‘Do they file reports?’ I nodded at his laptop. Where once I dreamed of his arms around me, his fingers in my hair, on my back, now I dreamed of using his password.

‘I suppose so. There are reports on everything.’

‘Can I see them?’

He laughed. ‘I don’t have access to those.’

‘What do you have access to?’

‘Not much. Honestly, Phoebe.’ The track ended. Jack touched the record but I was impatient to have his entire attention. ‘Show me.’

‘Well… All right.’

He wasn’t careful with his password at all. He trusted that I would only ever look at the files he said it was okay for me to see. Did he know me? I thought of all the times we’d spent together. Good times. But I wasn’t the only one involved in betrayal. Jack should have been helping me more.

I asked for more coffee. When he turned back to the makeshift kitchen bench, I logged back into his computer. One eye on Jack, I searched his files, looking for Caleb and Phosphorus. I saved it all on the USB stick on my keychain, copying every file the search located. I’d read them at home.

They took a while to copy. Jack returned to the sofa. Fortunately, he was very distractible. He was very warm and solid too and while… distracting him, I could pretend nothing terrible was going on. For a few minutes, anyway.

‘Will you come here?’ Jack asked, when we were lying together on the sofa that served as his bed.

‘I’m already here.’

‘I mean, if you need a home. I know it’s not much but I’ll rebuild—’

‘It won’t come to that. It can’t.’

I plugged the USB stick into my own laptop as soon as I got home. I pored through reports. I stared at video files of CCTV footage. I read transcripts of my neighbours’ statements until my spirits felt battered like a pinball in the machine Stephen used to play. How little my neighbours had shared with me, the newcomer, the blow-in. On the few occasions I’d met the Gordons, they’d seemed like good people. I found evidence in statements made by their grieving friends. They might, one day, have been Caleb’s in-laws. He couldn’t be responsible for their deaths.

I checked the witness list, trying to find anyone who might point the blame at Caleb to move suspicion away from themselves. Bernie Lippard could have wanted a fire to get promoted in the CFA. Bob or Bruce from Elecnet could want community anger to have a focus other than their employer, whose only defence was the likelihood that service had already been disrupted. Nancy Bailey was frustrated Caleb had never conformed and saw herself as an instrument of divine wrath. Brian Nally wanted to invite the Apocalypse. Fireys like Craig Silva might crave excitement.