Torched

STATA MATER | A guardian goddess who protected against fires

Stata Mater’s cult was kindled in the Roman Forum and spread throughout the empire. She was often depicted holding a tamed flame.

There might have been four or eight of us in our house after Caleb’s release, not just Caleb and me. With no power for light, the place seemed unfamiliar, not quite our home. In the light of old torches and emergency candles, our shadows twisted and somehow split from our bodies, elusive, scarcely connected, flickering among the shadows and whatever other ghosts had followed us. Everywhere I looked there was an alternate version of Caleb or myself, born from an action we had not taken, a choice we had not made, an ending to the fire that had not eventuated. But at least we were here, together, in our home. The situation was different, worse, for other people. Jeannie had lost her house. She texted me about it, trying to be bright. I’ve got to move in with my mum. Not ideal. But I won’t have to lug that old fridge out for hard rubbish collection after all!

Life was unlike anything we’d known before. The Yarra Valley had regressed to the standards of early colonisation. Mobile phones became unreliable, sometimes working, sometimes failing, dependent on the whims of the wind or some other unknown force. News passed by word of mouth, door to door. People didn’t know what had happened in Linlithgow, in Melbourne, in the rest of Australia. No one knew how long it would take to restore water or power. Survivors journeyed over mountains to register with the Red Cross and collect basic supplies. They were greeted by local store and restaurant owners carrying boxes of sandwiches and bottles of water, in acts of generosity that no one would forget. They passed collapsed trees with the middle sawn away to clear the road, and car wrecks sprayed with the names of insurance companies.

The fire was becoming real, solidifying in our minds as part of history. Like anyone else, I wanted life to make sense – our own experience to be a story. But our ideas of what had happened didn’t stay the same from day to day. There were so many possible causes it was frightening. Power companies, lightning strikes, another arsonist (a real one this time) an act of God. It was hard to say what the truth was. Only that my truth was different from anyone else’s. Meanwhile things seemed to look increasingly simple for everyone else. On television, in newspapers and online, the narrative became one about a firebug who had to be caught.

For a while, Caleb and I continued as normal, or as normal as we’d been in a year. I called him out of his room for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. He ate cornflakes and sandwiches and various hot meals without any appearance of caring, then returned to his room. But I couldn’t silence people. Whispers and rumours spread in an abundant and vile proliferation. I feared I’d lose track, and started keeping notes. News reports got closer and closer to naming him. At least Caleb had not yet been charged – that ordeal was like a blustery change that might not come. No one could be as vigilant as me in making sure he had not been named. Eventually it would come out – in our community, everyone already knew. At her BuyCheap counter, Ingrid asked, ‘Wasn’t Caleb sent home from Scout Jamboree for stealing matches?’ She knew.

The next couple of days, while the Prime Minister announced that defence force personnel would help with fire fighting and denounced climate change activists, Caleb was nearly identified on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and talkback radio. I accessed them on my phone. Every time my phone signal fluttered briefly into life I found something new. I copied major details from the posts onto pages in my battered notebook. I’d print them when the power came back on. In one newspaper article, a ring of quotes was arranged around the image of a burning house. Two of its beams had collapsed into the shape of a burning cross. CFA chief executive, Brendan Hurd, his hair looking like corrugated iron, was quoted: Volunteers undergo probation periods and criminal police checks.

A man in a suit, apparently found at random on the Melbourne streets, said, All CFA volunteers should face psychological profiling.

Taskforce Phosphorus Superintendent Lawrence Thornton said: Speculation about CFA members damages the reputations of volunteers. I invite people to speak to the police if they know anything. We’ll take statements from everyone. Even if you’ve spoken to others, we’d like to have your comments on file at Phosphorus.

Detective Superintendent Lawrence Thornton was photographed in another longer article. We urge the arsonist to come forward. This might be scary. But community anger means we simply can’t guarantee his safety until he’s in custody.

The bush burned for nearly a week. Mornings with magpies warbling and evenings listening to the shrill buzz of cicadas belonged to a different world, one drowned in a tidal wave of smoke. Everything was out of order. Maybe Hiroshima was like this, afterwards. I tried to see the Caleb a future jury would find in evidence and legal briefs, but I shared the house with a ghost. Investigators came and went, testing Damper Creek and the ground at the end of my yard, leaving the area strewn with as much blue-and-white tape as a Blue Light disco. Life had changed. I made a few phone calls to the Education Department, delving through their excruciating guidelines and paperwork, trying to find the place and means to get the school running again.

Then, one morning, I woke to the scent of smoke-tinted rain. The weather had finally changed, and would be working with the firefighters now instead of against them. And yet the strange smell suited my feeling that, though I was home, my home was lost. It was time to do some research, see what I could find out myself. Again, I sat in my car, charging my smartphone.

I remembered waiting with Caleb, years ago. The two of us in my Commodore outside his AFL club before practice. I said, I spy with my little eye something beginning with B, and watched his little face in the rear-view mirror.

‘Boy?’ he guessed. ‘Ball? Bad Mummy!’

Now alone in my car, when my phone powered on, I googled arson. I read about historical arsonists. I read about petrol bombs and pyromania. I read that once arsonists committed a crime, they couldn’t stop. It was a hit, like cocaine, an addictive success, like Marco’s early archaeological triumph that inspired him to commit his life to his career, like a vocation. I read about people who set fires for insurance claims, about firebugs whose obsession was sexual. I read about revenge arson. No motivation matched what I knew of Caleb.

