‘He was on his phone in the next cubicle.’

Through him, I heard the other boy’s words. You’ll never guess who’s at Myer. Caleb Wharton. The arson dude. The one who set fire to Brunton.

Caleb had kicked open his door and punched the boy in the mouth. He had a temper. Was that what had burst out and lit the fire? What could have made him so angry that day? Caleb was released back into the care of his parents. I brought him back home.

I lay in bed while minutes crawled past, and wondered about words. At what precise moment did I stop being the art historian who was also a teacher, and become instead just a mother and advocate? If I didn’t sleep, when did tomorrow become today? Was Tuesday, the first day of Caleb’s committal hearing, still tomorrow?

In a few hours, we’d face court and fight to tell the best story. Caleb’s future rested on a frail net of words. I preferred a tangible connection to people. The reason behind my collection. It was photos and mementoes, connections to their past, that people mourned after the fire. Nero invited divine wrath by stealing his fellow Romans’ household god statues, and melting them to make decorations for his own huge golden Domus Aurea. How different would my life be, had I stayed with Marco? I imagined that, magically, Marco could have been Caleb’s father. We’d once explored Rome like time travellers – in drama I’d studied, based on religious ritual, and in digs with Marco, I’d witnessed all history’s different Romes, from Romulus and Remus’s bare hills to the bustling city of the Republic, to the Empire, the great fire. In the Middle Ages, the Colosseum had been a weird apartment complex. Some of Marco’s colleagues had uncovered prehistoric tools. Others had evacuated the headquarters for an army unit and an impressively tiled commander’s domus. That happened in archaeology. Sometimes you did the basic work at a dig, but it was the next team who made the big discovery.

Above me, spider-webby cracks recorded my own house’s moving history in their slow spread across the ceiling. I rolled onto my side and stared at the night-greyed curtains, picturing myself as a once-empty vessel now filled with anger. All the problems of insomnia hovered a few calendar pages away. Not sleeping was dangerous. When we’re awake, neurons bombard our brains with electrical impulses. The barrage leaves us needing time to recuperate, regenerate. Sleep is when our minds put down memories, when we make sense of the world. I once read of an Italian family with a genetic illness causing them to stay awake until they died. One by one, each fell victim to chronic sleeplessness. They died within months of diagnosis.