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

fought, Mum got mad. She took off, stayed with Peg, who made a mistake on the calendar, then Mum collapsed. Et cetera. Coincidence. That’s it. You’ve got way too much time on your hands. Go back to work.’ She stood up and paced the room.

Bloody Tye. The thought flashed between all the other lightning strikes. Keeping Philly up to date with my business. He must have Philly’s number memorised.

But I’d got what I came for. This was something else. Mrs Nolan had been right. Mum had a reason to go before she knew about Jack and Peg.

‘So what was killing her?’

‘Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.’ Philly shook out her hands as she walked. ‘She said she’d die if she stayed. If things stayed the way they were.’

‘Instead she left and she still died.’ But I could see it had taken everything Philly had to finally let that ‘die’ word into the world. With that and Ahmed moving out, I didn’t want to push her over the edge. The way I’d pushed Tessa.

‘You’ve got to drop this, JJ. There’s no point to any of it. You’re going nuts.’

Stung, the red sparked up. ‘It’s not nuts to consider the crooked road.’

‘It’s nuts to keep dashing down rabbit holes.’

‘It doesn’t add up, Philly. Something happened to Mum. You can’t run away from it just because it’s not black and white.’

‘It’s not like he did anything terrible. You can’t keep making up a mystery because you want colour.’

I slammed down hard on that red but it octopused into too many tentacles. ‘She wasn’t at Aunty Peg’s. It’s like Mum waded out into the grey mist and disappeared. Then she turned up dead. If we could just make sense of those last few days it might feel more…’ I searched for the word ‘… more survivable. I just want the truth.’

‘The fucking drama.’ Philly hit one hand into another. ‘Knowing where she was doesn’t change the ending. Mum’s dead. You’re not. That’s the truth. Let her go.’

‘You don’t.’

‘Do so. I’ve got a job. I’m pushing ahead.’

‘You’re spinning your wheels so fast you’ve got no time to feel. Why do you think Ahmed had to get out of here? Couldn’t live with your speed, filling up all the corners of your life with activity, running from one thing to another.’

She came to a complete stop. Put her hands by her side. She did that thing she was so good at: drawing in everything so it was right where she needed it, close and tight and controllable. ‘It’s Aunty Peg all over again,’ she said. ‘All this…’ she opened her arms up ‘… stuff you go on with.’

I put my hands in front of my face and crossed them like I was scrubbing something away, fighting against her tide. ‘There’s no stuff.’

‘There’s stuff, all right,’ she said. ‘Calendars and diaries, and driving Tessa to drink.’

I jumped to my feet, facing off. ‘Who told you that?’

She took a step towards me and opened her mouth to say more.

‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.’ I grabbed my bag on the way out and I slammed the door behind me.

WHAT JACK ADMITS

Back at my place I took the red texta in hand. I hesitated. What exactly was the fact I thought Philly had given me? It was so tempting to write that Mum knew she was going to die as a stone-cold fact. Instead I swapped the red out for memory-blue.

I collapsed back to the bed and my eyes went over and over all the things on my wall and across my floor. Waves of hopelessness washed through me. Even with all this revelation there was still not one single fact that accounted for why Mum had left and where she’d been.

My eyes kept snagging on that address Tim had given me. It was in grey for miscellaneous since it might not have had anything to do with anything, but it was all I had. I turned off the light, wriggled out of the dress and burrowed under the doona. I was too done to even do my teeth.

In the morning, though, it didn’t feel like I was any less tired. And there was something more, a kind of queasiness like I’d eaten something bad. I lay breathing in the dark under the covers, but eventually I needed to pee. I took my toothbrush and gave my teeth a thorough going-over in the bathroom. Then I spewed in the toilet bowl and had to clean them again. I sank back against the wall. Days were passing. I really needed to talk to Tye. If he’d talk to me. ‘He has to,’ I said aloud to the air, my hand on my belly.

Back in my room, I took the Map of Mum down, folded it again and shoved it into my backpack, along with an apple and a bottle of water. I considered going back to bed, but instead tugged the bedding up so there was no more temptation. That doona cover was a bloody ugly thing. Only old men didn’t mind puke brown. Even Rocco had stuffed his under the bed. Although Star Wars wasn’t much of an improvement.

Outside, the Austin was waiting for me in the street and I got in and pulled the Melways onto my lap. I figured out the idea of where to go and headed in that direction, pulling over a few more times to figure out lefts and rights because with all the other jangle in my head I could only hold a few streets in my mind at a time.

Hope and dread all twisting together in me. This address might be nothing. Could be something. Maybe I was about to find out where my mum had been. Why she’d really left. Maybe she had a bloke. Could I really handle that? After Jack and Peg?

It could flick Mum’s light off in me. And I’d be alone and she’d be alone and that would