Again, I imagined Caleb riding through Brunton as he had the day of the fire. I’d watched the CCTV footage so often, I could see it: Caleb’s ghostly image burned into the landscape like the shadows into Hiroshima walls. Sweat whisking from his hair follicles, hot wind propelling him, he zoomed down the highway. If he slowed, melting tar might stick to his tyres, flames might catch him, set fire to his taillight. His bicycle must have seemed the fastest thing in the universe as he pedalled from the fire towards that day’s conflagration. He needed to reach the fossicker’s hut site and return to Brunton before people noticed he was gone.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Caleb. People notice everything.

Douglas passed an umbrella to use as a shield as I opened the car door outside court. If Caleb were with me, I’d use it as a canopy over him. Hopefully Stephen had something. At least Caleb would be with his Dad and would not have to use the underground tunnel from the watch house to the court – on a school excursion it had been suggestive of a trip through purgatory. ‘You need to be very careful here,’ Douglas said, glancing at me. ‘Vigilantes can be unpredictable.’

A crowd of people descended on us, like locusts, the first of the plagues of Egypt, that ended with the sacrifice of first-born sons. But I wouldn’t think of that now. That was Stephen in his balding man’s sports car, and that was Caleb.

CALEB

Caleb opened his own car door to a nightmare crowd peppered with television cameras and police officers. Caledonia Magistrates Court loomed like a fantasy computer game fortress. Two red brick turrets eyed him through vertical openings, ready for archers with longbows. Boos echoed. Angry mouths roared, open like funfair clowns hungry for golf balls. Caleb swung a hank of hair before his face. He couldn’t control the sounds but he didn’t have to let the clowns see him. Meanwhile an imaginary TV clip played inside his mind, a line of criminals outside courthouses, all concealing their faces. On tonight’s news, he knew he’d look guilty. He was guilty. He’d look ashamed. He followed Dad like a shadow.

Mum was waiting with Douglas, both of them determined to keep him out of trouble for his own good (as Mum used to say, meaning that what he wanted didn’t matter). This was street theatre – he was the accused, and also part of the audience. Dad looked as ashamed as he had way back at Caleb’s at Under-10s AFL when the other team had been sixty points ahead. Douglas waved his stupid wig to prove he belonged in the court’s strange arena. ‘Don’t worry about the crowds,’ he said to Mum, loud enough for Caleb to hear. ‘Court lice are always here.’

‘Phoebe!’ called a too-familiar voice. Sadie.