But if not him, then who? So many people, even some of my former students, were surely more likely than Caleb to be attracted by fire? Kids with all sorts of personality and developmental issues. I thought of John Zynda who had visited Caleb in hospital and then been rude to me. I thought of the homeless man who used to sleep in the park beside Brunton petrol station. I’d given him coffee once, and, another time, an old umbrella when it wouldn’t stop raining. I’d seen him trying to light a cigarette with hands that could barely hold a bottle. Wasn’t he a more likely arsonist than Caleb?

And there were other possibilities. A paedophile who went too far destroying evidence against him. A terrorist. We were always told to look out for abandoned bags and people behaving suspiciously. Why, in one breath, did police admit terrorists were trying to destroy us and, in the next, blame a violent attack on an Australian teenager who never hated anyone? If I were a police investigator, terrorism was where I’d start looking. And I’d consider people like… well, say the fire expert, Oscar Lynch. He had described arsonists as being obsessed with fire – but wasn’t he, himself, obsessed? I turned off my phone and leaned against the headrest, staring out at my destroyed home.

Could this have happened? On the day of the fire, had Caleb trudged through my kitchen, down the back stairs, through the yard, past the manna gum, to the fossicker’s hut? Had he gathered sticks and twigs and bark as kindling and lit the fire? Had he wanted people to die? Even more horrifying – had he not cared who might die?

No. Not that.

No motive I read fitted Caleb. Not the Caleb I knew. What if I didn’t really know him? Caleb was quickening inside my imagination as he’d quickened inside my womb. I returned to Google. All it took was a few clicks on my phone and I had his Facebook page.

What’s wrong with you? a girl named Becky demanded on his newsfeed. I know you’ve got the hots for Penelope. But people with the hots don’t… like, burn down houses.

Further down the page, I saw photos of his old Melbourne friends. Through his Goth Chat page, I found a link to a graphic drawing group. Caleb published none of his own art (as far as I could tell) but occasionally got involved in arguments about goths and anime.

Searching his name, I read the public posts he’d made for years, including things about Stephen and me. I shouldn’t have read those. Caleb and I hadn’t always been best friends. He had opinions about me that I didn’t need to see. I went inside, fighting the feeling I was the betrayed, not the betrayer. There are some things parents aren’t meant to know.

I remembered Jack saying that old Bruntonians had been through enough fires that they would know what to do. They hadn’t known what to do. Perhaps they felt shame as well as grief. Perhaps this was one more reason they wanted someone to blame.

I watched various TV channel apps, waiting for the next nightly news assault. Arthur Simmons took viewers to that afternoon’s memorial service for a Victorian cricketer, once nearly good enough to play for Australia. ‘He died in his Linlithgow home,’ Arthur said. A face lift gave the impression his skin was strapped on with elastic bands. Behind him, a sad group of funeral attendees walked past signs denouncing the government. ‘The Minister for Sport sent his condolences.’

Oscar Lynch was interviewed again. Arthur Simmons told us his scar came from a childhood accidental burn. Since then, Oscar said he’d dedicated his life to finding the truth about fire.

‘It’s time Australians took arson more seriously!’ Oscar sounded like he wanted a desk to punch. ‘Arson costs two and a half billion dollars a year. Two and a half billion dollars!’

‘There are elements of the story we can’t discuss,’ Arthur commented, ‘because of ongoing investigations. But the community is fighting back. Australians are standing up for ourselves, identifying these antisocial arsonists and telling them, we don’t want you here. We want you locked up, where you belong.’

‘Many of these murderers—’ Oscar announced ‘—let’s call them what they are—’

‘Yes, let’s call them what they are.’ Arthur sounded pleased with this development.

‘Many of these murderers could be identified earlier, with proper monitoring,’ Oscar continued. ‘Offenders have characteristics in common. They’re young, male, with psychological problems. Very specific incidents in their past can be warning signs. Family problems.’

It wasn’t a secret code. People who knew us would know this profile matched Caleb.

‘Similarities have been drawn between this catastrophe and Black Saturday back in 2009. Even with the 9/11 terrorist attacks,’ Arthur said. ‘This time with firebugs as the culprits. Latest developments add millions of dollars to the costs of these tragic events. One of Melbourne’s water reservoirs will be decommissioned to avoid contaminating the water supply with ashes. The latest rumours are that a young CFA volunteer will be arrested some time today.’

My car radio carried equally distressing news. Apparently a few hours ahead of the TV coverage, the news station was covering a police press conference. Voices in the crowd carried over the radio. I imagined the rest. Bulbs flashing. The Australian flag shifting behind a podium. ‘Fires have burned many hectares of land, destroyed hundreds of homes, left a thousand homeless.’ The commissioner recited numbers like a multiplication table. ‘All open spaces in the fire zone and most destroyed houses have been checked for remains. Are there questions?’

‘What is the Prime Minister going to do to stop this?’ called out one voice.

‘The PM has made it clear he’ll help where he can but this is a state government issue.’

‘Fire isn’t stopping at the borders,’ somoeone muttered.

‘Sadie Riley. The Melbourne Herald,’ piped a too-familiar voice from the invisible audience. ‘So, we can expect murder charges to be made against the suspected arsonist?’

‘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.’

The miner who lived here would have panned for gold in the creek before beginning to dig. There was no way to know how successful he’d been. He certainly hadn’t felt the need to take his tin plate. Perhaps he’d left in a hurry. The plate now rested in my cedar chest. I’d rescued it. It had survived a century here, but wouldn’t have survived the fire.

‘Caleb loved the lyrebird that lived here.’

‘Amazing things, lyrebirds,’ Jack said.

