If only Mum didn’t mind so much! One result or another, one expert or another was pretty much the same to Caleb. In the conference room, he ate his uninteresting sandwich, then he ate Mum’s. Mum sat, reading Penelope’s statement one more time. Her hands were skeletally thin, skin pale and dry as paper. She was trapped in her own mind, perhaps living Penelope’s day, focussing on those moments when it intersected with Caleb’s. Caught up in Caleb’s life like a living dream.

Caleb knew how Penelope’s day had gone, too. He knew everything from the time she fled her parents’ home, furious about the control they exerted. She felt so guilty about that now! The last words she spoke to them were angry. But if she hadn’t been angry, if she hadn’t walked out, the only thing that would have changed was that she’d be dead, too.

That was Penelope’s house, behind a huge eucalypt that had crashed over their driveway, blocking the gate. A two-storey shadow, backed by red and orange fire, billowing smoke. The fire front had passed, leaving burning trees and buildings in its wake. Penelope’s mother’s hatchback remained in the drive, but her father’s four-wheel drive was gone. The older Gordons had never liked Caleb. They respected Dad, but Dad was a lawyer, not a weird goth who dressed as badly as their daughter. Caleb couldn’t hold this against them now. He didn’t deserve to be liked. But they deserved to live.

Hopefully they’d made it out. But he couldn’t know. They might be here: Caleb had to try saving them. He raced to the house. Smoke eased through the shuttered windows, the house crying smoke – there was no chance to save it. The monster had attacked from the rear. The house’s guts were already ablaze. Even the doorknob was hot. Caleb tried to turn it. Heat seared through his leather glove. An explosion startled him. The sketchbook clattered from beneath his arm. He picked it back up, eyes directed skywards. Flames had burst through the roof. The front windows shattered outwards.

Screaming. Not just people and animals but fire itself. Shrieking. Penelope’s two dogs, those weird things he had laughed at. Part poodle, part rabbit. Not proper dogs. You can’t take them for a run. Look. If you pat them, they fall over. Screaming. Agony. Some screams that were not dogs.

One side window had not yet burst. The room beyond might be cool enough to enter. Caleb smashed the glass with a garden rock, broke into Penelope’s father’s study, assailed by high-pitched whines and screams. Again, Penelope’s dogs. Smoke leaked around the hallway door. Her goldfish floated in a bowl on a stand beyond. By now the water would have boiled.