‘Investigations haven’t reached that stage yet. It’s important to note that because of the relatively high number of casualties and arson allegations, Brunton is getting a lot of media attention but all across the state, other fires are being investigated.’

Click, flash, horror, next question.

‘Families are suffering,’ another reporter observed. ‘How long until bodies are identified for burial?’

‘It’ll take time. Police expect to find many more dead from multiple fires. And identification will take time. Fire causes extreme damage. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether remains are human or animal.’

Even Genevieve said there was no point threatening a media outlet with legal action unless they mentioned names. I knocked on Caleb’s door. He was sprawled on his bed, drawing. I thought I made out the dim outlines of trees, a slanted, corrugated roof. The fossicker’s hut as it once was. ‘Still your graphic stories? Can I see?’

He closed the black covers. ‘Mum. No. This is my stuff. It’s personal.’

I needed to see that collapsed hut again for myself. A knock at my front door disturbed me while I was lacing up my boots.

Jack stood there. ‘We’ve been… busy nearby. I thought I’d see how you were going.’

‘You can come with me.’

Jack looked confused. ‘With you…?’

‘I need to check this place that’s getting Caleb into so much trouble.’

Jack frowned but couldn’t stop me. It might be surrounded by police tape, but it was my property. ‘All right. There’s not much to see.’

Ashes, quiet as dried petals or autumn leaves, fell as we walked beneath the trees that had bloomed flames. They were part of a phoenix landscape where fire belonged, but where perhaps we did not. Jack carried his bulldog cigarette lighter and an empty cigarette packet. ‘Caleb came here that day,’ I said. ‘Do you know why?’

‘He told me he came for his sketchbook,’ Jack said.

‘That’s what he told me too. Does that make sense to you?’

‘I don’t know. It’s his art.’

‘He has other sketchbooks he left in his room.’

‘Careful.’ Jack indicated a pair of thick electrical cables, ripped from a fallen line and now reaching the ground. On Saturday, with the wind wild, and power from the town’s generator still reaching Anzac Avenue, they would have danced like electrical snakes.

‘I’ll avoid them.’

In the blackened debris, it was hard to tell where the dry creek bed was until I reached blue-and-white police tape that surrounded the tin roof of the hut Caleb had made his cubby house, now a heap of metal piled against the charred remains of a chimney.

‘We found a tin plate here when we first moved in,’ I told Jack. ‘A collapsed dining table. They must have been from Gold Rush days.’