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

help. Lied. Told him I’d be back. Lied. He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

Aunty Peg’s house was peeled back like a skun rabbit—the doors flung open, windows yanked wide. The violence of it stopped me dead. Aunty Peg had filled every space of her house with things, bringing the walls closer and closer until the house fit around her like a glove. I hoped her spirit had long pissed off so she wasn’t around for this violation.

‘Get behind it, Tim.’ Dad’s voice from deep inside the house was low and guttural like he was herding up sheep. We could all speak dog.

I wished for a sec that I hadn’t skived off work after all so I’d didn’t have to face him again. I wheeled my bike up beside Peg’s house and leaned it against the wall beside the apple tree. Dad’s back came into view, down the verandah steps followed by a couch, then Tim, who grinned.

‘Ah, you grace us.’

‘As you didn’t at Peg’s funeral.’

‘Gidday, love,’ Dad said with a glance as he backed towards the truck. It was his superpower—ignoring stuff.

I kept my distance. I picked up an apple that had fallen from the tree and rubbed it shiny on my jeans, which I’d changed into. When they’d passed, I went in: all that was left of the lounge room were the stepping stones across the floorboards where sofa legs and sideboards had been. The pale vulnerability of them crawled through me.

‘Where are the girls?’ I called, trying to shut it out.

‘We got an early start, been here since five,’ said Tim.

I frowned, thinking of how Tessa would take the news they’d been working for five hours, throwing out things she hadn’t sorted. And given the haul she’d already scored, she was on to something. It wasn’t like her to be late.

I wandered into Aunty Peg’s bedroom. It was empty as well and so was her sewing room. I wondered if they’d come across a sewing machine or anything that might have given the room its name. I bit into the apple and its slight flouriness of over-ripe.

‘Tessa’s going to be pissed off. She’s going through all this stuff,’ I called.

‘We’ve all got lives,’ Dad called back. ‘Got to get on with the job and get back to them.’

I grunted and went down the corridor to the back of the house. The door of the spare room was chocked open with boxes. I nudged them forwards and squeezed in. There’d been a bed once, but it was lost underneath garbage bags and piles of clothes. I took another bite of the apple and chucked the rest through the window. I put my hands on my hips, kicked at the nearest bag. So heavy it didn’t budge. I got to my knees and opened it. On the top was a ruler, a fan with a dancing Chinese girl on it and a whole lot of wire coat hangers. A sigh took a long time getting out of me. But still. I’d spent the night chasing sleep from one corner of my room to the other, and stubbing my toe against the same thing—Dad was damned keen to get in here and get rid of everything, so there was something he didn’t want found. Of course I knew that whatever it was had probably already been shipped off to the tip, but you never knew, and hearing Dad in the next room got me going.

I pulled gloves out of my back pocket, shoved my fingers into them. I poked about in the bag until I hit a lot of rocks at the bottom, and then went through another one a bit half-heartedly. All that uselessness was greying my insides. As I stood to put the box out onto my sorted pile, I banged my shin against a sharp edge. ‘Shit.’ I bent to rub like mad at it and saw what had got me. It was a rectangle wooden box—all blonde wood. I shoved the stuff off the top of it. It was an old-fashioned butter box. Mum had one exactly the same. She used to set me up by the fire with it and I worked my way through the buttons and ribbons and odd socks, my feet tucked under me, up and away from the licking moan of the wind through the cracks in the wall.

I couldn’t get Peg’s box open, but it turned out Peg was right: junk did come in handy. I got hold of a nearby screwdriver and I jimmied the lid up. Inside, dozens of hardback notebooks were sardined in. I wiped my hand on my jeans and opened the first one. The writing was all flamboyant loops and loud capitals like Aunty Peg’s.

‘JJ?’ called Dad.

‘Here.’ I shoved the diary back in the box and pulled a nearby jacket over it.

‘We’re in there next.’

‘I need to bag up these clothes for Vinnies. You can do the laundry first,’ I called back.

‘Straight to the tip with this lot.’ He pushed into the room. ‘Rat infested.’

I was about to argue when we heard Philly’s voice at the front door.

‘Fuck,’ we heard Tim say.

‘What’s wrong?’ Dad called, striding up the now cleared and echoing corridor, me in his wake. Philly was kitted out in a matching tracksuit with a mauve sports band around her head. I would have laughed if it weren’t for her look of serious.

‘Tessa drove into a ditch.’ You didn’t need to ask questions with Philly. She went on. ‘Just shaken up. Last night, ten past one in the morning. She’d been out putting Sophie to sleep. They’re both okay. Just lucky Bill Malcolm was passing—he towed her out.’

‘Shit,’ said Dad. He rubbed his hands together making something of the information. ‘But all good now. Let’s get back to it.’ He turned to go.

‘No, Dad. All bad.’ Philly put a hand on his elbow. ‘She shouldn’t have been driving.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘She was drunk—and with Sophie in the car.’

‘What’s she got