Jack’s phone rang. Answering, he stared at me, his eyes watery in his soot-stained face.

‘Is it Caleb?’ I mouthed.

He shook his head. I looked around the room. Mattresses and stretchers were laid out over a timber floor marked with lines for basketball and other indoor games. Piles of donated clothing, mostly in vivid, cheap nylon, already grew like bright toadstools on spectator benches along the side walls.

Loss washed over me now. All these people. Proud homeowners, sharers of the Australian dream. These people, my neighbours, were dreamers. They were as homeless as the man I used to give coffee to outside the Brunton petrol station. In fact, he was also here, with his beanie and his blanket and his bottle.

Jack ended his call. I touched his arm. ‘I need to know about Caleb.’

‘I don’t see anyone from the other tanker, Phoebe. They’re still out there.’

‘Can we go looking for him?’

‘Not right now. I have to go. That was the Incident Control Centre on the phone. This isn’t over yet. The fire’s still moving. A fire spotter has issued a red flag warning for Linlithgow.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Phone lines are down. I have to drive out to deliver warnings to people who might not have heard them on the radio.’

I blinked. Of course. Jack had brought us here but he was uninjured himself. He was going out, he’d be looking for people. Finding people. I couldn’t stay here. It would drive me mad. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Phoebe, you can’t. You don’t know…’

‘I know exactly what it’s like out there. I can help you; I know these people. They trust me. And I need to go home. The fire’s already passed Brunton. I need to be home in case Caleb has gone there. Please, Jack. I’m not asking you to taxi everyone around. Just me. I have to find Caleb.’

Jack relented. He offered me his jacket. I put it on. We left the shelter. I was Caleb’s mother. I would find him.

We drove through the smoke, the darkness broken occasionally by flaming embers. The fire was beautiful in a ravenous way, an enormous tiger on the hunt, looking for something lovely to destroy.

‘The worst part is the flaming bark,’ Jack said. ‘It’s eucalyptus. Pulled off trees and carried by wind, it can fly twenty kilometres. I can’t get phone messages that far.’

It was so hot, new fires were starting everywhere. ‘It’s different out here in the bush. In towns, I’ve seen buildings explode before the fire front reaches them,’ Jack said. ‘Afterwards, they’re flattened as though they’d been stamped on by a giant.’

Through the window I watched flame spinning bark around like an old barber’s pole that had finally managed flight. Then more like a kite, freed from the string that once controlled it. The flames playing with power poles were many shades of amber, and for a moment I let myself remember the Greek work for amber is electron. Words have an ancient history, too. But everywhere I looked was no Caleb.