Caleb walked around the campground established for survivors who’d spent the first night in the refuge but now needed more long-term accommodation, cap pulled low, concealing his face. He and Penelope once came here to feed the ducks. When would he see her again? A sign asked people not to feed the ducks, and especially not to feed them bread. His sketchbook featured a hand, bread, open bills. After the invasion of flames, this was what became of Brunton’s citizens, forced to seek refuge close to bare land where they’d once been at home.

Penelope’s house was gone; Penelope herself, their togetherness – just that morning – was long ago, or an illusion. While Caleb slept, tongues of flame licked through his dreams, inflammatory insults he lacked the will to extinguish. He dream-walked down Main Road, ashes dropping like hellish rain. He needed to rescue his bike although he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it connected him to a past burned to a cinder. It couldn’t have survived. He shouldn’t have survived either. He deserved pain. Not that it made any difference. He’d been lying to himself, imagining he could make amends. Fix things. That was what his drawings were about. How ridiculous.

He was that. Ridiculous. No wonder Brunton people stared at him. He’d started well, with good academic results and successes in sport but this was just what was expected from Stephen Wharton’s son. And since the accident, he’d been nothing but a disappointment.

Last night, Mum had argued with Dad and Ivy over the phone. Ivy, with her white jeans and suede boots and big fat fake lips – why did Mum even bother talking to Ivy? It was fucking mortifying.

‘If you hadn’t left him…’ Mum had said to Dad.

Dad or Ivy said something.

‘I did find another place to live,’ Mum said. ‘Here. You didn’t complain at the time.’

Caleb had put his pencils down, closed his sketchbook. Because of him, Mum and Dad were still fighting. ‘Do you think you might have PTSD?’ Penelope had asked him in her kind voice, visiting Caleb one day last week when Mum was at work. Penelope had been diagnosed with PTSD. Her entire family was dead. Helpless in the heat, Caleb still dreamed of hearing their screams. He’d never been able to tell her. ‘My counsellor says symptoms are having trouble sleeping, and reliving the fire, and having trouble concentrating on other things…’

‘It’s not fucking contagious,’ Caleb said.

Her hand covered his, like she couldn’t see the ugly scars. He’d lifted a branch while it was on fire, he had lifted burning hot metal to rescue the sketchbook trapped underneath. Something he’d never tell anyone. Not even Penelope.

‘I’m trying to help,’ she said.