‘Caleb.’ How wonderful to say his name again, to him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m alive.’

He swallowed but seemed to find it difficult. His throat must have been even more clogged with ash than my own. But he continued moving. My steps fell into rhythm with his.

On each side of the ash-covered road stood the blackened stumps of once magnificent trees. Once, those charcoal branches had burst with green foliage, had lent shade to park benches that were now molten metal and ashes. On the far side of the road rested a four-wheel drive, low and stained, its former tyres represented by wheels of ash at each corner. Its windscreen had simply melted. Caleb replaced his helmet with a slight wince, and strode on.

‘I left my bike here,’ he said.

‘Your bike?’ What miracle of hope made him look for his bicycle amidst all this evidence of damage to vehicles and shopfronts, trees and benches?

Caleb stopped so suddenly I stumbled. Just off the roadside crouched three wrecked cars. The headlights of one were still on. They peered, wounded, from a blanket of covering ash, so thick I couldn’t tell the vehicle make.

Caleb was finally reacting, finally showing an emotional response. He shook slightly. I reached again for his arm.

Caleb shook off my hand. The movement wasn’t rude or offensive. He just didn’t want my hand there. Had he really noticed I was with him? Perhaps he knew the car. The more he grew, the more the circles of people who mattered to him become different from mine. Some kids at Caleb’s school had driver’s licences and cars.

‘Do you know this car?’ I asked. ‘Is the owner a friend from school?’

‘I don’t know. Not anymore.’

I blinked. Jack’s words played through my mind. The worst place for a bushfire to trap you is inside your own car. That column of black behind the steering wheel, that was a person. Had been one.

Horrified, I grabbed Caleb’s arm. He moved briefly, then his muscles tightened as if he was strengthened by realising I needed support.

Beside the ash man, smaller, on the passenger side, that second black column – Lot’s wife except ash, not salt – that was also a human being. Had been one.

‘Why didn’t they get out?’ I couldn’t help myself.

Caleb, a volunteer of a few months’ standing, shook his head. ‘Poisonous fumes. They must’ve asphyxiated.’

As we walked a few metres further, I noticed a slow-moving, small black shape, in the ashes not far from St Monica’s refuge. A lump rose from the ashes in my throat. An animal? Some child’s pet?

We moved closer. The small shape resolved itself into the singed body of a baby wallaby. Hobbled and in pain, it dragged its burned tail. Stopping beside it, I felt a wave of sympathy for this tiny innocent creature, no one’s pet, injured and alone. ‘Poor thing!’

The wallaby pulled its head back in terror. Struggling to breathe, it swung at me with one tiny, black and injured paw. ‘Mum! What…’ Caleb began.