They’re lighting the cane and Janet McClymont has not been found.

A week after she disappeared, her mother Barbara walked into Jensens’ shop and bought every box of matches and all the Bic cigarette lighters on the shelves. She then stood outside striking the head of each and every match against the phosphorus strip, watching it flare before shaking out the flame and dropping the spent stick on the road. Then she drove down to the inlet and threw the lighters into the water.

No one knew what the hell she was playing at. Then it dawned on me. With the crush about to start, and all of us believing that her daughter’s body must be lying in the cane, some harebrained notion had got hold of her. She thought she could stave off the lighting of the cane fires until Janet’s body was found. You see, in Barbara’s mind, on top of everything else that probably happened to her daughter, burning her body would be yet another desecration. But nothing is going to stop the sugar crush. It’s already been delayed. We’re almost at the end of June, what with all the searching and the upset.I mean, I understand Barbara’s need to hope that after all this time someone will find Janet’s body lying unblemished in the cane fields near where she found her daughter’s bag. Or maybe even that the girl herself is alive. You have to remember, apart from the fact that she’s been missing for so long, there’s evidence that Janet’s dead. But hundreds of people combed through those drills from Quala to Kaliope and back again for weeks looking for her and found nothing. That hasn’t stopped Barbara, though. She still goes out every morning by herself, walking through the cane fields belonging to the Creadies and the Tranters, looking for her daughter’s remains. She comes back hours later, covered in dust and dirt…