Suddenly I found myself crying. Because no lyrebird was here, repeating strange song stories. Because Caleb, in dressing like a goth, had been doing the equivalent of trying on the sounds and the appearance of another creature. Because this year there would be no autumn. There were no leaves to fall, no living eucalypts to shed their bark. Not a single reminder that this was once a living place. Fire had changed Earth’s rotation, stolen an entire season. Jack stepped closer like he wanted to hold me but even that kind restraint was suddenly unbearable. I wiped my eyes and tried to explain. ‘It mimicked the sound of a lawnmower, and a tractor. And a magpie. Once I heard it mimicking a police siren.’

I crouched to scoop a handful of rubble. The creek bed’s pebbles, worn smooth by millennia of running water, were still here, beneath the ash and soot. Jack bent too. Distrustful, I pushed him away. Jack pulled a torch from his pocket and shone its beam beneath the collapsed roof. For once, there was no danger of snakes. There were no snakes.

A four-wheel drive rumbled over the old dirt track, stopping nearby. Two Elecnet workers climbed out. One of them poked at the police tape with the toe of his heavy boot. ‘G’day. Is this the arsonist’s shed?’

Jack stepped in front of me, sticking out one hand. ‘Bob and Bruce. I’m Jack Laskin. CFA. We met the other day.’

‘There’s no evidence of arson,’ I said. These were the workers Jack mentioned in his notes. ‘It could’ve been clashing electrical wires.’

The Elecnet employees laughed at this possibility. Bob said, ‘They’d have to be live to cause a fire. The one time a blackout suits us. We’ve got wires to fix before it gets dark. I heard Caleb Wharton was seen prowling around here. That this is the way he’d ride to his girlfriend’s house.’

‘Girlfriend?’ repeated Bruce. ‘Heard her on the radio. Wharton killed her parents. Left her behind and murdered her whole family.’

Bob swore. ‘Fucking bastard. Deserves to hang.’

Fire could have sucked all oxygen from the air, it was so hard to breathe. Left her behind. I tried to imagine being Penelope. How it must feel for her to be grieving her parents and hearing rumours about Caleb. I tried calling Penelope, but her phone message now said she was with her aunt and out of town. Learning to live with her new family, I suspected. As though family was replaceable. I tried to imagine being Penelope. How it must feel for her to be grieving her parents and hearing rumours about Caleb. The police would be questioning her too. Would she be able to keep believing in him?

I left a message asking what she was saying about Caleb, what she intended to say in the future. But I wasn’t sure she’d reply or even hear it, and there was no way to force the contact. My heart broke for her. And I wanted to get in touch.

Back home, I sent Jack into the kitchen for beer. It was room temperature, but it was wet and frothy. I pulled out an old guitar and plucked at some chords, considering how small vibrations from its thin strings forced music from the soundbox. Music needs air to travel like fire needs oxygen to grow.

We loafed in my sitting room while the world darkened. Jack drank his beer.

Days passed. One week since the bushfire became two. Our power was reconnected. Terrible stories continued to filter through the fire zone. I learned that Michael Gillan had been called away from the hospital the night Caleb was admitted because his own house was alight. His wife and daughter, Shelly and Violet, were among the victims. Meanwhile, Caleb’s refusal to give a more detailed alibi became an entrenched thing, as certain a part of the Brunton fire as the death toll. He left the CFA at 4 pm. His explanation about going home to pick up his sketchbook did not satisfy the investigators. He’d completed dozens. Why come back for this one? But he would say no more about it. They looked at the sketchbook. I looked at the sketchbook, it showed more of Caleb’s graphic stories. Jack said Caleb was back in Brunton at 4.30 so he must have ridden very quickly, but that time was possible. He was a fast cyclist and had reasons to hurry.

Rain didn’t last. Heat returned. The smell of burned flesh became the putrid odour of rotting, bloated carcasses. The fetid side of human nature came out too, with looters ransacking the ruins of people’s homes for melted jewellery and other valuables. A group of local teenagers was blamed. It was obvious kids needed to go back to school. Little kids needed a return to normalcy, as much as big kids needed to be kept out of trouble. Brunton Primary was my school. Three of the four closest campuses had been destroyed.

I still had responsibilities. I called a meeting to decide how and where to hold classes. People become teachers for a variety of reasons. Some have a passion for their subject and a desire to pass that passion on. Some finish uni with a degree in the arts or sciences and don’t know what else to do. Art history was my first passion. My mother called my undergraduate degree indulgent. ‘Tolerable,’ she continued, ‘if you go on to do postgrad law.’ But I didn’t: I decided to teach, because I cared for children, my own child most of all. I would support my students by holding this meeting. I also wanted to be out in public, to make it clear I was not running away.

After discussing it with Jack and Jeannie, I used the school email distribution list to call a community meeting in an old building, once the station house for a thriving dairy farm, now an expensive hotel – an historic site I’d once have been excited to study. Its ballroom was one of the few remaining rooms in the Yarra Valley large enough for the expected crowd. It was also the place where every spring the CFA held meetings with the townspeople to discuss the predictions for the coming bushfire season. Earlier this season, there’d been major discussion about how prepared the town would be now we were having yet another of the hottest years on record. Even then, a level of frustration had been apparent. Scientists who spoke to us knew how to stop things getting worse, but no politician would take the leadership to make it happen, preferring to speak instead about political reasons why changes couldn’t be made and different ways that it was really someone else’s responsibility. Each year fighting the impression that the town itself was nothing but an older scar on the landscape, concealed beneath the newer scars of smaller recent bushfires, plans were made, probabilities of rain and El Nino discussed, reminders shared about which places were safe places last time, which direction the wind was likely to spring from and what the likely fuel load in its origin.

Be prepared and survive.

