He let that sink in for a bit, and dug a few more spadefuls. This was getting to be a very deep hole and still he didn’t have the full story. ‘But…’he prompted softly, and he thought she wouldn’t answer but finally she did.

‘So then Micki came home for Christmas because her relationship had ended. She was having a tough pregnancy but Toby charmed her as well. Maybe…maybe things between Toby and me weren’t as good as they could have been but Micki and Dad loved him.’

‘And then the fires hit.’

‘Then the heat hit,’ she said dully. ‘Micki was so pregnant she could hardly move. Dad was having one of his bad spells. He could hardly move. On the day… It was so hot. There was no sign of fires, but I was nervous. Everyone was nervous. Then the district nurse rang to say she didn’t want to come up the mountain because she was scared her car might boil. But Dad had run out of his medication. So I made a run down into the valley. I’d only be away for an hour or so. Toby was here with the other car. What could go wrong? And then the fires hit.’

‘There’s no need…’ he said, hearing the raw anguish in her voice and not wanting to make her say it. He’d stopped digging now. He moved towards her but she waved him back.

‘Let me finish,’ she whispered. ‘He heard on the radio that there were fires on the other side of the ridge-that’s where they started. So Toby took the van and went to see. He took magnificent photographs. You probably saw them-they were the ones beamed around the world the next day, after the wind changed and over a hundred people were killed, and Dad and Micki and Benedict and all the animals in our vet clinic were left without a vehicle to escape in. Dad put Rusty in the fireplace and protected him with his body. Our three big dogs-Mutsy and Pogo and Bandit, they died, too. One little dog was all they could save.’