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

rest of the things on the chair and sat, elbows on the table, waiting.

When I finished writing, she cut the jobs into strips while Tessa folded them into a bowl. Maybe I missed this. This together thing. Seeing Philly every few weeks, her ‘schedule’ permitting, was one thing, but this being more than two, this fitting back into well-worn and oiled grooves was something different, like hands cupped around hot chocolate and staring into flames. For a moment I thought about showing them Mum’s cameo, which was with me all the time now, but I let the moment pass because I still hadn’t confronted what it meant to me. I didn’t yet have the courage to breath air into that dark place.

Philly chose first and pulled out the scrap of paper marked ‘fridge’, which she immediately tried to barter away, but Tessa and I grinned, arms folded.

‘It’s only mould,’ I said.

She made a face. ‘I would have brought jeans if you’d told me.’

‘I did tell you,’ said Tessa, pulling out a second pair of tracksuit pants and a T-shirt from her bag. ‘But I expected no less.’ She shoved them towards Philly. ‘Nightmare number two.’

‘See? You’re number one,’ Philly said to me.

After we finished the job lotto, I bunched all my tasks up on the table while Philly lined hers up one after the other.

Tessa clucked her tongue at both of us and started on the nearest newspaper tower, checking each one for share certificates or treasure unknown. I rolled my eyes, but got to work on sorting the earrings, bills, tape measures and nails on the kitchen table into piles. We got into the rhythm of things although none of us had thought to bring a tape deck for music.

After we’d been going a while, Philly stripped off Tessa’s elbow-length yellow gloves. She sat with a groan at the table, spreading herself long across my now cleared and cleaned table.

‘So soon?’ Tessa asked, opening the door of the oven and sitting back on her haunches to scowl at the newspapers jammed inside.

‘I’m bloody hungry,’ said Philly.

‘Sandwiches in the bag by the door.’

Philly and I exchanged of-course-there-are stares.

‘I’ve got eyes in the back of my head now that I’m a mother of three, so you can stop communing behind my back.’

Philly and I poked our tongues at her behind, half expecting her to see that as well.

Philly had the sandwich triangles in designer pleats across a plate pretty quick. Tessa sank into a chair wiping her forehead with the back of her arm.

‘Found your diamonds yet?’ I asked.

‘Shut up. Nobody asked you to come, JJ.’ She bent over to pull another thermos out of her bag. ‘Mother’s helper.’ She poured a cup of tea for herself.

Philly slid her plastic cup along the table towards Tessa. Tessa screwed up her face and hesitated, looking between the cup and the thermos as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do.

‘Hurry up, girlie,’ said Philly, in a cockney accent. ‘Christmas’ll get ere sooner.’

‘Is that the perfect-public-relations, run-a-million-dollar-company-one-day girl talking?’ I asked.

‘You can pluck the girl from the farm,’ she said in now plummy, cut-glass tones.

Tessa gave in and filled Philly’s cup. Philly took a sip and spat it out. Tessa jumped away from the spray of liquid, as I squalled my chair back and roared at the sacrilege to my pristinely clean table.

‘What?’ said Tessa and Philly at the same time, one challenging, the other accusing, but it was Philly who took the running.

‘Mother’s helper? What the fuck, at eleven-thirty in the morning?’

Tessa got up to get a cloth from the sink, so we couldn’t see her expression. ‘You’ve got no idea,’ she said, quietly, her back still turned.

‘I’m the one with the “allergy” to the past.’ Philly made finger quotes in the air. ‘But do you see me—?’ She ran out of words. ‘Or even her?’ She indicated me. ‘And JJ’s—you know…’ She fished about for a word. ‘Delicate.’ She paused. ‘No offence, JJ.’

‘None taken.’

I took the flask and smelled it to get myself caught up on the facts. Just warm sweet tea. I splashed a little into my cup and swigged it down. I worked hard to stop my eyes from watering from the extra alcoholic kick. ‘Nice drop,’ I got out through my coughing.

‘Don’t encourage her, JJ,’ said Philly. ‘She’s got babies.’

‘It’s because I have babies,’ said Tessa, coming back to the table and throwing down the rest of the contents in her cup, as if Philly’s stare might evaporate it before she could get it into her.

I took the cloth from Tessa’s hand and started mopping up Philly’s mess.

‘Does Geoff know?’ demanded Philly.

‘Shut up, Philly,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s nothing to know. A little softening early in the day makes the rest of it possible.’

‘Do you think Mum felt like that?’ I asked, not daring to meet their eyes.

‘Was Mum sozzled, you mean?’ asked Philly, her voice skidding up again.

‘I mean, maybe she wasn’t coping,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s why she left.’

Tessa thrust her head into her folded arms on the table. ‘I knew this bloody funeral would unhinge you, JJ.’

Tessa called from the lounge room. ‘Finished?’

‘Nearly,’ we both chorused. We leaped up from the table where we’d been taking a break and each grabbed a side of a large box full of crap and bustled it out to what you might call a lawn if it had ever met a mower. I blinked in the fresh air and slowed again, getting the ease of it inside me. We tumbled the stuff from the box into the skip. Philly let go of her side, pulling her arms together at the back of her so her yoga-limber shoulder blades just about touched.

‘Do you remember what Aunty Peg used to say about madness?’ Philly asked.

The clouds skidded across the sky. I shifted my feet to get a better grip on the ground.

‘Madness is for the brave,’ Philly went on, now hugging herself.

‘Well. She was wrong,’ I said, dropping the empty