Kate tossed her hands in the air. “Are my words just falling on deaf ears? Can we please stop swearing?”

“I wish I never gave you my Netflix password in the first place!” Emma spat. “I’m changing it!”

At the top of the landing, she looked down to the foyer. Cassie and Molly were stopped by the front door, Cassie’s eyes wide as she watched Emma and Lexi disappear up the stairs to the west wing spitting vicious threats at one another.

“Mol,” Kate said as she jogged back down to the foyer, “can you help Cassie with her bag?”

Kate grabbed Molly’s smaller suitcase from the van and headed upstairs to the seniors’ west wing. At least one of them doesn’t need to pack the entire collection of her closet to return to the island. For Christ’s sake, she thought, they wore uniforms. How many pairs of pyjamas did they need?

When Kate stepped through the door, Molly jumped from the bottom bunk. “I could have gotten it.”

Kate set the bag down between the two sets of bunks. “It’s okay.” She ran a hand through her hair and looked around the room. “Amazing how tidy your room always is on day one.” She grinned. She looked between Molly, Emma, and Lexi. “Think you can keep it this way?”

Molly smirked. “Nope.”

The girls always completed their chores on Friday night before leaving for the weekend—cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming the halls and bedrooms—but the state of their rooms throughout the week was another story altogether. Tilly wouldn’t be pleased and Kate worried how that reflected on her as housemother. What if Tilly ventured up to the third floor and thought Kate was too relaxed with the girls? That she wasn’t doing her job properly?

“Can we try to make our beds each morning this term?” Kate asked as she sat down on the end of Emma’s bunk. “Keep the bathrooms tidier? Start throwing empty shampoo bottles in the bin?” She paused. “I feel like we need hall monitors or something,” she contemplated.

“Ew, no,” Lexi said. “What is this, an Enid Blyton novel? We don’t need hall monitors. You already run this place like a war ship, Kate.”

Kate sighed. “I run this place like a free-for-all and you know it.”

Molly lifted her suitcase up onto the window seat. As she leaned over to unzip it, she looked down into the garden below. “Who’s that woman?”

Lexi and Emma joined her at the window.

“That’s Matilda Wattle,” Kate said from her place on the bed. “She’s your new Religion and History teacher until Cynthia gets back from Europe. She’ll teach VCE Literature Extension with me too.”

“Matilda Wattle,” Molly repeated. “That’s the Aussiest name I’ve ever heard.” She looked to Kate. “Is she going to live downstairs like Cynthia did? Babysit us?”

“No, the pipes in Cynthia’s suite haven’t been fixed yet. Tilly’s living in the cottage with me.”

“So she’s not a novice like Sister Ellie?” Emma asked.