Now the road had mostly been cleared, it was a ten-minute drive along the highway, from Brunton to Linlithgow, where Penelope’s parents died. Along the way, carcasses of houses stared at each other across deserted, ashy roads like a row of skulls, each window as blackly devoid of meaning as an empty eye socket. I parked at the end of a long row of cars and approached the front door. A red-haired attendant in a black suit stood beneath a white archway. John Zynda. Caleb’s former AFL teammate. One of the few people who’d visited Caleb in hospital before the accusations started.

I wound down my window. ‘John. It’s good to see you. How are you—?’

‘Ms Wharton,’ John interrupted abruptly. Everyone would have heard rumours. In this town, where I’d once been greeted (‘Hello, Ms Wharton!’) cheerfully on the street, I was a pariah. It stung. ‘You can’t leave your car there. There’s parking around the back.’

‘There’s space here.’

‘You’re in the way. Other people need to get through.’

Through a row of windows to his right, I spotted the light of the ballroom. Judging by the number of cars, it would be getting crowded.

‘You need to move your car,’ John said.

It wasn’t worth arguing. I restarted my engine. In my rear-vision, I watched John open the entrance door. An elderly couple stepped through. Behind them, the hotel reception was rich with panelled wood and empty vases.

I drove down the driveway as ordered and returned on foot. John waited beneath the white archway. ‘I found the car park.’ I waited for him to open the hotel door for me.

He remained still. ‘We have a dress code. No denim.’

Oh God. ‘I’m here for my meeting. I need to get through.’

‘They’re jeans.’ John’s tone was carefully neutral.

‘They’re designer,’ I tried. In a way this was true. The fabric was an exclusive Brunton Primary Grade 3 design of paint fingerprints that the kids had been very proud of contributing to, and that I’d worn in the hope it would remind families of better days.

He said nothing.

‘A dress code? For a meeting?’ I persisted.

‘The hotel has rules.’

‘I called this meeting.’

‘Other people are looking after it now,’ he said.

I reached into my tan cross-body bag for my wallet and Visa card. ‘This door is also the entrance to the hotel?’ I asked.

John nodded.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ll take a room.’

Obviously, there was no dress code for that. In reception, I handed over my card. Then I was allowed through to my own meeting.

The ballroom had been set up with rows of wedding seating. As I walked through the room, I tried again to slip into my usual role, the welcoming smile I shared at school committee meetings. But people I’d known for years avoided eye contact, engaged in discussions that ought to have been obscene. The business of funeral directing had experienced a boom. Three men huddled, debating whether the children, once their bodies were released, should be buried together or with their families, as if playing together was something they would do again. Then there were all the forms of magical thinking people could have:

‘We thought fire wouldn’t bother us. We’re city people,’ Tony Hart said. His wife Kylie crisscrossed the room with business cards, offering therapy sessions in the church hall at a ten per cent discount.

‘This area looks calm, controlled, civilised.’

‘We haven’t been here long enough to be in danger.’

‘We’ve been here fifteen years,’ Vanessa Thornton said, resentfully.

‘Newcomers, then,’ Ingrid from BuyCheap said, with a sniff. (If a residency of fifteen years made someone a newcomer, what was I?)

A row of four chairs had been arranged at the front, and I sat, trying to look busy with my mobile phone. I was still Phoebe Wharton, even if I was Caleb’s mother. I was still Brunton Primary principal, and had to be part of any discussion about my school’s future. Even if parents would one day tell their children they were taught spelling by a woman who raised a murderer.

My neighbour Mary Ross, as president of the school council, took another of the front seats. Detective Hong Feng, in a clean uniform, sat to her other side and jiggled a folder of notes on his lap. At 7.30, I began proceedings. ‘It’s good to see so many people here.’

A few of them started to whisper. I raised my voice in case it wasn’t carrying properly in such a large space. ‘Thanks for coming.’

Mary Ross stood. The whispering increased. Mary cleared her throat. My audience looked at her expectantly. I rested my hands at my side.

‘Thank you, Phoebe, for calling us together,’ Mary said.

I smiled, ready to keep going. But Mary wasn’t looking at me and hadn’t finished. In fact, she had taken over. ‘This meeting is an excellent idea. I’m sure we’d like to hear from Phoebe later tonight. We have many issues to consider. First we’ll hear Hong Feng speaking from the police.’

I nodded, unsure what else to do, and sat, feeling foolish.

Detective Feng stood, nodding at me and at Mary and clearing his throat. ‘I know you want an answer about what caused this. We’ve heard everything from climate change to firebugs to broken glass to faulty powerlines and tractors. We have no certainty at this point. The police do have one request: if you have genuine suspicions then do call the helpline, but we’re receiving a lot of nuisance calls and these sometimes interfere with our ability to provide help.’

Abby Brin stood. Her daughter Hannah, who I’d last seen distributing religious brochures by the side of the road, had been right to believe she’d survive, if wrong about Armageddon. And Abby’s brother was one of the residents Jack and I had visited. ‘Is it a nuisance call if I’m asking when I can get back into my own house?’ she demanded.

Detective Feng smiled sadly. ‘I’m sorry information is slow to get out there. We’re spending a lot of time dealing with unfounded rumours. For the time being, please only contact us if you’ve seen something yourself. There’ll be plenty of time to talk once this initial period is over.’

I leaned back in my chair, waiting my turn. Detective Feng called on Jack to speak about plans and policies for reconstruction. Jack shot me an understanding look as he came to the front. Intercepting the glance, Mary bristled. Her changed attitude cut me. She’d been so proud to offer me my job, as if it were her personal gift. I’d been proud too. I loved teaching because of the unique influence you can have on other people. Winning my first principal’s position, despite the school having only one other teacher, proved Genevieve was wrong to say I’d never be successful.

