‘We’ll take it back to the shelter with us.’

‘No, Mum.’

I looked from the quivering creature to my son’s serious face.

‘It can’t survive.’ Caleb passed the sketchbook to me and lifted the creature in his gloved hands. A man’s hands, I realised. With a man’s strength.

I watched my son hold the wallaby soothingly close. With a terrible gentleness, he snapped its neck. I cried out in sympathy, and awe and something else. Perhaps reverence at the distance between breath and death and how quickly it can be traversed.

We were nearly at the refuge. All energy pulled from him, Caleb was limp and drained. I looked up. Nancy Bailey, who missed nothing, watched us. She had seen Caleb. She stared as he lowered the wallaby’s still body to the ground. I knew she misunderstood. I didn’t know this would matter.

I found a stretcher for Caleb in the church hall. People were helpful, recognising me as the primary school principal and asking if I’d heard from many of the children. I checked my phone, but there was nothing. Caleb stepped out of his CFA uniform. Beneath, he wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt, wet with sweat. I gave him more water and passed him his rescued laptop before helping him take off his thick, padded gloves. Caleb winced.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. Then I saw his hands were burned, the skin red, blisters broken and weeping. ‘How?’ I asked.

He sat, damp black hair falling limply into his eyes, rested the laptop and sketchbook on the blanket beside him and sighed. He kept his black bandana on, covering his head. Around his new lip piercings, saliva and blood had washed the ash and soot away, revealing pink, swollen, painful skin. His silver pendant swayed on its leather cord. Perhaps sweat had kept it clean. The skull and wing were clearly visible.

‘What do the wings mean?’ I asked. ‘On your pendant?’

He touched it with his grubby fingertips. ‘It’s meant to look odd. Like, there’s a skull. Left behind. But there’s also a soul that flies away.’

‘I didn’t think you believed in souls.’

‘You’re acting weird. You need to go to sleep.’

He was right. I was tired enough to ask only the wrong questions. What I needed to know was where he’d been that day. He might have given me a sensible answer, then, before the accusations. It might have been information I could use.

But he sat there, staring at his pendant. I regarded my own burned and aching feet. Despite the first aid cream I’d received, they would scar. Then I stretched out on a mattress beside him and closed my eyes.

‘I know you from somewhere. Aren’t you someone?’

I opened my eyes. Here, in a crazed bustle that spoke volumes of how helpful everyday people could be, had we slept? Caleb had climbed back to his feet and swayed slightly. A woman was talking to him, a short, well-exercised blonde whose jacket buttons strained to close. I knew her. Sadie Riley, the reporter who’d tormented – sorry, interviewed – Caleb before. She carried a notebook and held her mobile phone out, waiting for something to record. She didn’t recognise him – he’d changed a lot over the past year and was covered in soot. Staring at Caleb, she wore a smile like someone had slapped her in the face.