop my car stalling at that pace. Could I borrow someone’s bicycle? I hadn’t ridden one in twenty years.

I accelerated outside St Monica’s. People were still using the hall for temporary accommodation, waiting for caravans and other more individual options to arrive. Donating had become such a national pastime that signs were erected announcing that shelters had run out of storage space for clothing and linen. Next door, lights were on in the church. Perhaps they were praying. I felt a moment’s envy for people who had certainty in their lives. Wouldn’t it be better to think there was a purpose to everything that happened in life, even if you were wrong? Fire was an act of God, insurers said, their faith in the twin gods of small print and money. On radio programs, discussion centered around how we could adapt to more frequent fires and higher temperatures, and force the government to take action.

I passed the cemetery. Graves were arranged in rows like hospital beds. As sacrilegious university students, Stephen and I had spent an afternoon there. Pashing, we called it. Soon there’d be more tombstones, bearing names I knew from class rolls and newspaper reports. My neighbours, now chilling in the morgue, would make their final journeys here to be buried.