This far from Mum, this safe in his new weight, Caleb was unrecognised, at least today. Tomorrow, especially if he came with Mum, he’d wear a scarf to raise over his face and hide behind. ‘Phoebe Wharton, your son’s accused of arson. How do you feel?’

Douglas’s black shoes stepped into view. ‘No comment!’

‘My question is for Phoebe Wharton. Tell us what happened,’ Sadie continued.

Caleb glanced up. The reporter’s yellow hair flickered like flames around hostile eyes. She pretended shared experience of bushfire made her Mum’s friend, but her poisonous stories – rarely accurate – always made Mum cry. He’d been reading them since hospital, when Mum – who had repeatedly turned off the television – had been careless with her phone. It was Sadie who first told Caleb how many people had died – her words that first linked his name to those deaths. She was always too close – those were her puffy ankles now, over towering heels. Caleb would draw her as a busty dragon with leathery orange skin, breathing out incendiary lies. ‘Do you really believe he’s innocent?’ she continued.

Douglas held Mum’s elbow. ‘Don’t let your nerves win. We can get through this.’

Microphones clattered against each other. Next to Dad, Caleb stared at the ground and at his own new black shoes. Ahead, Mum’s neat low-heeled slip-ons kept pace with Douglas as he guided her through the scrum. A metal detector leered beyond recessed doors. Mum passed her handbag and notebooks to a burly guard, who grunted in response. Dad and Douglas were silent.

They reached a small, dingy conference room far from the protesters. Douglas rested his suit carrier over a mahogany chair and opened his black briefcase. Caleb slid into a seat opposite him.

‘It’s a terrible place,’ Mum said.

‘Like a fucking zoo,’ said Caleb, and Mum didn’t tell him off for swearing. Her world had changed.

‘I think the architecture is intended to reassure,’ Douglas said soothingly.

‘Not to reassure the mothers of its victims.’ Mum tried to touch Caleb’s cheek. He batted her hand away. ‘Everyone is so angry,’ she said.

‘People are angry.’ Douglas pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. ‘Justice is blind.’

‘I don’t want justice to be blind. I need her to see.’ Mum stared at her fingernails. She’d already peeled away shards of loose skin, but she poked at the mess anyway. And she said goths were too obsessed with blood!

Dad sat beside Douglas, lawyers together. ‘I’m trying to convince Phoebe of the dangers of Caleb entering a plea.’ When Caleb was little, he’d watched Dad in court, and hated seeing he was as pompous as the rest.

‘Pleading isn’t necessary,’ Douglas agreed. ‘Our defence case can wait.’