Pictures of Lily

Chapter 1
     
    ‘Okay, enough! I’ve had it with your complaining! We’re here now and we’re here to stay, so get used to it, Lily!’
    My mother has finally snapped. I can’t say I blame her. I’ve been bitching about the idea of moving to Australia ever since she first hooked up with Michael on the internet.
    ‘Is the grass ever green here?’ I add, bored. If she thinks I’m going to quit complaining now, she has another think coming.
    My mum says nothing; she just sighs and checks her rearview mirror before moving into the fast lane.
    It’s late November – Australian summertime – and we’re driving up into the hills from Adelaide airport. To my left the yellow hills slope upwards, and to my right they fall away into deep, tree-covered gullies. The road is ridiculously windy so I’m gripping the armrest and having to squint in the bright sunlight because I forgot to unpack my sunglasses from my suitcase. Needless to say, I’m not in a good mood.
    ‘Don’t you think he could at least have come to collect us from the airport?’ I grumble.
    ‘We had to pick up the rental car, anyway. And as I’ve already told you, he had to work.’
    ‘Couldn’t the wallabies do without him for a morning?’
    The new love of my mum’s life looks after the animals at a local wildlife park. All he has to do all day is feed kangaroos and hold koalas for soppy tourists.
    ‘Perhaps,’ Mum replies, a slight strain to her calm demeanour, ‘but his voicemail said something about a sick Tasmanian Devil.’
    ‘Whatever,’ I reply.
    ‘That doesn’t sound like the Lily I know,’ she says narkily. ‘The Lily I know would be concerned about a sick animal. The Lily I know didn’t even want to go on holiday one year because her hamster was ill. The Lily I know used to care for her pets as if they were children.’
    ‘Yeah, and now they’re all dead,’ I interject.
    Silence.
    ‘What the hell is a Tasmanian Devil anyway?’ I add.
    ‘Oh, shut up, would you.’
    I smirk to myself and stare out of the window, pleased with my small victory. Then I remember that we’re in another country. On the other side of the world. And I remember that I haven’t won at all. I’ve lost. Big time.
    ‘Crafers – there it is.’ Mum flicks on her indicator and starts to move left onto the slip road.
    ‘What if you don’t like him?’ I ask. ‘Does that mean we can go home again?’
    ‘I will like him,’ she says determinedly. ‘And this is home, now.’
    ‘This will never be home,’ I reply darkly.
    England is my home. And as soon as I’m eighteen, I’m going back there. But that’s over two years away – and that feels like a whole lifetime. I am so pissed off at my mum for doing this to me, I can’t even tell you.
    Only she could meet a man on the internet. It’s almost the year 2000 – who does that sort of thing? I blame that stupid movie You’ve Got Mail . I swear it gave my mum ideas when she saw it last year. It’s all very well for Meg Idiot Ryan and Tom Pratty Hanks to email each other till their hearts are content, but who pays the consequences? Me, that’s who. Here I am in goddamn Kangaroo Land going to live with a man I’ve never even met because my mum has fallen in love. Again.
    We exit the tiny town that was Crafers and continue to drive up and down the perpetually winding road. We pass a paddock filled with brown and cream-coloured goats.
    ‘So this is Piccadilly,’ Mum says.
    ‘Piccadilly?’ I scoff. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
    She glances in my direction. ‘That’s the name of the town.’
    ‘You’re calling this a town?’ I look pointedly at the occasional house and farm dotting the side of the road. Old cars, trucks and tractors sit unused on the ever-dry grass. ‘The Piccadilly I’m used to is Piccadilly bloody Circus in London, and that is a far cry from this !’
    My mum frowns with irritation as the road takes us through a modest vineyard. ‘It’s not far from here, according to his directions.’
    We pass a few more houses before Mum begins to slow down.
    ‘Roses, that’s what he said.’ She points ahead at the multitude of pink and red rosebushes on the side of the road, then turns left into the driveway of a red-brick house with a brown-tiled roof, and a veranda overhanging with shady vines.
    My mum turns to me. ‘Be nice, okay?’
    I’m about to ask, ‘Why should I?’ but she interrupts.
    ‘ Please? ’
    And at that moment, a tall, dark-haired young guy