Court was dismissed while Magistrate Heaney went somewhere to reach his decision. Perhaps he rolled dice. An hour later, Douglas sent an associate to fetch me from the women’s toilet. I did my best to splash away the taste of vomit. Then I walked back into court.

‘The charges you face are of the most serious kind,’ Magistrate Heaney said to a camera above the video screen. ‘But I’ll allow bail on the condition you remain under the supervision of your father or mother. There’ll be no suppression order on your name, this would be pointless, because you’ve already appeared voluntarily on television. Vigilantism is a threat but police will have to play their role in keeping the peace.’

Caleb was coming back with me. I was legally responsible for him, as I had been before he turned eighteen. I imagined legal ribbon tying us back together as a family. I didn’t let myself think about vigilantism.

Caleb was subdued as we drove home. I imagined him as an antipodean Phaeton, the stupid adolescent god who caused previous climate change, who burned the Sahara Desert into existence by driving his father Apollo’s sun chariot too low. No. I wanted my old Caleb back, with his black hair and make-up and chunky jewellery, his temper tantrums and his insistence upon his right to be himself. When he’d been a baby, the mere suggestion of his distress caused my milk to let down and leak, sometimes painfully. Years had passed: my milk was long gone but my physical reaction to his emotions remained.

‘It must be so hard for you,’ I said.

‘What?’ Though he’d been locked up only briefly, he stared outside as if seeing the world for the first time. I followed his eye. Rapidly reconstructed, Brunton seemed as artificial as a stage set. You might wipe the air with your finger and see the ashes and destruction that still existed just below the surface. The town’s new reality was as fragile as skin on hot milk.

We arrived home. Rosie appeared at her window and watched. I nodded at her as Caleb strolled to our door. She vanished and a second later her own door opened.

‘So he got bail. Your legal connections. I suppose you’ll get these charges dropped too.’

I followed Caleb without responding to her, and closed the door between us and the world. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ I told Caleb. ‘Accidents aren’t anyone’s fault. It’s what the word means. Accident.’

He fell into a kitchen chair. ‘What word we use makes no difference to Sean.’

I made tea. Caleb sat, resting his hands on the table. His old black manicure had been replaced by natural nails, chewed to the quick. ‘You going to jail won’t make a difference to him either. You can fight this!’ I told him.

He shrugged.