Jack had to fill in a quick report to let people know about tonight’s call-out. All I had to do now was lean close enough to watch while he typed his password in. There was something wrong with me. Shouldn’t I feel guilty? Perhaps Caleb felt enough of that for both of us. I was simply doing what needed to be done. I had to save Caleb and Jack had to help me, even if it was only by paying hardly any attention at all. He finished his message quickly.

‘I’m glad your rekindling manna gum called me out here,’ he said. ‘Bit like us, hey, Phoebe? Rekindling?’

Awful as it was, whatever distracted him would help me. Eventually, I’d have to learn what was on his laptop.

I was starting to dress for school on Monday when Caleb, who routinely stepped outside to smoke cigarettes I was supposed to ignore, banged back in through the front door and down the hall, morning cigarette dangling unlit from his lips. ‘Don’t come out!’ His face was white.

‘What is it?’ I couldn’t imagine anything worse than Saturday’s toilet-papering.

But Caleb looked alarmed. ‘Someone’s been here, Mum. There’s graffiti.’

I wondered about his horror. ‘Graffiti?’ How could that be such a big deal? We’d learned about Roman daily life from graffiti in Pompeii. And some Melbourne train stations were so crowded with neon tags they could be art installations.

‘Do we have metho?’ he demanded.

I couldn’t remember. ‘Maybe Claire kept it in the laundry.’

‘Don’t go outside.’ He was trying to protect me.

I couldn’t help myself, and quickly understood his horror. An amateur Banksy had used stabbing slashes to spray-paint bright-pink letters a metre high across the front of my house.

MURDERER

It was outlined in yellow with enthusiastic skill, the artist insisting the word was an important creative gift to the universe. On top of the layers of ash and soot, rubble visible not far away, that word made my neighbourhood look even more like a war-zone.

‘Do you know who did this?’ I asked.

‘Do I know who hates me? Who’d attack me? How about nearly everyone?’ Then Caleb relented. ‘I’ll clean it, Mum.’

I found Claire’s metho, and passed it to him along with some old cloths. ‘Will you be all right with this?’

‘We’ve got neighbours cleaning up worse messes.’

‘Not messes that were so deliberate.’

Caleb stared at me, as if reading another meaning in my words. ‘Not as deliberate. Look, Mum, you were getting ready for school. You should go.’

He got to work cleaning. I did what I did every morning and checked the news on my phone. The first headline about the case had me clutching the device to my chest. Caleb couldn’t see this. But how could I stop him?

LEAVE ME ALONE: GIRLFRIEND OF BRUNTON ACCUSED ARSONIST SPEAKS OUT

by Sadie Riley