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

thought—’ Mrs Nolan released one forearm to cover her eyes, still gripping me with the other hand, panting air in. I inched closer, not knowing what to do, how to comfort her—me. When she spoke again, I could hardly understand her through her gulping gasps.

‘I thought…’ Her head rocking from side to side. ‘At first I thought her distress was because something so private had got out. That I knew about Jack and Peg.’ Mrs Nolan slapped her chest for emphasis. ‘But then Sarah just kind of lost her stuffing. So I went down after her, both of us in the mud, and I realised she hadn’t known about it. That I’d been the one to tell her. I tried to apologise. Tried to take it back. Explain it away; such a long time ago, just the once, both out of their right minds, crippled with sorry ever since, nobody else but me knew, I’d never told a soul. Hadn’t. But none of it landed.’

The sobbing overtook Mrs Nolan. Her body racked with the telling. This terrible truth, all these years. No wonder she’d needed to find me, to excavate all of this from her insides. I saw.

My hands dropped back to my lap, now my eyes over the parch of the paddocks to the far horizon, back down the years to my poor, poor mother in that mud.

Mrs Nolan righted herself enough to go on, drawing me back into the more.

‘Sarah didn’t say a word about it. Just put her palm up to stop me, shut me down. She took off her apron, like she was shedding skin, let it drop to the dirt. She went straight inside. She took pen and paper out of the drawer and disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back out to the kitchen, she picked up an overnight bag that had been packed and ready behind the door; didn’t even stop to wash her hands. Didn’t say a word on the way to the train. I was bitten through with misery. But at the station she did this one thing.’ Mrs Nolan clasped her hands over the top of mine. All of her burning into me, wanting me to understand, to be there in it with her. ‘Sarah put her hands out, just like I’m doing to you now.’ She shook mine. ‘Then Sarah looked straight at me, as straight as I’m looking at you now. “It’s not your fault, Nancy,” she said. “It’s theirs.” Her eyes as clear as clear, but I could hardly see her back for tears.’ Mrs Nolan released a bit. ‘And that was the majesty of your mother. I thought I was telling her something. But now I realise. I was telling her so much more. It wasn’t just the affair. It was the baby they made together and the lies they told together, drawing them in to a circle and leaving her on the outside. Making a fool out of her. Yet Sarah’s last words were all of comfort for me.’ Mrs Nolan’s folded her lips as if to put a stop to any more of the pain, but she lost the battle and it surged from her, and she let herself collapse the rest of the way to the ground.

I let her go as a fresh horror found me. It made sense now. Why Mum had only stayed twenty-five-and-a-half minutes at Peg’s. Just long enough to have it out with her. The crime Peg’s even more than Jack’s. After their parents’ deaths, it was just the two of them, so close they were almost sewn into the same seam.

What a terrible betrayal—skin flayed to bone.

PHILLY’S PUZZLE PIECE

Iwas completely done by the time I made it, shattered and bruised, back to the boarding house. This thing, it was just too big. It changed everything. How could Jack have done it? This moral man of God. He destroyed so many lives: Peg’s, Mum’s, ours. He had so many secrets. I stepped over all Tye’s messages pushed under my door. But Rat-Tail must have been hovering because he was there before I could even get the door closed.

‘He says you got to ring him.’

I couldn’t. ‘It’s too late. Ring him in the morn—’

‘He says no matter what time, but.’

‘I’m too tired.’

‘He says no matter what you’re feeling, but.’

Rat-Tail wasn’t going anywhere. I knew exactly what Tye would have said to him. I reluctantly pushed past him. ‘Okay. Okay.’ But Rat-Tail still wasn’t letting go. He shadowed me all the way to the phone and hovered.

‘Really?’ I asked as he watched me, head bent, eyes intent on my dialling fingers, but I knew there wasn’t much use expecting him to be anywhere else until it was mission accomplished.

‘Hi,’ I said for the benefit of Rat-Tail, giving him a significant fuck-off look. He repaid me with the biggest grin and a flare of grateful shot up in me for his sweetness in the middle of all this.

‘Don’t bloody “Hi” me, JJ.’

‘It’s—’

‘I don’t want to hear it. Maurice says you better call him tomorrow morning, Saturday or not.’

He hung up.

I looked at the phone as if he might still be in there somewhere. Felt Rat-Tail’s small, round eyes on me, so I replaced the phone gently. When I looked up, Rat-Tail had disappeared behind his door but it wasn’t closed. ‘You all good, JJ?’ he asked in a little voice.

‘Yep.’

His pointed face showed back around my side of the door, all concern.

‘You’re a good guy, Rat-Tail.’

His face broke open with another of his sweet grins. I returned as much of it as I could.

I numbed my way back to my room. What now?

The springs of the bed squeaked as I collapsed to sit on to it, folding forwards to grab my ankles, just breathing. The desert on the Timeline of Mum’s last days radiated urgency into my back from the wall behind me. Because despite all this revelation, there was still