Jack was what people called a good bloke. He coached kids’ sport. He didn’t speed or drink drive. He swore, but never when children were listening. He smoked the odd joint but never a strong one. Everything he had done since we began dating showed me how much he cared for people, especially for his mother, for Caleb, for me. He hadn’t let this court case come between us. I’d thought this was because he was a decent, honest bloke. Tonight, while he was being decent and honest and sleeping, I’d use my insomnia and his password to check his computer, to search for files made since last time.

I knew it was a risk. I knew I could lose Jack as I’d lost Stephen. I heard Genevieve. You get everything wrong. You could have stayed in Hawthorn if you hadn’t made a fuss about Ivy. Stephen would come back to you eventually. She maintained that sex didn’t matter. Perhaps her disengagement came with age. For me, nearing menopause only reinforced how irreplaceable was Caleb, was love. I was sick of advice, sick of being judged, sick of losing love. Yet here I was, going off to lose more.

En route to Jack’s, I stopped at Woolworths. I’d been avoiding shops – other mothers were everywhere. What mysterious skill eluded me that these women – whose sons weren’t called mass murderers – possessed?

‘Ms Wharton?’

A young voice reached me from a wheelchair. A young man with bright eyes, both arms in the cocoons of compression bandages. Scars on his face were the pink of recent injury. I felt grief for his terrible suffering and fear that Caleb would be blamed.

‘Yes?’ I braced myself. Your son did this to me.

The young man did a strange and unexpected thing. He smiled. What to make of such friendliness? It moved me. Could he have me confused with another Ms Wharton?

‘You don’t recognise me,’ he said.

I waved my hand hopelessly. ‘I’m sorry. I…’

‘I’m Ethan. Caleb’s friend.’

Caleb’s friend? These words seemed to belong to another life, one where people might relate to Caleb in ways other than as witnesses or potential alibis. But Ethan. Yes, I did remember him. From long ago, and from Caleb’s yearbook.

‘From school footy,’ Ethan continued to explain. ‘He was better than me. I thought he was a future champion. Until… you know. The accident. I don’t believe what anyone’s saying. Can you tell him? I don’t want a big fuss looking like… you know. This.’

What could Ethan’s mother make of him now? I started my car. Ethan’s life, like Caleb’s, had been aborted by trauma. Their friends continued with university or careers, but Caleb faced twenty-five years in jail, and Ethan might never recover.