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

followed her into the solid weight of the Baxter kitchen. The kind of sturdy money could buy. Big-bellied canisters, floral curtains that hung to the floor, a carved oak table. Things that held time.

‘You need fattening up,’ Shelley said. She put her arm up to showcase her muscles through her own comfortable layer or two.

‘Bring it on.’ I pulled the cake tin to me and yanked at the lid.

‘Help yourself, then.’ She laughed.

‘I’m practically family.’ I had the moist chocolate cake out and on three plates before she’d got the cups and saucers organised. ‘Do we have to wait for Tim?’

‘Maybe for the second piece.’ She sat down opposite. She twisted her hands together and leaned forwards. ‘Now that you’re here…’

‘Mmmm…?’ I said with my mouth chock full.

‘Could you talk to him?’

‘About?’

She shrugged. ‘You know…’

I put the cake down. I kept my eyes on her, emptying the space between us.

‘It’s been six years,’ she said.

‘You’re only twenty-three.’

‘I want babies.’

It was like a stab in my guts, right next to where my maybe-baby was giving growing a go.

‘Why don’t you propose to him?’ I said, trying for lightly.

‘He’d just say no.’

She was right. There was a dark place in Tim, deep down below the waterline. He was smart enough to know there’d been something up between Dad and Mum, but not smart enough to know that whatever it was had nothing to do with him and Shelley. I screwed up my eyes for a second. That needed to go on the Map of Mum under ‘weird shit’. Tim couldn’t make a decision about Shelley until he’d worked out what was wrong with Dad and whether he’d got the same wrong.

‘He doesn’t listen to me,’ I said.

‘I know.’ She grinned. ‘But it was worth a shot. If even you thought he should settle down.’

I leaned over the table to flick her on her arm.

‘Why didn’t he go to your Aunt Peg’s funeral?’ she asked.

‘You’re asking me?’

‘Told me he had to finish drafting the last of the cattle before Dad headed off, but Dad couldn’t have cared less.’

I took a bite and closed my eyes to get closer to the mint in the chocolate.

I saw Tim, ramrod stiff, refusing to get in the car to go to the cemetery to bury Mum, his skinny body shaking with the effort of keeping the pain all locked away. My eyes flew open at a sudden brush against my calf. Shelley burst out laughing and the cat hunkered back and launched itself into my lap. I got my hand to my heart and cringed away from its settling bones.

‘It’s only Clementine,’ she said.

‘Black freakin demon.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Has Tim had any nightmares recently?’ I asked.

Shelley pursed her lips. ‘A couple.’

I raised my eyebrows over the top of the cake.

‘Ah,’ she said, realising.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Death dredges up a thing or two from the dark.’

The fly-screen door squeaked open and flapped shut.

‘Little sister,’ Tim said by way of hello. His long, football-fit limbs strode out of the corridor gloom. I slapped his hand away but too late: he had my cake up and into his mouth. He dropped it back on the plate, half of it wolfed away. ‘Now that’s how you eat Shelley’s cakes, JJ. You’ve gotta commit.’

He went over to the sink to wash his hands. His moleskins, glove-tight and finished by a carefully chosen leather belt; a big improvement on the bit of twine Dad favoured. Why he thought he was like Dad I had no idea.

‘To what do we owe this honour?’ His back still turned, scrubbing dirt from his nails.

‘Been round at Dad’s.’

He turned and made a mock sign of the cross, wiping his hands on the tea towel. ‘How was he, then?’

‘Out.’

He dried his hands and kissed the back of Shelley’s neck. ‘That so?’ he said, his eyes on me. ‘Doing the rounds, then. Seeing Tessa next?’

‘Nah, did that a couple of days back.’

A look of ‘here we go’ raised his eyebrow and settled over his face.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said defensively.

‘I dropped in a casserole this morning,’ Shelley broke in to defuse the tension. ‘She seemed good, given everything.’

‘At least she’s sworn off drinking for a bit.’ Tim backed off and laughed. He balled up the tea towel and threw it at me.

I caught it and dropped it on the table.

‘Now Tessa’s off the turps, just you to sort out,’ said Tim.

‘Roses look good,’ I said, deliberately ignoring him, and looking only at Shelley.

He laughed again, showing us his straight white teeth. With that and his mussed sandy hair, he could have been December for sunbaked and farm fresh in the Young Farmers calendar.

‘You and the old man. Peas in a pod,’ he said.

I snorted. ‘Off your pills, mate?’

‘Me no looky, me no see,’ he said. ‘Now, what you need is a boyfriend. Relax you a bit.’

Shelley hit him. ‘Leave her alone.’

‘What?’ he said, all injured. ‘You think so, too.’

She screwed up her face, caught out.

‘What happened to that Tye bloke?’ asked Tim, still full of grin.

‘Still around.’ I folded my arms, smug, because for once he was way wide of the mark. ‘You’d be left on the bench if the amateur psychologists were picking sides.’

His grin widened even further as he tipped forwards to tap the table. ‘Yet here you are, still all messed up, JJ. So what do you need?’

‘Me. What about you? You should bloody tal—’ I began, but Shelley flicked the tea towel at Tim.

‘Stop winding her up.’

He opened his arms wide. ‘It’s too easy.’ The front of his shirt slid open and a glint of silver shone from around his neck. It took me a second to recognise the cross Mum had given him on his first communion. We’d all got one except Philly who didn’t make her communion until the year after Mum died. I didn’t know where mine had got to.

‘Still wearing that?’ I asked.

‘What?’ His hand closed around the cross. ‘This?’ He did a ‘it’s nothing’ wave with his hand.

But this