Dangerous to Know (8 page)

I sighed. “Don’t worry. She’s not going to see my parents, is she?” And I told him what had happened when I got home.

Jono winced. “Nasty, mate, nasty.” I could tell he was mostly relieved that his mum was blissfully ignorant about the whole thing. Jono’s mum is blissfully ignorant about most of what Jono gets up to, to be honest.

“We don’t care, though,” I told him. “I’m going to see her now.”

Jono stared at me. “You must be well desperate.” He sighed, properly patronizing. “Why bother with the hassle? Georgie Hicks blatantly fancies you – and she’s easy.” He shook his head, looking annoyed. “They all think you’re so bloody mysterious. I don’t get it. You’re just a dodgy greb with long hair.”

He didn’t understand about Bethany – that was for sure. “Thanks for the compliment, Jono.” I crossed the park at a run.

I’d never been to Bethany’s house before but I knew which one it was. One of the very last places before town gave way to fields. Almost in the countryside, really. No wonder she rode a bike. She’d told me her bedroom looked out over a meadow, which meant it must be round the back.

There was a big ornate gate at the top of the driveway, but it was open, hanging rusty off its hinges. That surprised me. Bethany’s mother seemed like the type who’d go in for closed gates everything all neat and tidy. Her dad was off sick in a new job, though. What happened if you couldn’t go to work for months because you were ill? Perhaps Bethany’s parents weren’t as loaded as they seemed. I avoided the gravel drive and made for the back of the house, sneaking round the side of the garage. The garden was enormous – mainly lawn, stretching away into nowhere. A few windows were lit up, but all had the curtains drawn save one on the first floor. I heard the muffled hum of a television. Sitting room. I grinned to myself, sticking two fingers up at the curtained window.

There’s one for you fascists.

From the middle of the lawn, I looked up at the lit window on the first floor. A string of fairy lights blinked behind the glass. It was Bethany’s room. Had to be.

For a minute I stood there like a complete idiot, wondering what to do. Then I remembered something I’d read in a Famous Five book when I was a kid, took a small stone from the gravel path running round the back of the house and lobbed it up at the window. Not a bad shot, from someone as rubbish at sport as I am. It bounced off the glass and landed on the grass beside me. I waited, breathless, half expecting someone to open the sitting-room curtains and peer outside. Nothing happened. Then, slowly, the upstairs window opened and Bethany looked out. She saw me and smiled. Holding a finger to her lips, she disappeared for a moment. I waited, feeling like my hair was turning white with fear. And yet, strangely, getting a kick out of it, too. Nothing ever happens around here. This was something.

After a while, a small pale thing fell out of the window and floated to the ground like the petal of a rose. I ran forwards and scrabbled around in the damp grass.

Bethany had thrown me a note, a message. I read it, blue Biro on graph paper:
BACK DOOR OPEN
.

Grinning, I felt my heartbeat speed up as I pocketed the note. I wasn’t about to leave the evidence lying around.

I’d passed the back door already. Avoiding the gravel path again, I retraced my steps. I had to take a couple of deep breaths as I reached for the handle. If I got caught, that would be it. Mum would take me to the cleaners. She doesn’t get properly angry very often, but when she does, it’s awful. I shuddered, but I couldn’t help feeling pleased with myself. I listened outside the door but all I could hear was the sound of the telly, still muffled.

There was only one solution: not getting caught.

I opened the door and went in, finding myself in a hall. To my left, there was a rack of neatly ordered shoes and boots, including Bethany’s wellingtons. To my right, coats on hooks. I could tell where the sound of the television was coming from now: behind a closed door a few feet down the hall. There were the stairs, rising up in front of me like an invitation. I know where the creaks are at home, but this was like playing Russian roulette backwards. Each bullet chamber in the gun holding a bullet one. The chances weren’t good.

I made it up the stairs, breathing easier now. I could hide more easily up here if someone heard me, opened the living-room door downstairs to check it out. The upstairs corridor was dimly lit: pale, creamy walls and pictures of flowers. It was more like a hotel than a house. At home, there are embarrassing photos of everyone splashed all over the walls, faded posters from exhibitions Mum’s been to in glass clip frames, a charcoal sketch I’d made of our old cat, Loopy, on the kitchen wall. When Loopy died, Mum got it framed. There was nothing like that in Bethany’s house. It was sterile.