Jack asked if there were questions about planned reconstruction. Laura Price, who ran the local history society, had a strong opinion. ‘Surely you’ll prioritise? Some places are much more important than others.’

Jack asked her, calmly, to elaborate. ‘Well, the museum,’ she blustered. ‘You have to save that ahead of… the petrol station, say.’

‘People need petrol even after a fire,’ Jack reminded her. ‘To keep generators going. Not to mention, if they explode, it can be pretty catastrophic.’

Finally, just as a short break was called, Jeannie arrived, carrying a large cardboard box. She spotted me at the front and deposited the box beside my chair.

‘Are you all right? You look terrible. God, I know that’s an awful thing to say.’

‘I’m fine. This is all a bit awkward.’ What an understatement!

‘I’m sorry I’m late. Living with Mum creates difficulties. And I had photos to pick up. Any decisions been made yet?’

‘Not about the school.’

‘About something else? Thought…’

‘It doesn’t matter. There are lots of issues. People need to talk.’

Jeannie slipped to the sideboard to get me a cup of tea in a Styrofoam cup. No one else spoke to me in the fifteen minutes before Detective Feng asked everyone to reclaim their seats. He spoke again, this time without paperwork. ‘I’d also like to thank Phoebe Wharton for calling this meeting. And invite her to take the floor.’

A few people stirred. Ingrid from BuyCheap raised her hand. ‘We can hear from other school staff.’

Jeannie stood. ‘It’s important to recognise Phoebe is doing what she can. She’s the principal. It’s her job to steer the way.’

I stood, embarrassed. Perhaps maintaining my status in the community would help people think more positively of Caleb. I shared the plans I’d been making. The Education Department had already promised to deliver a relocatable classroom. School would resume in four days. Meanwhile, children would be welcomed at nearby schools if they wanted to go.

For the children, at least.

Caleb stayed in his room but I visited the school site a couple of times over the next few days, ensuring the demountable had arrived and everything was arranged properly. Friday would be my biggest test yet.

I prepared for the day as I always did. Getting up early, I dressed in my preferred casual clothes, suitable for tasks as varied as climbing through a window to rescue a locked-in boy and sitting on the floor cradling a girl with a broken wrist awaiting the ambulance (both had happened at Brunton Primary). Still at home, in honour of it being a Friday, when prep students’ mothers brought younger siblings, I made scones the way Claire taught me. I rubbed butter with my fingertips so my body-warmth melted it, adding a precise teaspoon of sugar and pinch of salt, stirring a hole to pour in the milk, cutting the mixture with a knife. I kneaded the dough exactly ten times before rolling it out and cutting circles with an antique glass. There was something reassuring about using this particular recipe in Claire’s kitchen, where scones had been made so often. The scones were Caleb’s favourite. I left him some on a plate.

What I wanted was a day of normal summer heat where all that blistered were the bare feet of children running over melting asphalt. This was a connection to my old life.

Setback Mountain was visible between wafts of smoke when I arrived. The classroom had been trucked in and waited behind a hastily erected fence and low gate. Painted an ocean blue, perhaps it had recently been located at the seaside. I parked beneath a surviving eucalypt in a field near the old burned building. Jeannie’s car was already here.

I trudged through dead grass and bark to the stairs. Jeannie’s head popped around the internal doorframe. ‘I had to escape my mother. Got here early.’

Jeannie had arranged an eclectic collection of desks into the circular groups the children usually worked in. I walked to the small room behind the classroom, which I had assumed would be my office. Jeannie’s bag and laptop were on the desk beside the cardboard box of photographs she’d been carrying at the community meeting. Our office, then. I could cope with a shared space.

I pointed at the box. ‘What’s this?’

‘I started to explain at the meeting,’ Jeannie said. ‘So many people lost all their photos. Their memories. I thought the school could produce a book of donated pictures. It won’t replace people’s lost albums but it’s the closest thing. I grabbed mine when I evacuated. Lots of kids are in them. I’ve been teaching here a fair while.’

Jeannie’s collection stretched back over decades. In one fading photo, I found Stephen. A long fringe covering one eye, he looked so much like Caleb! I imagined glancing out the window and seeing Stephen in the yard where he’d played as a boy. Our lives would never disentangle.

‘I have photos you can use,’ I told Jeannie. ‘And Leanne Beckwith left others with her history manuscript.’

Jeannie sounded excited. ‘Great! How about I come over after dinner and we go through them?’

Another car approached. I replaced the photos in Jeannie’s box. ‘Perhaps you should welcome the kids and…’ My words faded.

Jeannie knew how bad my situation was becoming. She closed her hand over mine. She was very kind. ‘Things will get back to normal, Phoebe. They will.’

She went back outside. Through a small side window, I watched the children and their parents. They poured out of dusty cars and embraced, shoes grinding into the gravel. How easily Jeannie slipped into the role of welcoming students for the day! It should have been my job. But she quickly returned, looking concerned. ‘There’s nowhere for kids to hang their bags.’

My mind flashed to the burned timber row of hooks in the old school house, the giraffe image where Matilda Miller used to hang her bag. ‘They can put them under their desks,’ I decided.

‘Even though it’s against fire safety regulations,’ Jeannie agreed with an ironic laugh.

