“I’m feeling really sick, Kate,” she’d said. “I’m feeling the way my Nan felt when she got pneumonia. Like real bad sort of thing. I think I need to get the ferry back to the mainland to stay at my aunt’s for a few days. She only lives a few suburbs away from Mornington. My parents would be totally cool with it…”

Glaring over the rim of her glasses, Kate had fixed her only Year Ten boarder with a look. “Lexi, I’d like to see how you would have survived Kokoda. I really would.”

“If I wanted to hear my dad say that,” Lexi had spat, “I’d live with him and not you!”

“Go for it,” Kate had murmured, returning to grading music essays.

“This island is a prison!” Grace had informed Kate the next night. “You’re the worst housemother! You run this place like a death camp!” Emma had claimed an hour before the connection returned. Like heroin addicts feeling their rush, the girls had gone from demons to angels, and once more, all was well on Lords. Lately, Kate had even found herself missing the Year Twelves who had recently moved back to the mainland to undertake VCE exams hosted at larger schools, reducing the cohort from three hundred-and-fifty to just three hundred.

Three months until Christmas and her contract would be completed, Sister Mary Patrick coming from Ballarat to take the reins in the music department next year. Kate was looking forward to returning to Melbourne, to a life where she didn’t live tight-lipped about her sexuality, endlessly longing for the weekend when she could take off to the mainland to absorb enough adult conversation to survive a five-day week of she leaves all of her hair clogged in the shower and she stole my bra and she Snapchatted a fugly picture of me even though I didn’t give her permission. As Kate watched the ferry chug closer, aware of exactly who was on board, something told her that these next three months were going to be harder than the last nine combined.

“It’s a lovely time of year for Tilly to be coming home,” Sister Ruth said, her gaze still focused on her puzzle. “Not too hot, not too cold. And the vegetable garden is flourishing like never before. Tilly will just love it! She was always an excellent cook.”

Because she had no option but to become one, Kate thought, bitterness prickling beneath her skin. It wasn’t as though Tilly had it tough but losing her parents in a car accident when she was five and being sent from England to be raised by her mother’s sister on Lords had reaped Tilly a life of responsibility unfamiliar to the other boarders. Sister Hattie had been a deeply loving aunt, but she’d also wanted Tilly to learn about duty. By the time Kate had arrived at the island at fifteen, barely able to boil pasta for herself, Tilly had been a good cook for years. The legally-blind Sister Mary Joseph had taught her, and when she’d passed away when the girls were sixteen, Tilly had taken on the cooking responsibilities—boarding house and convent—to share with old Sister Mary Claire until graduation.