Read Online Haunting of Lily Frost by Nova Weetman - Free Book Online

Under the window?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Or along that wall.’
    â€˜Yep.’
    The younger removalist smiles at me then. He’s obviously about as interested as I am. The couch looked good in our old house because it’s square with sharp edges and stiff arms. But here, in this peeling room, it doesn’t fit. Just like me.
    â€˜Come on, Lil. Help.’
    â€˜I am. I’m helping. It looks fine. Wherever.’
    â€˜John? What do you think?’
    Dad pretends to consider both options. I know he’s faking because he doesn’t care about stuff like furniture or making rooms look pretty. As long as he can lie on the couch and see the TV from where he’s lying, he doesn’t care about anything else. He points vaguely in the direction of the wall and I think that’s pretty clever, because he isn’t really committing to either. He can argue later that he was actually pointing to the window. But of course Mum already has her own opinion, and she’s just pretending to ask for ours, so whatever we say doesn’t really matter. She’s faking too.
    â€˜Great. I agree. The wall.’
    Dad smiles like he had something to do with it.
    â€˜Picked a room yet, Lil?’ Mum says.
    â€˜Yep.’
    She expected me to be difficult for longer. She’ll be even more surprised when she sees the room I’ve chosen, but I might leave that revelation until I’ve moved my bed up the stairs and it’s harder for her to make me change.
    She nods. ‘Knew you’d grow to love this house.’
    â€˜Oh yeah, Mum. Once in a lifetime dream.’
    Then before she can start the argument I dodge her and disappear. As much as I don’t want to feel any sort of attachment to this house, I strangely do, but I’m not admitting that to an adult anytime soon, and particularly not to her.
    In the end Dad drags my bed in pieces up the stairs. I can’t believe he’s so strong. He lifts the slats and the sides and heaves them onto his shoulders, like he’s carrying nothing heavier than paper. I like him being this big. He’s never been one of those dads who look like they might blow away if someone bad confronted them. He’s a sort of fairytale dad with a massive body that could protect a princess from a dragon. And in only five minutes my bed has moved from a box in a truck up a flight of stairs to the middle of my new room. He even pulls out some little screwdriver thing and puts it together while I’m still watching.
    â€˜You can do the sheets, Lil.’
    â€˜Yeah, cheers.’
    â€˜Well, you’ve done nothing else all day.’ He grins at me then. He loves giving me a hard time. Always has done. He jokes around more than any dad I’ve ever met and sometimes it’s even funny. I really want him to leave, though, so I can see how the room feels now. I want to see if it’s still creepy, if the things I think I know are real. But he’s fussing around and doesn’t look like he wants to go anywhere.
    â€˜Shouldn’t you go and help Mum?’
    â€˜Probably.’
    â€˜Thanks, Dad.’
    â€˜Righto.’
    And finally he goes. I’m alone in this huge room that could be anywhere in the world and doesn’t feel like any room I’ve ever been in. My bed fits under the window so the sun can come in and shine on my feet first thing in the morning and I can look up and see the stars before I go to sleep. I can’t put up bookshelves, wardrobes, or my desk, so all my books will have to stay in piles around the edges of the room and my clothes will just spew out of suitcases. It feels like I could leave at any minute. If everything had a place then it would feel final, like we were staying forever and that’s too depressing.
    But the best thing about being up here is that the rest of the family’s down below. I can hear them banging around and moving things and even muffled words being spoken,