I listened, arranging whiteboard markers and pens from the pencil case Harmony had rescued, while Jeanie chatted to flat-toned mothers and exhausted fathers about the importance of children getting back, as closely as possible, to their normal routines. Children poured into the classrooms, some chattering with the friends they’d missed. All normal kids with normal hair and normal clothes and piercings in normal places. If Caleb still looked more like them, could he have avoided these horrific rumours and accusations? I used to wonder what sort of young man he would become. I’d never imagined anything like this.

‘Phoebe? Are you in here?’ Leanne Beckwith pushed through the office door and detached the baby from her hip and nipple for long enough to wrap me in an effusive hug. Isla, now a little taller, stood beside her and sucked her thumb. ‘I’ve heard what they’re saying—’ She stood back, pushing me to arm’s length. ‘You know what they’re saying?’

‘Maybe,’ I whispered.

She crushed me for a second time. ‘I don’t believe it. Let me know what I can do. You saved my family. You’re Harmony’s hero.’

‘I’m not sure what can be done.’

She waved one hand in the air. Her fingernails were filed blue talons. Amazing that she found the time for such elaborate manicures. ‘You’ve still got my history manuscript? Maybe we can talk about it after school.’

‘Maybe some time next week.’

‘I’ve been thinking. A lot. We keep hearing about climate change. Worse fires… But we don’t really know. The history we know is so… white. Fires could have been a lot worse in Aboriginal times.’

‘Maybe.’ Aboriginal times. That was how Leanne thought. To her, history was past tense, progressing through developmental steps to an inevitable Now. But perhaps her ideas were developing. ‘Harmony’s around somewhere. But I knew you’d want to see the baby. Beckwith Junior. We still haven’t decided on a name.’

Beckwith Junior stared at Leanne’s full, wet nipple and let out an almighty roar. He was on track to rival Harmony.

‘Harmony said you’d settled on Braydon.’

‘It might still be Braydon, in the end.’ Leanne fastened her nursing bra, plugged a dummy into the baby’s mouth and passed him to me. He sucked and stared, fiercely. His face was as round as Caleb’s had been, topped with similar curls, soft as air.

Leanne watched. ‘The nurse says it’s gas. But I know he’s smiling.’

I passed him back. At the door, Leanne smiled, exposing a missing tooth. ‘I don’t care what anyone says. You saved us. I think you’re a top sheila.’

I came into the classroom once the parents had left. Donations had been generous, encompassing books, art supplies, a television set and even a box of wooden descant recorders. I clapped my hands together, ready for the day to begin, and we split the kids into two groups. For the older class, Jeannie would use a whiteboard at the front. I’d teach the younger children at the back, using an old green-painted blackboard.

The children arranged themselves on mismatched chairs. I tried not to think about missing faces. Many families, their homes and businesses destroyed, had left the valley saying they doubted they would return. Their children would be enrolled elsewhere. Other students, like Sean Henderson who now studied through Distance Education, might be at home. But of course, I noticed the missing chair where Matilda Miller should be sitting with her tiny friends. And Violet Gillan would be missed by the older age group. There was as much heartbreak in these classrooms as there was hope.

Teaching might have seemed a matter of routine and predictability to my mother, but in reality, it was a life full of surprises. No two children were ever alike. No child was ever the same from hour to hour. They swung between moods, trying on different personalities. Who they would grow into was a matter of experimentation. And if one small child had four personalities to swing among, it was exponentially more chaotic to deal with twenty children. There was no predicting what might happen in a classroom. And these variables would be multiplied today.

‘Let’s start with a music lesson,’ I said. ‘I’m going to hand everyone a recorder and a white label to write your name on.’

Archie Price, grandson of Laura who ran the historical society, cried when handed his recorder, and asked, ‘Can we play at Matilda’s funeral?’

Another child cried, remembering Matilda had never been good on the recorder and wanted an oboe for Christmas. ‘Miss, do you think she got one? Would it have burned too?’

How could I respond? It was outrageous, these babies planning a funeral! At recess, Jeannie took the kids outside to play. We’d take turns on yard duty to give each other a break from the high emotions of the day. I checked my phone and found a missed call from Genevieve.

As soon as she answered, she got down to business. ‘Douglas Anderson is interested in the case.’ She paused. She always had a friend to look after things. ‘You might like him. If you’re really determined not to win Stephen back.’

‘Genevieve.’ My mother’s judgement on lawyers at least was reliable. She’d known exactly what to do to get Caleb out of trouble after the car accident.

‘I’m just saying. I’ll email you his details.’

I’d also received another email from Marco. I read it while waiting for Genevieve’s information. He attached photographs of art that had survived for centuries between the destruction of Nero’s Domus Aurea and its rediscovery during the Renaissance. The paint had faded. Now the signatures of explorers who had broken in to see it for themselves were more visible than the paintings. But those signatures were interesting in their own right. Michelangelo and Raphael, I read. Also Casanova, de Sade. And Marco had discovered a string of names, not yet public, of famous Europeans who had left their mark on ancient walls in ways we would now consider vandalism. After university, Marco had joined a team uncovering frescoes of an ancient Roman dinner party, previously hidden by a block of flats being replaced by a multi-storey car park. Diners reclined in tiles while slaves fanned them with giant leaves and fed them grapes whose vivid freshness had withstood millennia. Marco had become a celebrity among his peers. Success was like a cocaine hit. He’d be digging, chasing a repeat of that early triumph, for the rest of his life. Skype when you have the time, Marco signed off.

Genevieve was taking a while. I had time now. Marco! ‘How’s your article going?’ I asked.

‘I’ve made progress. More on digging than writing. But I’ve got some funny parallels between Rome and modern times. Nero’s celebrity wife apparently developed her own brand of perfume.’

‘His second wife,’ I reminded him. ‘Poppeae. Poppy. The Roman Kim Kardashian.’

