Along the way, we passed blue-uniformed Wildlife Officers in grim teams, dispatching animals who couldn’t be saved. How loud it was, helping those animals find peace! Other creatures were carried to the Healesville Sanctuary or to the vet. Those survivors might not have been luckier. What was luck? Fire destroys language as well as trees, buildings, lives – it strips words of meaning, removes their power to describe. A pile of ashes we paused beside, for instance. Once, that was a house – that had been a porch, that a door. Babies had been conceived here. Now brown blankets showed where lives ended.

We drove on. Forensics crews in white suits moved around a burned-out house. Jack stopped to ask if they needed anything. A young police officer, Milla Jackson, pushed aside her fringe, leaving dirt on her forehead. ‘Hey, Ms Wharton. Jack, you got any body bags? We’re running out.’

Jack shook his head, obviously appalled. Milla leaned closer. ‘Did you hear about Noah and Ashley?’ She was their aunt. ‘Their house has been destroyed. They’re staying in the city.’

‘I’m sorry, Milla.’

‘I’m glad they got out when they did.’

Milla was talking to me like a regular person. She obviously hadn’t heard about Caleb yet. Who would maintain respect for me then?

We drove off. I must have dozed. I dreamed it was a normal day. Caleb and Penelope would go parking beneath the same tree at the gentle creek bend where Stephen had parked with girlfriends as a teenager. Perhaps Stephen’s father and Claire had parked there in their own youth, I had never thought to ask.

We reached the small Brunton Primary School site. This was where I had spent most of my waking hours, Monday to Friday. The two-room timber building was still smouldering. But at least no crime scene tape decorated the walls or fences – no one had died here.

‘Do you want to stop?’ Jack asked. ‘Maybe you can salvage something.’

‘I’ll take a look.’

‘Stay away from anything that might fall,’ Jack told me. His phone rang. ‘I’m off to check next door.’

Following Jack from the ute, finally I slipped the poetry book into my bag. Then I crunched through debris, trudging to the spot where the school entrance once stood.

All this loss! Even the board of hooks where children hung coats and sunhats was bent out of shape and half-burned. Names were printed above the animals that illustrated each hook – Noah, Simon, Ashley, Violet, for Violet Gillan, whose father Michael had been with the police investigating at the hospital last night. Eventually I’d find out which kids had survived.

Carefully, I stepped through the space where there should have been a door. Nothing in here was salvageable. The children’s paintings were burned to ash. It was almost unbearable. I returned to Jack’s ute.

Jack was still on his phone, talking about his mother. He disconnected as I approached. ‘Nothing there?’