Another day with a forewarning of disaster, and I dressed carefully. I’d read website advice that all clothing has a message. Dressing is always a matter of casting off one self in favour of another. No longer a digital spy or panicked mother, on Monday, I pulled out clothes purchased specifically for court. My blue suit said conservative, strong values, toned down by a white shirt that whispered of caring for my family in the language of starch and ironing. So recently, these clothes would have horrified me. Conservative women were great school mums because they had time to help with remedial reading and maths. Now I was one of them, my energy exclusively poured into my child’s life.

I was alone until Douglas collected me in his Mercedes. We drove along Anzac Avenue and down Main Road, passing a familiar fire warning sign, burned around the edges. One more thing that needed replacing. Beyond a final turn in the road, Brunton emerged, its landscape an unearthly patchwork of fire-scarred relics alternating with bare, red earth sites already clear of ashes and rubble. Winter Brunton has always been a different place from its summer self. It was especially apparent after the rain – the season after the fire was among the wettest ever. (Mother Nature strikes me as a bit of a bitch.) A large tree near the hotel sprouted new green leaves, high above a blackened trunk. The park bench to which Caleb once chained his bike had disappeared. On a few lots, new grass grew in sparse strands like a balding man’s hair.

There was no logic to what had been saved and what destroyed. The restaurant where Stephen and I had our first out-of-Melbourne date had survived, but the service station had not. We passed the newly repaired Brunton Hotel where I no longer played guitar. (It had been awkward, when I suggested coming back. The owner clearly wanted no connection with me. Though much moved in the opposite direction, music moved from my life’s public to private sphere.) As on the day of the fire, today the hotel’s white tower overlooked a deserted street.

Further along the road, the carcasses of one or two buildings remained, surrounded by tape to keep curious people away from sharp metal and from burned timber refuges for snakes and spiders. Caleb would have been fascinated by those dangerous places when small and here on holidays. He loved Brunton and always wanted to return.