Marco laughed. ‘A good observation. Thanks. I’ll use that too.’

‘Too?’

‘As well as what you said about Tacitus. Until you, I always associated him with every other boring historian.’

‘Historians aren’t boring,’ I said, pretending to take offence.

‘Now I’ll describe the investigative reporter Tacitus,’ Marco declared, ‘and his story about the young emperor Nero, in love with his generation’s Kim Kardashian.’

‘There’s even more drama to that story,’ I reminded him. ‘When Nero’s mother wouldn’t let him marry Poppy, he had her murdered.’

‘You haven’t forgotten your history, have you? Despite being so busy dealing with infants.’

‘I’ve forgotten a lot, actually. Children are a worry.’

Immediately I wished I could take those words back. I didn’t want Marco to know about Caleb. I needed this escape. But Marco laughed and brushed away any possible unpleasant interpretation of my words. ‘I’ll send you a link. Let me know what you think.’

After we disconnected, I followed his link and read.

AD59. At twenty-two, Nero had been emperor for six years. His mother Agrippina, still only forty-five, had as much power as him. Realising he couldn’t achieve independence while she still lived, Nero planned an act of premeditated murder. His first attempt at murdering his mother had tragicomical undertones. A boat was built for Agrippina, one designed to fall apart on the Bay of Naples. The boat did collapse, but Agrippina was saved by two surprisingly mundane things: a sofa that got in the way of a collapsing ceiling, and a case of mistaken identity. One of her friends, hoping to be pulled from the water by rescuers, claimed that she herself was Agrippina. Romans had fame but they didn’t have Instagram; no one knew what Agrippina really looked like. Hired assassins believed the unfortunate woman’s lie and killed her instead. Agrippina survived.

Instagram and Twitter weren’t the only communication networks to let Nero down. The gods themselves could be ambiguous. Tacitus was certain the good weather Agrippina encountered on the Bay of Naples was a message of divine displeasure at Nero’s murderous plan. But the Emperor listened to other advice (in modern times, it might have been because he watched current affairs on another channel) and as a result, developed a back-up strategy. He sent an assassin to stab his mother. And Agrippina, knowing the attacker had been sent by her son, requested that he stab her first in her womb.

‘Are you still planning your Italian trip?’ Jeannie asked from the doorway.

I glanced over my shoulder. Jeannie could see my screen.

‘I’ve postponed it for a while. Is everything all right?’

‘I’m concerned about Billy Griffith. He hasn’t spoken all day.’

‘I’ve hardly heard a word from him since prep.’

‘It’s more than that. He doesn’t even speak when asked a direct question.’

‘We’ll keep an eye on him,’ I decided. ‘It’ll take forever for the kids to get over this.’

We had an art class after lunch, using pencils and pastels, anything that wouldn’t need water. Children drew bright images on butcher paper and pinned them to the walls. Not all the images were of fire. Some children drew green hills and pastel flowers as though their drawings could conjure such scenes back to life. I was relieved to see Billy was content to draw, if not to talk. I’d have to consult his mother when she came to pick him up – or ask Jeannie to.

At 3 pm, I retreated once more to the office. A couple of parents caught me out and glared while they pulled their children away. Jeannie, the school’s positive front, smiled at everyone. I heard Billy’s mother reassuring her that he was getting all available care.

Most had left before I noticed an older woman lingering at the back of the room. Always alert for people who didn’t belong, I checked the remaining children were safe, then approached her. ‘I’m Betty Miller,’ she said. ‘I should be picking up Matilda for Kate but I can’t. She’s dead. And Kate’s dead.’

Then she collapsed into a child’s chair to cry and apologise. I told her she didn’t need to, that I was a mother, too, I understood. Parents and children need to protect each other, being unable to do so is unbearable.

‘I keep thinking of Matilda and Kate lying in… in fridges like they show on television,’ she said. ‘In plastic sheets. Cold. We could have gone to Melbourne for the day. My baby and her baby. I want them with me.’

Jeannie saw me taking her box of photos to my car. She followed me outside. I wound my window down. ‘You’ll take care of them, won’t you?’ she asked.

I regarded her, very closely. She couldn’t possibly know I was responsible for other missing things. But I’d have to give the photos back. All of them.

‘Come see my own photos tonight?’ I said. ‘I’ll make coffee. We could share some wine?’

‘Wine sounds good. I’ll see you then.’

Pausing at a surviving stop sign I glanced at the topmost photo on my passenger seat, an image of old Brunton. Main Road trees, ones now reduced to ashes, then were saplings. I drove into a blacker landscape. This was the route Caleb had taken, riding homewards from the CFA to get his sketchbook. I wanted to grieve, I wanted to mourn with my neighbours, with my students and their families, but I couldn’t. Before I could feel anything, I had to deal with these accusations, this blame, find some way to protect my son.

I left my car outside the CFA building. The building had survived but its fences had not. Their ashes crumbled underfoot. I still smelled smoke. I peered into the semi-darkness, noting doors, frames, wall joists. More ashes floated down, staining my jeans and my hands. I was surprised by things that didn’t burn. Without being sure what I was looking for, I imagined Caleb that morning, sliding open the heavy glass front door, slipping out into heat haze that challenged his lungs. I imagined the heavy rattle of the door closing behind him. I closed my eyes, and remembered the brown and desiccated but not yet burned world, the sky bleached of blue, not yet obscured by smoke. I imagined I was him, carrying a backpack, my pockets stuffed with the cigarettes I lied about, and also a lighter, later in the day. Leaving Penelope at her store. I imagined untying a bicycle from the park bench beneath a Main Road eucalypt. The tree shook its leaves in the hot wind of the last morning of its life. Where was I going? Down to the fossicker’s hut. Why was I leaving Penelope? Why? Because of my sketchbook. Why?

