Over a year, my contact with Rosie had contracted. Now we avoided each other at the place where our driveways neared. But I was aware of her, watching Caleb through front curtains that twitched when he returned from the bus stop. Her bedroom light switched off only after his. It was good of Caleb to think of checking on her, considering the claims she’d already made. She hated him.

He stopped pretending to eat and slouched from the kitchen. ‘Let’s go, now.’

The air outside was hot and still. Trudging through desiccated bark to Rosie’s front door, we might have been the only living beings in the valley. Even animals I regularly saw while out running had hidden from the weather for the day. Our old four-wheel drive lurked near the fence, as far from Rosie’s place as possible.

Caleb knocked on Rosie’s front door. The responding footsteps were few and slow – Rosie had watched our approach and we were not worth hurrying for. Her door opened, a sliver of too-bright light illuminating her lined face. Near her scalp, her hair was grey and oily. Lower, beneath a line marking the day she stopped caring, she had a blonde dye and a cheap perm.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m making sure you’re ready,’ I said.

Rosie sniffed.

‘You know… fire warnings?’ I said. ‘We need to clear our gutters, rake leaves.’

‘Ready as I plan to be.’

‘We can help, if you want…’

Rosie glared at Caleb. ‘Your weirdo goth boy will do something to help me? Finally stop that manna gum shedding bark into my pool?’ Her words were a series of slaps. ‘Nothing can make a difference now. I don’t need his help.’

‘What about Pattern?’ Caleb asked. The beagle wound around Rosie’s ankles.

‘We’re taking him with us.’ Rosie relented a little. ‘I’m not staying and defending. My brother’s gunna take us into Melbourne. We’ll be back next week.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

Rosie gazed at the dry grass between our houses. ‘You staying? You don’t have a pool. You can use water from mine. If you need it.’

What an unlooked-for kindness this was! ‘I’ve got a hose connected to the house…’

‘Town water failed on Black Saturday. People needed water from their pools.’

I finally understood her. ‘If fire gets close, I’ll spray water over your house too.’

Rosie thanked me and shrugged simultaneously. She stepped back behind her door. Would she ever forgive us for what happened last year?

I gave Caleb a lift into town, his bicycle squeezed into the back seat of my old blue Commodore. He might want it to come home. He tapped his finger to the beat pulsing from his earphones. My keychain dangled, the assortment of keys and attached USB stick rattling against my leg as we bounced over the unsealed road, passing wide fields of thirsty vineyards planted on a land of hills, undulant as a human body.