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

for her, right down, but she still wasn’t there. I tried not to let it knife at me, but it got in anyway. I attacked the centre of my palm with my nails, then squeezed my hands into fists and held them at my sides. I was trying to stop all the palm attacks because my skin there was a mess. Before I’d even counted to three I was back ripping into the skin again, full up with self-disgust that I’d even imagined there could have been a sign from Mum about what to do next, all neoned up and flashing, just because it was a cemetery.

I punched the newspaper into a ball and jumped to my feet. But a car was pulling up at the gates and I didn’t want to get nose to nose with anybody, so I dropped the newspaper and curled up on a grave further along with a tall enough stone for a bit of cover. Chin to knee to chest, waiting for them to get in and get to whatever far corner they were headed to so I could slip out unremarked. I did have something new to investigate for the Timeline, though: not a sign from Mum, but Tim’s address. It was something for my mind to work on while I waited to get away from this place of dirt and stones.

It was taking so long, though. I peeked around the headstone hiding me. Shit. She was headed my way. There was something in the way she leaned into one hip. Then she stopped to fan herself with one hand and I knew what that something was. It was bloody Mrs Nolan. She moved her basket from one arm to the other and kept coming. And that meant it must have been bloody Tim! What was he up to? I bet that bastard rang Nosy Nancy. I got one arm to the other around my knees and squeezed, trying to Alice myself smaller. Mrs Nolan’s shoes scrunched against the tiny pebbles, closer and then closer. I shrank, dropped my head between my arms, hissed in air between my teeth and waited. And she did turn into Mum’s row. She groaned as she got to her knees beside Mum. I hardly let any air out of me.

‘I know you’re there, JJ.’

Fuck. One hand flew to my forehead, the other close after. Hidden and exposed at the same time.

‘No shame in visiting your mother.’

I glanced around the gravestone to look at her. She kept at what she was doing. Big black-red roses sticking out of her basket. I decided to play it as if I hadn’t been hiding. Not that I expected her to buy it.

‘Just taking a break, Mrs Nolan. Hard work, arranging flowers.’

‘Still got a mouth on you, then.’

‘They for Mum?’

‘Some for your mum, some for mine,’ she said, pointing towards the rows beyond to where her mother’s grave must be. ‘You did a good job.’ She snipped off half of the stem of one of her blooms and then did the same with two more, bringing them into height alignment with Shelley’s roses. ‘You always had the knack.’ She placed the blooms in among Shelley’s, sat back, head to the side. The new roses pulled the idea of the whole deeper. It was something, adding in that sorrow. She studded one up and down, shifting them all. Again, it was right. I moved to get closer in to them.

‘Your mum had the knack, too,’ she said.

‘She loved your roses.’

‘That’s why they’re here.’ She dusted her hands off. ‘Didn’t see you after Peg’s funeral.’

‘Needed a smoke.’

She grunted.

‘Funerals are difficult,’ I said, my voice heading higher in defence.

She touched this rose and that. Picked at them like guitar strings.

‘After what happened at Mum’s funeral,’ I said, all heckles raised, and sharp with blame.

‘Nothing happened at your mother’s.’ She flicked the cut-off bits away between the graves.

‘You attacked me.’

‘I tried to help you. You were hysterical with grief. Your father had no idea.’

‘You tried to take me away from my family.’

She buttoned her lips, shook her head, looked out through the sighing of all those pine trees. Looked back at me, measuring something. ‘I…’ she started, then lost her way. Took a long breath in, gathered her words. Started again. ‘I felt that without your mother, you were… in some danger. You were… sensitive, like Peg had been as a girl. More so, because you didn’t have her lightness to go with it. You were a broody, fiery little thing. I felt you needed a firm hand to keep you on the straight and narrow. Jack…’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think he was the best thing for you.’

‘You said I had the devil in me.’

‘Peg’s devil. I said you had Peg’s devil in you.’

Something popped in me. I dropped into a squat, my head buried in the cave of my arms. From the deep dark this new truth came rushing at me. All these years I’d held to this devil thing. It’d made sense. The way Dad had been after that, as if he blamed me for something. But she hadn’t meant it; she’d just been worried about me without Mum.

I felt her hand on my shoulder, gentle. ‘But look at you. You proved me wrong.’

I looked up. The sorry in her looking down on me. ‘I shouldn’t have said it at all. But at the time…’ She shook her head, did some more looking through the trees. Scratched under her jawline.

I tried to clear the buzz in my head for this new thing she was trying to say. The build of it in her. I stood up, knowing I needed to be on my feet for whatever was coming next. She hadn’t been trying to find me at Peg’s funeral to apologise. It was for this. What was coming now.

‘I was mad with grief myself,’ she said. ‘Grief and guilt. And a terrible responsibility. You see, at the time, I thought it