The house was theirs.<br/><br/>The way they had come by the money, savings, death benefits, life insurance, it almost made it sort of sad, but the house was theirs and due to how they had found it, it hadn't cost them as much as it likely should have done.<br/><br/>The place had been in a government auction and since these things are not well advertised or well known about, the entire house had gone for around a fifth of its likely market value. It and all the contents it had, now belonged to the Black family.<br/><br/>They had moved their stuff in and any of the previous owner's stuff they didn't want around had been lumped in the garage, or the storage area in the basement. With some small overflow to the home cinema.<br/><br/>The cinema. It had a big screen at one end, a very high resolution multimedia projector still in place, the speakers were built into the walls and ceiling, the whole place was sound baffled really well. Someone had come in and raided the electronics from the cupboard that held them however. Still all that was really needed was a computer to run video and an amp/receiver to run audio and the place would be up and running again. All the cabling was there. Isolde could handle that easily enough.<br/><br/>The room had twelve three seater leather sofa's facing the screen four rows of three, each row a little higher than the one in front. Everything that had been left in the house was of similar quality and it did beg the question who had lived here before the Black's had bought the place? Why had it been re-possessed? Government auction not bank auction? That was the only worrying thing. Possibly drug dealers or mobsters?<br/><br/>Still, it was theirs now.<br/><br/>Situated in a stand of affluent suburbs just to the north of Neptune the house itself was on a rise with the rear of the house overlooking a large pond, fields and woods. It was an impressive view. The Black's land extended down to encompass the pond and around to give them a good two acres or more of land, mostly behind the house, but with thirty meters each side of it. The houses either side had a similar arrangement so there was plenty of space between each one.<br/><br/>The driveway up to the house was fully tarmac, not the more usual gravel, which was nice, with spaces set out to park four cars on one side and a turning spot on the other. The large garage was still full of tools when they took possession which made Isi sad. Her dad would have loved that.<br/><br/>Which was the heart of the matter.<br/><br/>Dad was gone and wasn't coming back. If he wasn't this never would have happened. Dad was gone and they all missed him. It had been a while since he had died, but the wound was still fairly fresh. There was a certain darkness about the Black family still and likely would be for a little while.<br/><br/>Isi had taken a room in the basement. She had kept the king sized bed that had been there already, with its memory foam mattress and under-bed drawers, but had bought new sheets for it. The little leather three seater sofa had already been there and was similar to the ones in the cinema, only this one would pull out to form a decent sized bed should she have company.<br/><br/>Her computer desk was set up by one of the many cat6 sockets that were around the walls of almost all the rooms in the house. One of the first things Isi had insisted on doing was going out and buying three managed twenty four port network switches and a box of cable and ends. She had spent a few hours making patch cables and hooking everything up via the patch panels that were in the rack in the home cinema electronics cupboard. The router and modem for the internet were there as well, making it easier for Isi to solve potential issues.<br/><br/>The place was still in need of some re-decoration. Whoever had owned it before had somewhat gaudy taste and the wallpaper and some of the fixtures and fittings would, in time, wind up replaced. There was far too much mock opulence and the whole thing currently felt like trying too hard and was far from having a fit with the Blacks more English Country sensibilities.<br/><br/>The house was still giving up secrets every day. The family had yet to even look in the attic and they would find new and surprising things for a few weeks at least to come no doubt.<br/><br/>Still, they were away from Stockbridge.<br/><br/>Living with the Trents had been great to be fair, yet being expelled for telling a boy to stop stalking her had not. Of course in telling him to stop stalking her she had broken two of his fingers, but he had tried to grab her and she had reacted. As it turned out she had reacted a little harder than she meant to.<br/><br/>She didn't face criminal charges as the incident had been caught on camera and it was quite clear from the footage and from eyewitnesses that she had been under duress. However the school took a dim view of her reaction and kicked her out anyway.<br/><br/>Hunting for a house had followed and the move to Neptune and yanking their stuff out of storage soon after.<br/><br/>Now they were living in this unbelievable house and Isi had a new school to look forward to going to.<br/><br/>Her new room was mostly set up. Her room was... An odd mix.<br/><br/>She had girl stuff like stuffed animals, yet also there was a shelf above her computer desk with classic Generation one Transformers re-issues and even a few original un-boxed ones. She had a fully built original European issue of Redhorn the Terrible and a number of other smaller wind up reds, which was incredibly rare in North America as Zoids weren't officially released there at that time. She had an action man wearing barbie clothes holding a spatula holding hands with a Barbie doll wearing action man clothes holding an assault rifle. Someone had taken the time to re-cut the clothes, even adding fabric in the case of the action man, to make them fit right. She had posters on the walls, all in frames, all for films.<br/><br/>Reservoir Dogs, Unforgiven, The Breakfast Club, The Killer, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil, The Iron Giant, Metropolis (original Fritz Lang), Hellraiser, Evil Dead II, Alien, Fight Club and last but not least Monty Python's Life of Brian. Her computer desk was tidy, though the full size resin model of the Lament Configuration puzzle cube next to her mouse looked almost real. Yet sat the other side of it was a book of stickers of little cartoon kittens. The whole room was like this, a seemingly mismatched jumble of boy and girl stuff. There was a pile of clothes on the floor by the bed which looked like the extremely boyish type of outfit she would normally be seen wearing around school.<br/><br/>Isi was a puzzle wrapped up in an enigma, even to herself most of the time. She was a mess of conflicting voices in her head, strange impulses and differing opinions. Her mind a mystery to herself all too often.<br/><br/>She had to start at a new school soon. That was always fun. She had done that a few times before of course, it didn't hold any real trepidation for her, only, the whole incident with breaking a boy's fingers was fresh in her mind and she didn't think that it could possibly have escaped the notice of the principle of her new school. He had 'invited' her to meet him at his office when she registered and she wondered if it didn't have something to do with that incident. So there was that to look forward to.<br/><br/>Isi lay on her bed wearing only her underwear and tried to stop worrying long enough to concentrate on the book her tablet was dutifully showing to her.<br/>