The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

Ted had to do this thing for me. Had to go into the dark and be with Mum, who made him in the first place.

I raced out of my room. I was happy about this Ted business because Mum would have something of me after all. I slid through the lounge in my socks and it was only when I was just about into the kitchen that I saw Dad poking at the fireplace. There were a few bits of white paper with gold edges on top of the logs, curling and blackening with the heat. The end of Dad’s poker burying a square of black deep in the hot orange. I was in mid slide, so I couldn’t stop, even though I put my hand to the wall.

Dad came hurtling into the kitchen after me. ‘In the car. You’re keeping us all late.’

I thrust Ted at him so he’d see there was a good reason. ‘Ted’s going in with Mum.’

‘Where have your brains got to, JJ?’ he said, ignoring Ted. ‘Should have sorted that out well before.’

I tucked Ted back under my arm, got into my shoes and followed him out the door. It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it. I missed his half grins and winks behind Mum’s back, but I guess he’d just about had enough of me. I dragged down the side of my mouth. I’d had enough of me. That was for sure. Couldn’t keep my mouth shut for quids despite all my hand-on-heart promises to Mum. I held Ted tight to my stomach all the way, even though Tessa offered to put him in the bag with the other things.

‘He’s right with me till we get there,’ I said. She didn’t argue. It was Philly who leaned over and said what I saw in Tessa’s face. ‘Are you sure you want to give Ted to Mum?’

I was sure, but I didn’t trust myself to do anything more than nod and stare out the window.

I couldn’t see out the front window because Aunty Peg’s big hat in the front seat took up the whole view. She’d taken some of the lilac from the vase Tessa put in her room and tucked it into the headband. Mum said she and Aunty Peg had had lots of fun times, like hiding Great Aunty Dot’s teeth from her. Mum and Aunty Peg sounded good and naughty when they were kids. I wondered if I’d grow up good like Mum or mad like Aunty Peg.

Father McGinty had never said a word to me, but I could see he had ideas of changing that tonight. Dad and Father McGinty said a few low things together, and then Aunty Peg stepped forwards, sending Philly and me into giggles with her curtsey. Father McGinty nodded as if a curtsey was to be expected, then he turned to Tessa and shook her hand with both of his and then Tim’s. It was my turn next, but I kept my hands around Ted. He ended up ruffling my head and just patting Philly on her shoulder. He said things to all of us, but I didn’t know what they were.

Aunty Peg greeted Mrs Tyler and Mrs Nolan and the others like friends she saw every day. Mrs Tyler put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in for a quiet word.

Tessa pulled Philly after her, and Tim and I followed up the aisle. We got to go in first and have a private moment with Mum before everyone else. It wasn’t really ‘with’ Mum because the coffin was all shut up tight on account of us kids—Mrs Nolan said it wasn’t right for children to see dead people. Dad agreed, said he wanted us to remember Mum how she was, not stone cold in a coffin. Aunty Peg had snorted and asked him what he had to hide. Dad swore.

I swore too because with the coffin all locked up how would I get Mum’s brooch in to her? But then I heard Aunty Peg saying they’d have to leave the coffin open at the funeral because there’d be a bigger crowd, so we would just have to put up with seeing our mother stone-cold dead, then. I winced; she’d be in that plain old navy dress Tessa had picked out in the first place. Dad wouldn’t hear of Mum wearing the pink snowdrop dress because it wasn’t a party she was going to.

Tessa got our things out of the bag and handed them to Tim and Philly. She nodded at us to put them in the basket at the foot of Mum’s coffin. Tim went first, looking as if he didn’t know what to do. In the end, he placed the Donald Duck comic in the basket with his two hands and did a kind of bow. That seemed good to me so I did the same thing with Ted.

Dad put in an envelope and Aunty Peg swept off a set of bracelets from one arm and then more from the other, and let them drop into the basket with a hell of a racket. I sat in the front pew beside Dad, who was all kneeled over. I wished I’d said goodbye to Ted. Properly. With words, not just all that squeezing. I knew he wasn’t real or anything. But he was something.

Then the others came tiptoeing in and we began. Tessa’s eyes were crinkled up as she gave the Hail Marys in her loud voice, as if they could bring Mum back. Tim’s eyes were closed, too. Philly was mumbling along like it was a song, Dad was running the words over his tongue like water over stones in the creek, and Aunty Peg was mumbling, rocking forwards and backwards.

I couldn’t catch on to the rhythm; I was always a beat behind, and out of nowhere I dropped my beads. Tessa glared at me as the clatter of the rosary beads exploded