There my imagination faltered. I hated realising I didn’t understand him. I got back into my car. I’d follow his route exactly, as far as I could. Could I be the one who proved the witnesses wrong?

How fast can a bicycle go? It was hard to stop my car stalling at that pace. Could I borrow someone’s bicycle? I hadn’t ridden one in twenty years.

I accelerated outside St Monica’s. People were still using the hall for temporary accommodation, waiting for caravans and other more individual options to arrive. Donating had become such a national pastime that signs were erected announcing that shelters had run out of storage space for clothing and linen. Next door, lights were on in the church. Perhaps they were praying. I felt a moment’s envy for people who had certainty in their lives. Wouldn’t it be better to think there was a purpose to everything that happened in life, even if you were wrong? Fire was an act of God, insurers said, their faith in the twin gods of small print and money. On radio programs, discussion centered around how we could adapt to more frequent fires and higher temperatures, and force the government to take action.

I passed the cemetery. Graves were arranged in rows like hospital beds. As sacrilegious university students, Stephen and I had spent an afternoon there. Pashing, we called it. Soon there’d be more tombstones, bearing names I knew from class rolls and newspaper reports. My neighbours, now chilling in the morgue, would make their final journeys here to be buried.

I reached my street. A white station wagon had been parked opposite my house. Its passenger, wearing large sunglasses, slid out. Surely I had slipped into some otherworldly experience, where nothing was quite real?

But she was real. Sadie Riley bustled downhill to me. Fucking bloodhound, Detective Feng had called her at the scene of Caleb’s accident.

‘Phoebe Wharton, right? You’ll recognise me.’ Her make-up had the texture of poly filler. She had something in her hand. Shrouded in unreality, I imagined a gun or knife.

Then, a microphone, I realised. Not a weapon. Just brandished like one. ‘Police are interested in Caleb,’ she said, as if I might not have noticed. ‘They’ve got evidence linking him to arson. You’re a respected member of this community.’ She offered me her press ID. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I’ll take this inside to read with my glasses on.’

In my room, I peeled off everything I’d worn to work, changing into a cotton sundress and pulling my hair into a ponytail before opening my cedar chest and storing Sadie’s ID with the rest of my collection.

Jeannie arrived right on eight o’clock. Sadie Riley was still outside in her car.

‘Ignore her,’ I said at the front door.

Jeannie was chatty while I poured two glasses of pinot gris. Her mother was making many demands on her time, she said. It was hard living back at home at her age. Meanwhile, she shared photos of a different Brunton, one haunted by memories of my younger self, and Stephen. Nothing much changed here, until everything did.

‘I should have more photos actually,’ Jeannie said. ‘I always thought there’d be time to get the perfect shot. But things vanished so fast.’

‘Brunton was once a romantic place to me,’ I said. ‘I first came here with Stephen before we were engaged.’

‘I knew him when we were kids.’ Jeannie smiled. ‘He was so good looking. Some girls were very jealous of you. Ingrid Wilson especially. You know, at BuyCheap.’

I couldn’t picture it. Stephen and Ingrid! ‘I wondered why she was so hostile.’

‘She had a crush on Stephen for years.’

The front door crashed open and Caleb entered. He saw Jeannie and stopped, backpack hanging at his side, new sketchbook pressed into his armpit. Jeannie smiled. They knew each other well from Saturday mornings she’d spent helping him with his art. I wondered if she might be able to help me understand him, and mentioned his latest graphic stories, the ones he’d come back to rescue. ‘Maybe you’d like to see them?’

‘Of course!’ Jeannie looked enthused.

Caleb went to his room, returning with another sketchbook. ‘Some of my graphic stories.’ He turned the first page of Sean the Adventurer.

In an unreachable past, before the accident, Sean Henderson had treated Caleb as a hero. Rosie had been grateful to Caleb because she had no other help and Sean, even walking, had been a difficult child. After the accident, when Sean was still difficult (worse, probably) Caleb drew these stories. In contrast to the wheelchair-bound boy, Sean the Adventurer was never still. An intrepid Sean saved a Marrakesh-bound sheik from a bunch of intelligent and angry camels. Super Sean saved New York’s tallest buildings from Super Villains.

Jeannie turned a few more pages. ‘I’ve told you before. You’re very talented.’

Caleb looked at the black notebook, and at his knuckles, turning white from his tight grip. ‘When the pictures are good enough, I’ll give them to him.’

I didn’t understand him, but I had to. His devotion to Jack, his guilt about Sean. Everything that Caleb was and had been. The child fascinated by a bunyip, the young man with the skull necklace who drew Penelope as a phoenix. Now that reports had announced that the fossicker’s hut was certainly the source of the fire, I knew that someone other than Caleb must have been there. Could Sean have lit the fires? I imagined his wheelchair bouncing over leaf litter, bark strips, and had my answer. Sean could only reach the fossicker’s hut if Caleb took him. When Jeannie left, my mind returned to my earlier drive. I couldn’t know exactly what Caleb’s firestorm had been like, but evidence existed that I could see. CCTV footage, for instance. What places in town had cameras? I developed a plan. I’d work with Jeannie on her photo project but also, collecting photos people took that day, I’d put together my own version of events.

I’d discuss the day with Caleb again, to give him the relief of talking. But he avoided the subject, retreating to his room when I brought it up. Perhaps those drawings were a kind of therapy for him. Perhaps far too much of what he saw and experienced was simply unspeakable.