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

bit my lip to stop it shaking. When she turned her big eyes on me I ducked even further between my arms. She pitched forwards to tug at Tessa’s jacket sleeve. She tapped her finger against the page of her open notebook. Tessa bent further in to look, head to the side, then nodded.

The church door banged shut and there was a clack of high heels that echoed in the hollow cavern. We all turned. It was Philly, sailing in like a grand new ship to harbour, making no apology for the racket. She waved and when she reached us she went forwards to peck Tessa, Mrs Tyler, Mrs Nolan and the others, like she was at a gala. She looked the part, too. All black and white, swinging skirt and fitted jacket.

When she was through she came back to sit in my pew. She leaned towards me and rested her head on mine. The soft of it melted into me. I tried out a smile and at first it was like cracking through dried mud. She arched an eyebrow and I saw that she saw how it was with me. She reached down to the line of her skirt and raised it just enough to show me a flash of frilly fire-engine red. She winked and let her skirt drop. A smile sunshined out of me this time. She has always been able to change the channel in me. It reminded me of Mum, but in a sister way.

The priest hobbled out from the sacristy, old and wobbling like a bowling pin. First Philly and her frilly red knickers, and now him on the verge of toppling over. There was a pop in my head and the air got in and out of me easier. Tessa crossed the aisle to us and slipped in beside Philly, taking the time to ignore me. I was okay with that. Good, actually. Better to worry at the paint of the past on my own without her silent running commentary.

The priest found his mark on the altar and spread his arms over us, making a wide sign of the cross. Despite myself, I felt the blessing. I tightened my fists into shields because I didn’t want any blessing from the woman-hating Catholic Church.

‘Tim gunna make it?’ I whispered to Philly.

‘Said he had to finish the drenching for Shelley’s dad.’

I guess that was okay; it wasn’t like it was Mum’s funeral. Philly wagged her finger, reading me like a book. ‘First time he’s Missing In Action—two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth for you.’

‘When you put it like that…’ I had to admit.

She nodded, her lips all pursed up saying, ‘You know I’m right.’ Tessa frowned at us and we both raised our eyes as one and clapped them back on the priest. He gestured to Mrs Nolan and she got to her feet, notebook in hand. She bobbed before the altar and suppressed a groan as she lumbered up the steps. She put her hands on the lectern, cleared her throat and made contact with each of us, making sure we were all across the gravity of the occasion. I kept my eyes well down.

She opened with, ‘Peg was a marvellous woman. In the true sense of the word.’

The surprise of ‘marvellous’ jerked my head upright.

‘Peg lost touch with us after she moved to the city: she wanted her life to go a different way,’ Mrs Nolan said.

Philly turned to me with a lift of her eyebrow. I knew what she meant. What happened to: Dad chucked Aunty Peg out. Mum cried. Aunt Peg cried. Mum steadied Aunty Peg’s arm as she got into the car. Dad held the door, looking out over the top of the car into the far horizon, face like concrete. The story Tessa had told us.

Mrs Nolan put her shoulder to the wheel of truth and ground it down into something like normal. In her account of the days of Aunty Peg’s life there was quirkiness rather than madness.

Truth was that Peg’s madness often came in handy. When I lived at her place, straight out of school, she kept this cloud around my head of what she had said and hadn’t, what she’d asked me to do and then hadn’t. I couldn’t live with the convenience of it for her. That, and all the junk she hoarded and the way it breathed up all the air and leaned in close. In the end I realised that was Peg’s way of getting me out the door without hurting my feelings. She hadn’t wanted me there any more than Dad had wanted me living there. But in those first few months before I got that dishwashing job, staying with Peg was the only way I could afford going to uni.

At least she had colour, though. Madness had that going for it. She was always crashing through walls other people couldn’t see.

Mum was special that way, too. She also saw those walls and decided to ignore the shit out of them. She stood with her back to them, sleeves rolled up, arms plunged elbow deep into the sink, scrubbing hard. Heroic in the epic battle of dirt-poor survival.

I leaned forwards and dropped my head deep into my arms triangled on the back of the pew in front so nobody could see me swipe my eyes across my forearm. My heart cracking and then shattering for my beautiful skin-and-bone mother.

Maybe Mum would have been happier mad. But Peg beat her to it. So she was left with duty. Maybe that’s why she left us, looking for that something between the stifling rightness of what everybody expected her to do day after day, and the wild wrongness of mad. The tragedy was, she died in a cold hospital bed before she found it.

For a second there seemed no other option for me than to get to my feet, stumble over the back of Philly’s and Tessa’s legs and run fast and long, away from all of this. But Philly’s