I stayed, watching. The afternoon lengthened into evening. A new moon barely lit the world. Was that Caleb standing by the creek, or was it the shadow of a forgotten tree? High above, the Milky Way was a wash of silver, like smoke, across the sky.

Normally the lights of Brunton were visible from here, past the Retirement Home. It wasn’t simply the smoke or roadblocks making the town seem further away than before. I’d been starting to imagine we belonged. But now I imagined Brunton people pointing at us as we drove down the street. They would talk. Yes, that’s them. That’s the mother. That’s the son. And I sensed absent faces, wraiths in the smoke, flowing in a state of dislocation and loss. I knew who some of the victims were: television had begun the distressing roll call.

Valentin Zynda. The Miller family. Elizabeth Morgan.

This was the world they left behind, their surviving loved ones drifting like ghosts themselves. They wondered if their souls were up for it, if they had strength to create a future. Before, no one knew who’d survive the fire. Now, no one knew who’d survive the aftermath.

I poured myself a glass of wine and returned to the window. My own glimpse of the future was personal, devastating, impossible. Caleb would be blamed – he couldn’t be. I doused the spot fires of my fears with other thoughts – it was normal for teenagers to have secrets. Caleb had been in trouble before, for skipping class, smoking at the train station, cheating in a Grade 5 maths test. He’d lied about quitting his AFL team. That was the one time Stephen had been really angry. He’d have a similar minor reason for secrecy now. But he wasn’t an arsonist just because other people found it convincing.

What was he doing out there? I’d only know by asking. I had no choice but to risk his anger.

I’d been keeping up with news on my mobile phone but now my portable charger had finally run out. I’d have to charge it in my car. I leaned back in my seat, while the air conditioning did its best to clear smoke from the air. I took some of the clearest breaths I’d had in days and turned the radio on.

‘Victorian detective members of Taskforce Phosphorus, investigating the deadly Brunton fires, have angrily denied reports they are about to arrest a member of the Brunton Country Fire Authority,’ the radio announcer told me.

A member of the Country Fire Authority. Was that the connection that really got Caleb into trouble? Would anyone have suspected him otherwise? Without that, the police might not even know his name. I felt a surge of unreasonable anger against Jack for suggesting he join.