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

money all right. But instead you told me you’d talked to a doctor there the day after we found out Mum had died.’ I picked up the death certificate from the table. Pointed to the squiggle signature of the doctor. ‘Too bad for you that Dr Steven Bridgton still lives there, Dad. I found his number in the Yellow Pages, easy. I rang when I thought his wife might be home alone. Only took me a few goes and she picked up. She didn’t seem to understand me at first, but the facts of how it worked came out of her in the end. She told me women cancelled appointments all the time, some changed their mind, others “didn’t have the money”.’

The tick of the clock was the only thing that breathed in the room. I felt Tye beside me, thigh long against thigh.

‘She said backyard abortionists hung around outside the clinic and they’d take whatever money a woman did have and get the thing done.’

Tim collapsed into his chair.

‘Is that how it happened, Dad?’ I pushed on into whatever was coming at us. ‘She ended up in some grubby room with a coat hanger?’

Dad hung his head like some mongrel dog.

‘And that’s the real reason you came home that day with the black eye,’ put in Tessa. ‘You got into it with him.’

‘He as good as killed your—’ Dad tried to say.

But Tessa wasn’t having any more of it. ‘That didn’t stop you giving him our Christmas money to change the cause of death on the certificate, did it?’

He deflated again.

‘Did she even die in the care of a hospital or did she bleed out in some dark alleyway?’ Fury strained Tessa’s voice. ‘Because how come an abortionist was the one to sign her certificate?’

‘Hospital,’ Dad jumped in. ‘He worked at the hospital, too. When the backyarder rang him to say Sarah was in a bad way, he took her in himself. He already had the police in his pocket, but I threatened him with going to the newspaper. Gave him enough to pay a couple of nurses to keep their mouths shut.’

I let some time snake by, then said quietly, ‘But that coat hanger didn’t kill just her, Dad, it killed us all.’

‘Rot as usual,’ he said, trying a last rally. ‘You’re all fine. Tessa’s got her family, Tim’s running the most successful farm in the district and Philly’s got a good paying job.’ He pointed his thick, callused finger at me again. ‘You!’ His flicked his wrist towards me. ‘You’re the only write-off.’

‘Dad!’ said Tessa.

‘She is!’ He glared at me. ‘See, I know a thing or two about you, too.’

I backed away, the air whooshed out of my tyres.

‘That poncy bloke, Maurice.’ He mimicked a drag queen’s voice full of venom. ‘See, he called again. Said I should talk to you. So you and I both got secrets.’

I shook my head like I didn’t know how to stop it going, and pressed back and back through the air until my shoulders hit the back of the chair. How much did Maurice tell him?

‘You’ve skinned me raw here today. You’re no daughter of mine.’ He stood up, getting power back in him. ‘Your mother would be ashamed of you.’

I licked my lips, tasting something new on them.

My father stabbed his finger at me. ‘You and me. We’re not so different.’

Philly leaped from her chair. ‘Stop being a bastard, Dad.’

‘No, he’s right, Philly,’ I said, all slow, still, behind the veil of this something new. ‘I tried to steal Mum’s records from the hospital and I ended up with the police.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Tye, breaking in. ‘You weren’t charged. You’re nothing like your father.’

I turned slowly to him, half drowning. ‘I’m not?’

He shook his head hard.

‘You’re not,’ Philly said, her voice heated in my defence.

‘You’re right there,’ said Dad. ‘She’s more like Peg. Maurice told me you weren’t even living with her when you said you were. Sleeping on a park bench until he sorted you a job and you got into that boarding dump you’re in now. Lying to us, all those years.’

‘Shut up, Dad,’ said Philly. ‘Hardly your league. Nobody could live in Peg’s nightmare house except Peg.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you get up every morning? Clean your room? Granted, it’s a shithole. Talk to those crazies you live with, look after Marge? Get to work mostly? Win cases?’

I nodded.

‘You’re not fucking Peg-mad, then.’

‘But you are nuts,’ said Tessa. She looked around the table. ‘Everyone in this family is, in one way or another.’ With her eyes dead on me, she said, ‘JJ’s right, Dad. Mum was the thing holding us together.’

A twisted, tight spring in me released.

Tessa wasn’t Mum, but she was doing the thing Mum used to do for me. I gathered all the loose up before it could pour out. We weren’t at the end yet.

Dad angled towards the window again. ‘At least your mother’s not here to see this.’

‘There wouldn’t have been a this,’ said Tim. ‘It was you, Jack. You and your lies made all this.’

I plucked at the petals in the white chrysanthemum napkin ring. Pulled at each one and crushed them under my nails, making them bleed white on to my skin.

Dad’s body jerked up, his face ravaged deep. ‘How could I have told you any of that?’

‘Dunno, Dad,’ I said.

‘You think I don’t know what I done? You think I don’t already feel the heat from the blazing fires of hell on my skin? It was my job to keep her safe. I will not take absolution, I will not clear myself of this sin, because I will not leave your mother in that place for all eternity on her own.’

His face twisted up ugly again. ‘You sit there, all powered up on things being as clear as black and white.’ He gripped the table edge. ‘None of yous know what it’s been like for me to keep all of this locked tight, keeping it from