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

doors down from Marge for five years now and I’d never heard her talk like this—and didn’t want to hear it now, either. ‘It’s true, he’s no saint,’ I conceded. I told them what I knew. ‘It’s just that I gave him such a hard time imagining worse.’

‘That’s exactly how secrets work,’ Marge said. ‘They dry your innards.’

She was bang on. ‘Nah. That’s on me,’ I said. ‘I should have had more faith.’

Rat-Tail came over. ‘Sweet-talked that nice chick over there into another round,’ he said. ‘Bad teeth, but.’

‘Just wanted to get rid of you, mate,’ said Rocco.

Rat-Tail grinned. ‘Nah. Got a date after her work.’

Tye, Rocco and I exchanged looks. She’d be leaving earlier than usual that night, we reckoned silently across the table. Rat-Tail set the tray down and we all took another beer, with Rocco passing Marge’s to her.

‘So what yous all talking about, then?’ asked Rat-Tail.

‘Marge was just giving JJ the benefit of her pessimism.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rat-Tail. ‘You don’t want to be like that. Life’s real good.’ He grinned over his glass with froth on his top lip. ‘This beer. Real cold, it is, and it gurgles real nice in the back of your throat. And these peanuts.’ He reached for the bowl in the middle of the table.

Tye laughed. ‘Spot on, mate.’

‘What about that address your brother gave you?’ asked Rocco.

‘Just one more of those dead ends.’ I shrugged. ‘They were all dead ends because in the end there was nothing much to discover.’

‘You’re being too hard on yourself, JJ,’ Tye said. ‘You found out why your mother left without saying goodbye, why she didn’t stay at Peg’s. That’s huge.’

‘An extra-marital affair with your wife’s sister is nothing to be sniffed at,’ added Marge.

‘One-night stand,’ I corrected automatically. ‘Or five-minute stand. And that’s scandal, not crime.’

‘The real crime,’ said Tye, ‘was all the lying.’

‘Seems to be an epidemic,’ I said. ‘Even those kids the other day at Mum’s Richmond address. Lied. Straight to my face.’ I told them the story of how their mother had been there all along in the back of the house, and when I’d gone they’d lied to her about who I’d been. ‘Called me a country cousin.’

‘Country cousin,’ said Marge, placing her glass on the table.

I nodded.

‘You sure?’

I shrugged.

She sat back. Opened her handbag. Looked inside. Didn’t find what she was looking for. Closed it again. ‘I think your mother was pregnant.’

‘She’d had a hyster—’ I started.

‘You sure about that?’ she cut me off. ‘Country cousin is what we called a woman up from the country needing an abortion. Stays a day or two to recover and gets on home with no one any the wiser.’

SETTING THE TRAP

I’d drunk enough to put me out last night, but despite that I’d got no sleep. It kept dancing away, soaking up into all those cracks on the ceiling. The thing was, my mother couldn’t have been pregnant. She’d had a hysterectomy after Philly. The Catholics’ approach to contraception.

Still, there was some dark thing buzzing inside it all.

Truth had to feel better than this. So maybe I hadn’t scraped all of it off the sides of this Mum thing yet.

Tye had stayed over and pressed close into my back as ballast against the whirl. In the morning, sitting in my bed, my arms locked around my knees, I watched him leave early to go home and change into a fresh suit. When he’d gone I got out of bed, too. Dressed, got my bike, headed to the hospital.

Dad already had the telly on.

‘You’re early, love,’ he said.

‘Was Mum pregnant when she died?’

He immediately clammed up tight. ‘What rot’re you talking now? They took her baby works out after having Philly nearly killed her.’

‘Number 95 Righton Street did abortions.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t play innocent with me. That’s why you came home that day with a black eye. You had a fight with somebody there.’

‘What fight?’ But he was only half-hearted and then he caved in completely. ‘Come on, love.’ He scratched his head. ‘It was against my religion. He was a baby killer.’

‘So you knew it was an abortion clinic all along.’

‘If I’d told you that, with an imagination like yours, you would have gone off down a thousand different rabbit holes looking for trouble where it wasn’t.’

That right there.

In the past, I would have believed him. I was dead sick of all his bullshit.

‘Fuck this.’

‘Get your foul mouth out of here.’

‘What about your foul opinions?’

‘You keep the dirty out of your speech or get out,’ he said. His fingers got themselves tapping against the steel of his bed rail.

I got in closer, ready to go on, but a nurse swept in. All small and white and filling up the room. Dad pulled up a smile and plastered it on. I stepped back.

‘This another of your daughters,’ asked the nurse in an Irish accent, flowing cheer, her face spotted over with freckles.

He widened his smile. ‘Second youngest,’ he said. ‘JJ, this is Maureen.’

‘All these girls, you’re a lucky man.’ She waved at me, while she set Dad up for a blood pressure test.

‘Could say that,’ he said, his eyes not meeting mine.

She pumped up the bag around his arm, letting it down slowly and monitoring the screen. She sucked in air, shaking her head. ‘Blood’s up, Mr McBride.’ She tapped her head. ‘Settle down or you won’t be getting out of here anytime soon.’ She shot him a wink as she left the room.

He cleared his throat and looked me dead in the eye. ‘Reckon it was Peg,’ he said.

‘Peg what?’

‘Reckon that butcher bloke, the abortionist—Sarah might have taken Peg for one. That’s why your mother had the details in her missal.’

‘Peg was pregnant when Mum died?’

‘Nah. Would have been years before. Peg was always putting it around. Your mum had been holding tight to that prayer book for a long time. Remember? Wouldn’t let any of us so much as look at it. Reckon Peg was