Houses on Penelope’s street, both sides, were reduced to cinders. Faint trails of smoke still rose but fire was abandoning this place. We stopped.

Jack said, ‘Are you sure you want to see this?’

‘I think so,’ said Penelope, wonderingly.

The property’s perimeter was marked by blue-and-white police tape. Amongst the smouldering rubble, a stack of collapsed steel, maybe once the roof, had been thrown against a blackened chimney, as if by an enormous, careless hand.

‘Your parents have been taken away.’

‘Taken away?’

‘They were treated with dignity,’ Jack said. ‘Don’t go past the tape. And I have to ask you not to take any photos.’

‘I want to pick up some clothes. No donated stuff is really… me.’

She wanted to pick up clothes? Her new reality hadn’t settled in.

‘We’ll find some… things,’ Jack promised her. ‘When we get in with digging machines. There won’t be much. I have to be honest. I’m sorry.’

Penelope stood at the edge of a soot-stained footpath, murmuring. ‘I left Creepy Chic in Brunton to come here, but argued with Mum and went back into town. I’m not helping you with anything. That’s what I told my mother. Those were the last words she heard from me.’ She pressed pale, narrow hands over her ears, as if she could block the memory like the roar of fire. ‘I hear those words. Over and over.’

Jack stepped past the police tape to retrieve a cast iron skillet he gave to Penelope.

She turned it over. ‘My mother’s. She used this… Can I be alone for a minute?’

Jack and I moved closer to his ute. Black remains crusted the ground. Marsupials, judging by teeth in the ashes. Something else, hard and dark, rested in a sparse patch of blackened grass. I stooped to pick up a silver bracelet, child-sized. ‘This didn’t come out during the fire.’

‘Penelope could have lost it in the yard years ago,’ Jack guessed.

He was right. Penelope had no sisters, and this was their yard. I imagined her parents giving her this bracelet, now a link to a past I’d never known. It was warm in my palm, and rattled dully. I wanted Penelope to care enough for Caleb to help him, and I wanted this bracelet.

Penelope stood, deep in thought; she clearly didn’t want to be interrupted. I slid the chain into my pocket. ‘I’ll give this to her later.’

Jack checked his watch. He wouldn’t remember the moment, or the bracelet.

Penelope returned.

‘Back to St Monica’s?’ Jack asked.

She nodded.

‘I’ll visit Caleb later,’ I told her. ‘You can come to the hospital if you like.’

‘I want to see him. But I’m so tired…’

She was quiet and still in the back seat as we left.

We passed another house surrounded by blue-and-white tape. I’d later learn it was Michael Gillan’s house, where his wife and daughter had asphyxiated in the false refuge of their bathroom. Twenty slow minutes later, we approached the fuming heap of a neighbour’s house. Three cars were incinerated in the driveway. It was unlikely anyone had escaped.