Luke Smith Returns Aaron Smyth's Calls After the Wallcrest Road Fire

By the afternoon after the fire, the house on the corner of Wallcrest Road was a blackened shell behind police tape, its roof partly fallen in and its windows gone. Fire investigators had been on the site since the morning. Aaron Smyth had walked down the hill twice to look at it from the footpath, and on the first occasion a constable had asked whether he knew the occupants. He said that he knew Luke Smith to have a beer with, and nothing more. The three calls he had made the night before and the text he had sent were still unanswered.

Luke rang him at home a little after three. His voice was flat and hoarse, and there was a noise behind it that Aaron could not place. He said that he and Jamie Greyson were safe, that neither of them had been in the house, and that he could not explain over the phone what had happened or where he was. He asked Aaron not to tell anyone that he had called.

Aaron did not press for an explanation. He asked instead whether Luke needed somewhere to sleep, clothes, cash, a car, or someone to deal with the insurers. The questions came in the order he had asked them of displaced families through a decade of bushfire seasons, and he did not notice that he was doing it. Luke refused each offer and then fell silent for long enough that Aaron thought the call had dropped.

Before hanging up, Aaron asked after the dogs. Luke said that Henri was with them and was fine. He said nothing about Duke, and Aaron, hearing the gap, did not ask again.

The call lasted a little under five minutes. Aaron did not ring the police afterwards, and when a constable knocked on his door that evening, collecting statements up and down the street, he did not mention it. He spent the rest of the afternoon in the back garden splitting wood that did not need splitting.