‘Oh yes. Jack loves it here. We’ll be very happy.’ Apparently, in her mind, the Brunton fire was forty years off. ‘I’ve had a book of poems published, you know. It got very good reviews.’

‘We were talking about the fossicker’s hut. On Damper Creek. Did you ever have a bonfire there?’

‘Did you see us? Oh, Queensland was beautiful before the war.’

She’d gone to another place, but she’d linked them. ‘Dried leaves,’ Shirley said. ‘Trash, we called it. I’d see smoke for days. It bleached the sky. Like putting too much blue in the whites and rinsing it out. Everything smells of burned caramel and toast.’

A caregiver came in with tea. Shirley clapped her hands. ‘I knew I smelled toast!’

She offered me some. I shook my head. ‘Someone usually has toast.’

‘Maybe Jack?’

Shirley frowned. ‘Who’s Jack?’

Against my will, I saw myself in a decades-off future. Could I ever forget being a mother? Caleb? Shirley clenched her fists and closed her eyes. ‘I love the roar of a cane field on fire. Flames taller than a building.’

I stayed a few more minutes. Shirley was obsessed with flames. Her story filled the silence in the story of the bushfire, like a missing page in Caleb’s sketchbook, or a too-long pause in a piece of music. Could I use this? Make the court see that she was also at the abandoned fossicker’s hut? Brought to the witness stand, who knew what she’d say? Any lawyer could make her look confused, unreliable. So, what could I do?

On the way back to the desk I decided simply to assert myself. I reached for the sign-out book and flipped back through the months to the day of the fire. ‘That’s confidential—’ Rebecca began.

Many residents were signed out by family members. Shirley was not among them. I remembered Jack’s testimony. He had called his mother before the fire but hadn’t spoken to her, although records said she’d been here. But the records might not be accurate.

Had Jack been lying? Was it possible that he had given Caleb an alibi, so that Shirley would have one?

I turned to yesterday’s sign-out page. My eye skimmed to the evening, when Shirley went missing. Her name was not there. According to the book, she had never left. Not yesterday, same as the day of the fire. It was the proof I needed that when Shirley was out, without permission, it wasn’t mentioned in the book. As far as investigators knew, she’d remained here right through the firestorm.

But she really had no alibi, after all. She could have been anywhere. I was pretty sure she was the white figure in Caleb’s sketches.

My call went straight through to Douglas’s message bank. Still in my car, I tried Stephen’s number too. ‘I need to talk to you.’