‘Platoon will advance! Right turn—right turn, Jake!’

At first there was a lot of laughter. Then the punishments started. I would stroll past the parade ground with an armful of sheets and see someone doing push-ups. Or someone moving a rock. Or two kids at either end of a wooden pole, lifting it from shoulder to shoulder. ‘Lower! Raise! Lower! Raise! Keep it off your head, Mr Stubbs!’

Soon the laughter gave way to a sullen silence, interspersed now and then by angry, breathless complaints. The kids grew tired. Confused. One or two of them burst into tears, but any attempts to taunt them were shut down: the veterans didn’t allow bullying of any kind. ‘Ten push-ups, Mr Pusnik! There will be no comments while I’m giving orders—is that clear?’

After drill, the boys were shown how to make their beds with hospital corners. I overheard howls of protest as Shaun insisted that various beds be remade over and over again. Some of the kids had probably never made a bed in their lives except by pulling up a doona. ‘It’s like fucking Downton Abbey,’ one of them complained, his voice drifting through the dormitory window. I had to laugh.

After the bed-making came the boot-polishing, which was briefly interrupted by Dreadlock Dean’s third attempt to run away. I saw him from my office, where I was returning a couple of phone messages. One message was from Zac Henderson’s mother, who had a creaky little voice and who couldn’t recall if she’d mentioned that Zac was allergic to seafood. Not fish: seafood. I rang and assured her the problem was duly noted. The second call was from Tyler Metherill’s mother, whose message was an incoherent ramble and who didn’t answer when I called back.

I scribbled a couple of entries in my daily log. Then I returned to the kitchen, where I braced myself for the next challenge. Shaun always insisted the boys help me prepare dinner every night. ‘Those kids won’t learn to appreciate their food unless they cook it,’ he often said, and he wasn’t wrong. We’d negotiated an extra fee, and I’d stipulated that no more than half his platoon could occupy the kitchen at any one time.

‘You don’t have to worry. We’ll do it in sections, and there’ll always be two officers on duty.’ He seemed very confident, but I made a point of locking up all the obvious weapons: knives, skewers, meat mallets. I also drew up a risk assessment plan, assigning every kitchen activity a risk level and basing my recipes on that.

I suppose all my years of teaching hadn’t been completely wasted.