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

‘All Italians are poets.’ She dusted her hands together, the crumbs dropping to her plate. ‘Least he’s got a bit of sunshine in him.’

‘Not this again. I’m happy.’

She pursed her lips. ‘Not sure if you have that definition of happy quite pegged.’

I got up to take the tray from her.

‘Leave the dishes,’ she said. ‘Give me something to do.’

I told her I’d see her later, and gathered up my files and went on down the corridor to my room. I unlocked my door, kicked it closed behind me, threw my bag and files onto the bed, and rolled down after them. Face down, head to the side, muscles melting into the curve of the mattress. Feeling the breath fill me up and abandon me, fill and abandon, fill and abandon. Breathing took a lot of effort when you slowed right down to notice.

PROOF

Two days later, Tessa stood in the middle of Aunty Peg’s kitchen with her arms wasp-angled on her waist, just like Mum. ‘This changes everything,’ she said.

‘Which bit of everything?’ I asked.

‘Obviously we can’t just chuck all Peg’s junk out now—we have to go through it.’ Her head swivelled from one side of the chaos to the other. She stepped around piles of crap and leaned between towers of boxes to snap up the blinds and yawn the windows wide so we could get a better handle on the ghosts of Peg’s past. I pushed papers off a chair and perched on it, pulling my knees in tight to my chin, while Philly stood near the front door at the beginning of the path Tessa and I had cleared, like a flighty roo about to spring, her mouth pressed into the smallest line.

‘I’m not touching a thing,’ she said, her fingers plucking at the seams of her pale-blue skirt.

‘Yes, you are! Despite your allergy to the past,’ said Tessa. ‘We all are.’ She turned to me. ‘Even you, JJ.’

‘Never said a word.’

‘You’re speaking all the time, just not with your lips.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Like right now you’re accusing me of being trivial,’ Tessa said, circling her finger in front of my face. ‘Because out of everything Mrs Tyler told you, I end up focusing on the practicality of locating the valuables rather than exclaiming upon Aunty Peg’s unknown pregnancy.’

She was good.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, bending below the table so she couldn’t see how right she’d been. I re-emerged, pulling my shoulder bag to my lap, fishing in its depths for pen and paper. ‘But being knocked up out of wedlock. You have to admit—in those days. That’s something, surely.’

‘It might have been,’ said Tessa, ‘but luckily fate intervened and there was no baby. Imagine passing her particular genes on.’

I used the back of my forearm to shove things aside to clear enough space on the table so I could begin writing out the list of jobs to be done, just like we used to do every Saturday when we were kids, AM—After Mum.

Philly gingered her way to the table where we were, resting her black leather handbag on top of a pile of newspapers. She snapped her handbag wide, inserted her hand confidently and withdrew a small, clear bag.

‘Really, Philly? A sewing kit?’ I said.

‘Brownie training. Be prepared, JJ. You never do know what will come in handy.’ She unzipped the bag with a flourish and handed me a pair of scissors.

‘Any other signs of madness?’

‘Leave her alone, JJ. It’s not as if it isn’t well established that if there’s a Peg Award to be given out, you’d be first in line.’

I mimicked Tessa, shaking my head from side to side like Aunty Peg used to do at Dad. Philly laughed.

Tessa made a show of deliberately ignoring us and poured herself another full cup from her thermos and slugged it back. ‘This is a hell of a job. How am I going to find the time to sort through every bit of all this?’

‘I vote we turf it all out as per the initial strategy,’ said Philly, half hopeful.

‘Now that’s short-term thinking, right there,’ I said. ‘There’s gold in them there hills.’

‘Laugh all you like, JJ. But it would be just like Aunty Peg to have hidden stocks in the fridge or something.’ Tessa swigged directly from the thermos this time. ‘How did you live in this, JJ?’

I widened my eyes at Philly, giving her the secret shut-up code. She cocked her head.

‘Yeah, how did you, JJ? What was it? Five years, day in day out while you were at uni?’

I gave her a dark look out of Tessa’s eyeline. But at least she didn’t let on I’d moved out of Peg’s and into the boarding house after only a month. I winced on the inside at what a baby I was being, but even now I didn’t want to give Dad the satisfaction of knowing that I’d been safely out of the Peg zone all along, just as he’d wanted.

Tessa went to get empty boxes from her car. Philly found a wheelbarrow in the lounge room and wheeled it into the kitchen, tipping it on the side to navigate through the narrow path between the towers of newspapers. Joining me at the table, she picked a pile of things off a chair opposite mine and looked around for a space to lay them. I looked up from writing to dare her. She shrugged, and held her arms high and opened them.

‘Stop winding her up,’ Tessa hissed at me, coming back through the front door, her arms full.

I laughed, going back to my list.

‘Both nightmares! One ignoring the past, the other drowning in it,’ Tessa said.

‘I am not,’ I said back, still like I was about five. Philly didn’t bother denying it. She made a meal out of staying contemporary. Besides, she’d worked out who she was years ago and she wore it like skin. She made short work of the