I can’t end this letter without a mention of the fireys, defence force members, emergency service workers, and the people who have helped look after their neighbours, sometimes by as simple a thing as making a pile of sandwiches. You are our heroes. Thank you.
Kimberley Starr
TORCHED
KIMBERLEY
STARR
Contents
Prologue
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Part Two
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Acknowledgements
Book club questions
Author Biography
Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.
Sophocles
Who lies for you will lie against you.
John Locke
For my family
RED BELLY BLACK SNAKE
I remember running through
fire blanket air, humid, heavy. Rotting sweet
sick mangoes. Fruit bat wings
rattling open, heavy curtains on
frail white rods. Running, like a
river slithers through cane fields, a
black snake
in flames. A hissing
match struck, and running.
Shirley Blakely, from Sugarcane Poems, 1958
PROLOGUE
AURORA | Goddess of Morning
Protector of childbirth. Often portrayed in Roman art as a young woman with wings like the dawn sky. She killed her own son in a jealous rage.
from Images of Women in Roman Art, by Phoebe Wharton
PHOEBE
You are not a firebug. If you killed anyone, I’d know. I know you. All those hours with your warm infant self damp against my shoulder, all that time cooking vegetables in ways you ate only once, all those afternoons cheering your team to football losses, frustrated over incomplete homework, holding you while you cried over grazed knees or the unkindness of schoolgirls – our shared umbilical cord must have left a residual connection, a spiritual navel. No one could be more sure of anything than me, of this. You are not a firebug.
Your committal hearing starts tomorrow. Of course I can’t sleep. I lie here, now and then reaching for my notebook or getting up to pace through the house. Like a trial, every bushfire tells a story. Every bushfire has a beginning, a middle, an end. A year ago, smoke from the Brunton fire twisted around our window frames, slid under the door, forced its fingers through keyholes. I’ve been unable to keep the outside world out since then. Fire didn’t destroy our home, but the rumours that came afterwards did. Attacks continue whenever I check my email or the news. Your lawyer says it isn’t wise for us to begin your defence yet. But I must defend you, get my thoughts in order. Every fire has a beginning, but not every fire is begun by an arsonist. Every trial has an ending, not every ending is just.
Before teaching, I studied art history. Now, in my notebook, information about ancient Roman mosaics has been supplanted by research about accelerants, motives for arson, rising global temperatures, wind patterns, the forensic distribution of burned eucalyptus leaves. Now, instead of wondering what excavated art reveals about Roman life, I wonder how anything withstands time or fire. I once studied a mosaic showing the goddess Demeter abandoning the Earth to drought while she rescued her child from the kidnapper Hades. It’s the judicial system that has kidnapped you, but I am just as maddened by the need to rescue you. You’ve been in custody. Even on bail, darkness has imprisoned you. You might be returned to jail, this time for years. I need strength to keep you home.