I can’t remember the first time, but it would have gone like this. Knock at the door and she’s there, embracing me in a patterned pashmina, her laugh echoing off the walls and into the street. A black cattle dog called Molly is at her feet. Molly wags her tail and presents me with a shoe.
‘She does that with everyone,’ says my host. ‘It’s her way of saying welcome.’ She kisses me on the cheek. ‘You’re welcome here. You’re very welcome here.’
She didn’t quite understand what those words meant to me at the time. Or perhaps she did, and that is why she said them. She said them to everyone who came.
Her husband was waiting for us on the verandah, a board game already spread out and ready to play. Two small, shirtless boys with long hair would sprint around the place.
For a few humid, sticky summers - the best summers of my 20’s - this would be the second home for our little community.
I keep thinking of how frightened they must have been.
The sound of an explosion. A race to the curb. There wasn’t enough time to get anything out.
Standing on the bitumen, watching it disappear. The smell. The sound.
They taught me how to host.
There was a series of parties. Great parties. Parties with singing and laughing and weeping. At the first one we turned up with a cheap bottle of wine. She laughed.
‘We have wine!’ she said, ‘you didn’t have to bring any.’
Oh right. It’s a grown-up party.
Somewhere around there I brought my future wife around for the first time.
Over many weeks he gives us lessons in sound economics. We laid out our budget and plans before him, and he gave us vital lessons that we were shocked to have missed. He is sensible, measured and helpful. The basis of our entire financial lives - which eventually nets us a house and our own two shirtless children - is because of him.
He was also the man who sat with me in the Summer when I thought my life was over and rebuilt the engine of a van with me. I was a long-limbed arts kid, and he was patient enough to teach me the basics of mechanical engineering.
All we wanted for them was peace and freedom. They had given so much and had had a rough few years. And recently, it seemed like they had entered a new stretch. They are more comfortable in their skin and calm. And ready for the next chapter.
We can’t reach them right now (their phones are gone), so we all keep talking about them. The nightmares we share. We can’t get them out of our heads.
In the fire, they lost everything save for the clothes on their backs.
Their names are Janet and Richard. They have been the most influential teachers to me and the most profound friends.