It’s months since the first kookaburra returned to our yard, perched on a ruined manna gum branch. Other animals have returned to the Yarra Valley – cattle, sheep, kangaroos. I see them when I’m out running. Again in the mornings, I hear the warbling of magpie song through air unstained by smoke. Later in the day, once again currawongs squawk. New leaves grow on surviving trees. Along the dark ground and up the towering ghosts of eucalypts, new leaves grow, a bright surprising green. Though our neighbours and the council have fought them, imported weeds have also sprung to life: thistles, asphodel, turnip weed, blackberries. Your grandmother’s old car, the one you tried so disastrously to drive, is now part of a Bushfire Art collection at the gallery where I once volunteered. Its puddles of aluminium and steel, once melted over our driveway, have resolidified into uncanny shapes on a polished wood floor. Meanwhile, in this valley where city and bush overlap, we’ve endured the encouraging and uncomprehending visits of religious leaders and minor royals offering symbolic seed packets and platitudes. Country Clubs have relit their tennis courts and re-laid their croquet grass over land that even before the fires had already been purposed and repurposed. It might appear peaceful country but this is a restless, changing place. The world is changing and we have to deal with it. Those who don’t want to look instead for targets like you.

I’ll never sleep. I wrap myself in my dressing gown and pace the hall to your bedroom. I stand at your window. Lights from the nearby Retirement Home and the further away town blink across the night-dark dry creek bed, site of your alleged crimes.

Other fires have lapped at Brunton’s outskirts, singeing its fabric, burning off its loose threads. But this one caught the entire community, destroying its warp and weft, leaving nothing but ashes, as surely as it destroyed the people who died. Every local family has regrets. Beneath every rooftop and buried in every building site is the story of some small decision that could have been made differently and saved a life – or cost one. Few people truly survived: police are increasingly called to deal with domestic violence and alcohol. The house right next door to ours pulses with poisonous emotions. Its owner, Rosie Henderson, hates you. I still believe there’s some truth I can find to free you, but it seems I’m alone.

I know all your movements on the day of the bushfire; from the window I stare into unrevealing darkness, all but seeing your ghost stride through our backyard, clutching your sketchbook to your chest. In my mind’s eye, I see you push your bicycle along Damper Creek Road to our house, heading for the dry creek bed and the old fossicker’s hut beyond.

This is the closest I’ve come to despair. Questions peck my consciousness, throwing me into a fluttering panic of denial. How can I learn about you? I should know everything. Could I be wrong? Could you be responsible? – I can’t let myself wonder. I can’t stop wondering. When did this impossible distance erupt between us? Did you look out on the sunburned paddocks whose dryness frightened everyone and decide to…