Rosie stood in her front yard, glaring at us. She wore the same shapeless dress as before and her hair was oily and wild. Perhaps she hadn’t bathed in days. I swam against a familiar wake of regret. All those months ago… If only I’d been more careful with Claire’s keys. If only I’d asked someone else to take Caleb to football practice. If only…

In endless arguments, historians prove we can never be sure about why things have happened. It doesn’t matter if Nero burned Rome so he could build the Domus Aurea for his throne, also now destroyed by time. All we remember is the burning rumour, whether or not it was true. I needed to know what Caleb did on the day of the fire.

Jack stopped the car, leaving the engine running. ‘I’ve gotta get back to work.’

Caleb climbed out, legs together. Walking to our front door, he kept his eyes trained carefully on the ground, thick black fringe covering his face. He was leaning slightly towards me, the way he had as a little boy. He looked back at Jack. ‘Rosie’s still grateful to you. Because of Sean. And she’s still angry with me.’

‘Things will get better,’ Jack promised. He turned to me. ‘I’ll check on you later.’ His stubble was gritty against my lips.

‘Thanks.’

Caleb closed himself inside his bedroom. I took a cup of tea into the sitting room where dull, smoke-tinged stripes of light pushed through the blinds. There were no other visible signs of change. But nothing made sense anymore. Late in the afternoon, I rapped on Caleb’s door. ‘Anything you need?’

Silence. ‘Caleb? I asked you a question.’

‘What?’

‘Do you need anything?’

‘No.’ But he opened his door.

‘Caleb?’

He walked past me, through the kitchen and laundry and outside. From the window above the sink, I watched him stride over the burned lawn towards the creek. The air was starting to clear, smoke-ghosts drifting away. This was my life now, watching at windows, trying to work out what was happening.

Caleb paced down to a clutch of charcoal trees and the creek. Reaching the collapsed tin roof, he pulled aside a stretch of blue-and-white tape. Then he vanished. He’d never been easy to control. He always acted out whatever impulse he had. ‘He’ll grow out of it,’ said people I trusted, like Claire and his teachers, giving him permission to be reckless. Though we’d moved here permanently only three years ago, his ancestors were from here. He was a product of this place. The 1890s and 1930s depressions brought unemployed fossickers Caleb’s age to the creek, where they subsisted on damper and jam, earning a few shillings a week and living in a village of tents. They boiled creek water in billy cans and slept on mattresses of saplings and chaff bags.