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

Who was I without the bloody great mystery clanging in the heart of me?

Then I knew it. As sudden as shit. That was fucked-up thinking and my life was all angled out because of it.

A couple more corners brought me into Righton Street. The normal of it was an affront to the adrenaline my heart was pumping. I cruised to the far end and stopped at the milk bar. I bought two Mars Bars and stuffed one straight down and put the other in the glove box for later. I got the car back down the right end, parked a few houses away from Number 95 and turned off the engine. The houses were jaw by jaw with short strips of green behind picket fences. Number 95 was not much different from any of the others, although there was a bush of camellias and a spray of impatiens, and the grass was manicured back to a crew cut.

I was glad it was me and not Tim, after all. This kind of thing hollowed you right out. I tried not to let the camellias and their missing-somebody-so-badly get inside me. Instead I tried to fill up with Mum, the feel of her, but there was too much swirl going on. Not being able to get at her dialled the panic up. I put my head down and tried to get more air in and out of me, nice and slow. Even then, my breathing sounded as if I’d galloped the last paddock home.

A bird called and I looked up with the surprise of it. I couldn’t see the bird, but the impatiens in the garden of number 95 caught me. Their purple and pinks were so sure of themselves. Mum always stopped at their page in the flower book. Motherly Love, she said. Maybe Mum was in me after all trying to connect in the only way she could through this swirl. I opened the car door.

The front gate creaked as I clicked it open and left it wide after me. I went up the steps and on to the verandah, hearing the hollow of my footsteps against the wooden slats. The doorbell was tarnished from use. I pushed on it. The dring of it loud in the silence of the street. I took a step back and the adrenaline got to roaring in my ears. A kid about twelve opened the door.

‘Is your mum or dad home?’

The kid shook her head. And a girl a few years younger than me came up behind her and put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. ‘What do you want?’

I looked at the sky through the branches of the tree next door. Too blue. And then I realised I hadn’t said anything and I hadn’t said it for too long.

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘None of your business,’ said the older one.

‘Sorry,’ I said, shaking myself back into my body and telling myself to be less strange. ‘My mum died a while back and she had this address, and I just thought your mum or somebody here might have known her. My mother’s name was Sarah McBride.’

The little one shrugged a shoulder, while the older one was all concrete wall, giving nothing.

I cast around for something less confronting and aimed it at the kid who was the friendlier one. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Louise Bridgton,’ she answered before the older one could shush her.

‘When’s your mum back?’

‘Tomorrow,’ the kid got in again.

‘That’s enough.’ The older girl skitted the little one behind her. ‘You’d better go.’

I turned. Then I remembered. I took a strip of paper out of my jeans pocket. ‘Can you ask her to call me? Just in case she can tell me anything about the people you bought the house off?’

‘Sorry about your mum,’ said the little one.

The older girl took the paper but scrunched it up as she closed her hand. That single thing, on top of everything else, was so pointy. She started to shut the door with me still standing there. The pointy thing began to spin and it exploded up and out of me. I stuck my Doc in the door.

The girl pushed the door against my foot.

‘Get away,’ said the kid, her voice all high and quick.

I came to my senses and pushed the door forwards enough to get my foot out. It slammed shut.

‘Who was that?’ asked a woman’s voice from far inside.

‘One of Dad’s country cousins.’

So there was a woman-slash-mother in there, after all. Which was more than weird. Why did they lie to me? And then to her. I never said I was from the country. The world was bent out of shape. I was so over all this bloody lying. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I knew it was no use, but the red was out and whipping about, so I screwed it all up for one great kick at the door.

The smell of bush-hard things was up under my nails as I slammed the car door behind me, my eyes on Dad as he yanked at a prickly pear.

‘Saw your car on the road,’ he said.

‘Saw the ute down here from the bridge.’

‘Give me a hand with this bastard, will you? Extra pair of gloves in the back.’

I bent down to pat Blue. She’d got old while I was looking away. She nuzzled her nose into me and I was grateful she hadn’t forgotten me. I’d been planning to attack Dad straight away. Had been doing it all the way from Righton Street. I realised that deep down I had thought that address would tell me something. And the crazy-bad disappointment that it hadn’t ate me through. There was something at that place that didn’t quite add up, but I couldn’t work out what, so I put my agitation down to the weirdness of the older one’s hostility— that and crashing into another dead end.

So there was just this left. Full-on frontal attack on