The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan (affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

so you could have seen. I wasn’t going to mention this until after the funeral, but in the light of recent events… I don’t think you know the magnitude of the danger Philly is—’

‘Philly’s in no danger,’ said Dad, cutting her off, but still mildly. ‘JJ’s got a temper on her, but she means well.’

Tessa and Philly got tighter hold of me.

‘On the day Sarah left, she told me JJ needs—’

‘I won’t be saying any more on this, Nancy. I can see you and the other women have done some thinking and I appreciate it, but Sarah wouldn’t want the kids leaving their home, going to strangers.’

‘Strangers? My home, or Jessie’s or Mary’s, who is more than happy to take on a handful like JJ, near saint, is nothing like a stranger’s.’

‘My kids would be honoured to be looked after by any of you women,’ said Dad with just the right amount of honey, and Tessa and my eyes snagged on each other at this strange tone in him. ‘But the thing is, Sarah and me, we love these kids. And Sarah, she wouldn’t want me to give them to anybody, no matter how good they were.’ Dad’s voice cracked and wavered.

We were all fitting ourselves into the shape of the next second. We could hear Mrs Nolan’s silence it was so loud. It was like she was as unprepared as we’d been. But she surprised us, too.

‘You’re right there, Jack,’ she said. ‘Sarah wouldn’t like it.’

I let go of the breath I’d been holding.

‘But Sarah’s not here any more.’

Panic flew my eyes wide and snagged them on Tessa’s.

‘You may have to face facts,’ Mrs Nolan said. We heard the sound of a chair going back. ‘But we’ll leave that for after the funeral when you’re back to thinking straight.’

‘Facts?’ he said, his voice on the rise. ‘Let’s talk facts, then. What did Sare say to you? You drove her to the station the day she left. It could only have been you.’

Mrs Nolan didn’t speak for a beat and I wanted to squint around the fridge, just enough to see what her face was saying, but I didn’t. None of us did. We heard the chink of china as the cups and saucers were swooped over to the sink.

When her voice came it was full of stiff. ‘Indeed. I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Jack: she didn’t say one word about Peg having had a turn.’

Tessa gripped me. I gripped her back.

‘She must have found that out when she arrived at Peg’s,’ Mrs Nolan went on.

‘She told you that’s where she was going, then?’ Dad asked, a quiet of desperation creeping into his words, as if he knew he were admitting something but he just had to anyway.

‘Not in so many words.’ Mrs Nolan sounded uncomfortable, like she was squeezing words out though her own tight straw. ‘She asked me to take her to the station because you were busy. All she actually said was that she had a spot of shopping to do in town.’ Mrs Nolan’s voice stayed all clipped and hard edged. ‘Told me she’d get the school bus home. I knew she always dropped in on Peg, so I assumed.’

‘Is that a fact?’

The tick of the clock was the only loud thing now.

‘She have any other friends down that way?’ Dad asked, low and dirty.

‘Not that I knew,’ Mrs Nolan clipped back. ‘What exactly are you asking, Jack?’

Dad didn’t say anything for a long while.

‘Funeral,’ he finally said. ‘We don’t want any of her friends to be missing out. And it seems you women know a deal more about a man’s wife than I’d have reckoned on.’

‘We’ll keep the meals up,’ Mrs Nolan said, ignoring his words like everything was bang-on normal. ‘We’ve got the spread covered for the funeral. We’ve booked the hall if that suits. Expect there’ll be quite a few there for Sarah. Such a tremendously good woman.’ I caught Tim’s look, which was just as full of question as mine about why Mrs Nolan said ‘good’ as if Dad might ever have thought about arguing the point.

Dad was back to grunting and Mrs Nolan took that as acceptance. After the door closed, we were all ready to skedaddle before Dad spotted us, but he didn’t move a muscle. After a long quiet, we pushed back across the lino, slow and silent like mice backing away from a cat. We didn’t call out to Dad that night to remind him to do our prayers. We did them for each other.

A CLUE AT LAST

The next day, Dad said we wouldn’t be going to Mass. We’d never not been to Mass. We looked at each other like this was maybe even bigger than Mum dying. But I kept my mouth tight shut because after Mrs Nolan trying to take me away and Dad saying ‘no’ at first but then letting Mrs Nolan say ‘maybe after the funeral’ I was on my best behaviour. I had to even those scales up, which were pretty heavy on the giving-me-away side after I told Dad the devil was after his soul. He hadn’t even looked at me since, although he hadn’t parceled me out the door quicks sticks with Mrs Nolan either, so that was a shine of hope.

But my very best hope was staying exactly out of his path, out of the way of temptation. So instead of going to Mass I went all the way down to Jean’s Corner to sit by the apple tree. There weren’t any flowers about so I just had to say it all to Mum without their help. Told her about how I couldn’t stop sassing Dad, because as soon as I got one thing straight in my head another thing that didn’t fit would go pop and the red flooded in. I promised her I’d be stopping all that, though. One hand on her scarf, the other on