A Roast on Sunday Read Online Free Page A

oven and left it on the windowsill to cool. The air in the kitchen took on the soft smell of lavender. Maggie’s creamy lavender soap ensured the user a deep and peaceful slumber filled with wondrous dreams.
    When her mother had left Willow spread her books over the kitchen table and sat back, kicking a table leg idly while Nick sharpened a pencil. The scent of the soap started to make her feel drowsy and her eyelids drooped with heaviness.
    “Wake up,” Nick said, poking her with the now sharp tipped pencil.
    “Ouch you idiot, that hurt.” Willow rubbed at the small black mark on her arm where Nick had stabbed her. “You could have given me lead poisoning.”
    “ Yeah right.”
    “You never know. You’re going to feel pretty stink if I keel over and die.”
    “If you do can I have your bike?”
    Willow kicked him under the table.
    “No. Let’s go outside,” she said. “I’m falling asleep in here.”
    ‘What about your homework?”
    “I’ll do it later.”
    “We promised your mother we’d get it done.”
    “I don’t remember making any such promise.”
    “Willow, she might ask and you know I can’t lie to her. She has this way of knowing when I’m not telling the truth.”
    “Everyone in town knows when you’re lying. Your ears go bright red and you bite your bottom lip.”
    “ Aw hell, you might have mentioned this before you know. Might have saved me a bit of bother over the years.”
    Outside the day had warmed up. The sun was high and fat white fluffy clouds wafted slowly across the sky. It was like something from a kids drawing, except the sun wasn’t an orange triangle with wavy lives in the corner. Dropping her school books in the grass, Willow and Nick lay flat on their backs under a big Magnolia tree and let dappled sun flicker across their skin.
    “Can you believe we only have two weeks left of school?” Willow remarked, watching a fantail in the tree above scoot from branch to branch, chirping merrily all the while.
    “I know , the end is in sight.”
    “Then we have two whole months of freedom,” Willow said.
    They both smiled in satisfaction at the thought.
    From a distance they heard a car turn into the gravel road that led to Willow’s driveway and Nick lifted himself up on to his elbows to look. Through the cloud of dust kicked up by the tyres he could just make out the shape of a red VW.
    “Dot’s home,” he said, laying back down again.
    The car turned into the driveway without slowing, and as it bumped up the potholed drive they could hear the song ‘Ten Guitars’ wafting out the open windows, along with a chorus of accompanying female voices. The car pulled to a stop in front of the house and Willow’s grandmother climbed out of the backseat. She waved across at Willow and Nick and then went up the steps and into the house. Before she had disappeared the car was off again, rounding the top of the curved driveway where it paused briefly in front of Willow and Nick and three lined but beaming faces peered at them out of the window.
    “ Eh, Kia Ora Willow and Nick,” Arihana said from the front passenger seat, her lined face creased up into a smile like a Sharpei dog.
    “H ey Arihana, how was your night?”
    “Oh choice dear, it was fabulous as always. You two behaving yourself?”
    “Yes Arihana.”
    “Now that’s disappointing,” Arihana cackled, her voice throaty and husky from forty years of smoking Marlboro lights. “Your grandmother should have taught you better. Here,” a dollar coin came flying out the window and bounced off Nick’s right cheek.
    “Ouch.”
    “Don’t spend it all at once, you hear?”
    “Yes Arihana.”
    Then the car took off back down the driveway, the stereo cranked up loud again.
    They watched them leave. “R ight,” Willow sighed, rolling over and stretching out a fingertip to retrieve a book. “I suppose we better get this out of the way.”

Chapter four
     
    The centre of town was already a hive of activity when Maggie