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

box to the ground and leaning against the skip. ‘Madness is for the mad, Philly.’ I didn’t say what Aunty Peg had added to me: ‘Madness is for the brave, JJ. Just you remember that when your time comes.’

‘Maybe it is brave, though. Not caring what others think. Not matching every colour, shade for shade.’

‘You are obsessive, even nuts, Philly, but you’re not mad.’

I had to admit everyone was probably right: that if anyone did take after Peg, it was going to be me. Sometimes I could already feel it crawling around under my skin. I mean, there were times I was sure Mum was talking back to me when I spoke to her.

I’d felt it more than usual since Peg had kicked the bucket. Even Tye had noticed it. Straight after Philly told me about Peg’s heart attack, tiny jackhammers had started in on my nerves all the way along my arms and down my spine. If I’d known Dad and Tim were going to skip out on her funeral maybe I would have done it too. I winced as Mum gave me a clip around the ear from beyond the grave. But then laughed back. Course I wouldn’t have not gone, I told her. There was something gutsy about Peg, I added for myself. Like Marge said. You had to honour the quiet fierce of ordinary lives.

Marge knew a lot about that. She’d never told me. I was one hundred per cent sure I didn’t want her to, but Rocco had, the words tight and grim. Marge had got up early to cream the milk in the dairy before the kids were out of bed. Her husband was on the tractor already, so she thought the coast was clear. She’d only just sat down to begin when she heard them: two clean gunshots. One for each kid. Then he turned the gun on himself. I did ask once why she kept going. Because she had to, she said. She lived her life because her kids didn’t get a chance to live theirs.

The sad of it could strangle you if you let it.

Compared to that, all the muddy, loose ends fraying around Mum were nothing. The thing was, I might have made it all up, anyway. Maybe there was no mystery. Mum had just taken off to some boarding house without a phone for a break from us. None of it had been easy. You only had to look at Tessa with her kids to see that. And that was with Geoff being a much better husband than Dad had ever been. Had a steady job at the bank, for starters, so there was enough money to keep the kids in warm clothes.

Mrs Tyler had just got caught up in all my drama. But maybe she was right about one thing. Peg dying was an end of an era. Maybe it was time to let Peg carry all our madness with her to the grave. I could be like Philly. I had my career in the right place. Now was not the time to lose focus. I rubbed my arm, hard and fast. I just had to shut down these jackhammers.

A few minutes later, Tessa cried out. Philly and I raced back into the house and into the lounge room. Tessa cradled her index finger as blood spurted out. Philly ran to get her first-aid kit from her handbag. I bundled Tessa to the kitchen sink and got cold water coursing over her hand. We both watched the blood spatter and river down the drain with the water. When Philly got back with bandages and ointment, I leaned against the wall for a while, taking in the way their dark heads arched together.

I wandered back into the lounge to see what had cut Tessa’s finger. I kneeled over the pile of things she’d been sorting. The broken glass was hidden beneath a calendar. Aunty Peg and her bloody obsessive calendars. I tipped the broken glass into a sheath of newspaper. There was Philly’s name on the calendar. Friday afternoon: four pm. I turned the pages over, her name repeated over and over. I hadn’t even known. Philly just quietly turned up week after week to visit Peg. The visits lasted forty-nine minutes, fifty minutes, there was one as long as sixty. I pushed the calendar aside and twisted the sheath closed so none of the glass could get at anyone else, laying it in the wheelbarrow ready for the tip.

Back on my heels, I was dwarfed by the mountains of crap rising up and bearing down on me. I stood to even things up and rocked, toe to heel. Heard the snap of Philly’s handbag and her telling Tessa to sit and rest. With Tessa out of the picture, I had a window of possibility to chuck rather than sort, so I dropped back to my knees to go at it hard and make a dent in things. I threw the first pile into the wheelbarrow, then picked up the next pile of stuff to hurl. But the burn of Mum’s name on a calendar on the top stopped me: Sarah.

I dropped it like a scald.

I scratched at my palm, digging right in. Stubbing your toe was bound to happen when you were on the business end of a shovel digging through the past. I pushed out a bit of a laugh at myself and picked up the calendar to throw it in the wheelbarrow. But the bold of the letters dragged at my eyes, tiding them back. I leaned closer. There was something odd about the date. I calculated. It got colder in that room as the answer became clearer.

It was the day Mum left us.

It was proof.

Mum had been here all along. No mysterious boarding house needed. She just hadn’t wanted to talk to us. Least of all me. I would have argued her six ways to Christmas to make her come home. I shook