A door at the far end of the corridor had been left ajar, casting a thin line of flickery light out into the corridor. Bethany.

I went in, closing the door behind me. Bethany was sitting cross-legged on the bed, waiting, still wearing her pink dress, but now her legs were bare, which for some reason gave me more of a kick than if I’d found her wearing nothing.

She watched me, her face serious, black hair loose and winding around her shoulders, almost down to her waist. I hadn’t realised how long it was. “I knew you’d come.”

The room was a complete contrast to the rest of the house: a cave of fairy lights and colour. Old metal signs advertising chocolate and cigarettes, photos tacked to the walls, Indian scarves trailing everywhere. A garland of fake roses. Her bed was an old iron one, like something out of the Victorian times, the sheets white and crisp.

Saying nothing in reply, I walked till I was standing just inches from where Bethany was sitting. I can still remember the heat spreading through me, a kind of wild crazy excitement I’d never felt before. She stood up and we kissed, hands in each other’s hair. It was hard to stop, but Bethany pulled away.

“What are we doing?” she whispered. “Oh, God, what are we doing? They’re downstairs—” She broke off and looked away for a moment, taking a long breath. “Sit down,” she said, and I did. We lay next to each other on the big white bed, holding hands, legs twined together. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding my gaze. “About my mum – what she said. It was awful. I thought your mum was going to cry.”

“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s OK.”

Mum had cried but I wasn’t going to tell Bethany that, make her feel even worse. She already had to live with the woman.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said, “but what really happened to your brother? Herod, I mean. I don’t believe what Mum told me – I know she got it from that stupid friend of hers.”

Well, I knew that already but I could never bring myself to tell Bethany I’d overheard that conversation.

So I told Bethany about Herod. “They both got really into free parties,” I began. “Well, Owen did and Herod followed him. It was a big deal at the time, wasn’t it? Raves. The thing was, Owen could take ten pills on a Friday, smoke a quarter, sleep it off and be fresh as a daisy the day after. He’d do it again on Saturday night and play Scrabble with me on Sunday evening looking as if he’d spent the weekend hiking in the countryside.”

If I closed my eyes, I could still see him, sprawled out in front of the sitting-room fire, swigging from a glass of Louis’ finest red.

“Qi,” Owen said. “It means ‘force of life’. Thirty-three points, Jack. You’ve got to learn all these two-letter words, man. They’ll win you the game.”

Bethany waited for me to go on, stroking the back of my hand with one finger.

“Herod,” I said, “was different. They’re identical twins but he wasn’t the same kind of person at all. Herod’s kind of fragile. Gentle. Owen was really clever at school, but Herod could only do Art. He was brilliant at it, though. He used to make these sculptures out of porcelain that looked like leaves. He thought about stuff too much. Smoked too much weed.

“They were doing their A Levels, going out a lot. Herod had this job in a health food shop, saving up for Art Foundation, but he got fired. So whenever there was a party going on or whatever, Owen paid for him – he worked in a café down by the station. It’s closed now. We had an agreement never to ask our dad for money. Then … you know sometimes people go on about getting the fear when they’ve had too much to smoke?”

Bethany nodded. “Yes, like Jono did in the field. I never have. Maybe I haven’t smoked enough.”

“I’ve never had it either, but Herod did. And it got worse than that. He wasn’t just a bit paranoid. We didn’t know till later, but he’d started hearing voices, bad voices telling him horrible things. Eventually, Mum realized there was something really weird going on and sent him to a psychiatrist. He was taken into hospital, stayed for ages. Then a few months later, he had to go back for even longer.” I sighed.

“Was everything all right?” Bethany said, quietly. “What happened in the end?”

“So, basically, Herod got sectioned again. Fully sent off to the loony bin. He’d taken too many drugs and went psycho, just like they tell you in the
Daily Mail
. He was literally psychotic: hearing voices the whole time. Everyone blamed Owen for getting him started in the first place, or Owen felt like they did, so he went off travelling and never came back for uni. And that was it. Haven’t seen Owen since – till the weekend.”

“Where’s Herod now?” Bethany asked.

Good question.

I suppressed a shudder. “While he was still sectioned, he had to stay in hospital. That was pretty dark. But then once his medication got sorted my dad paid for him to go to somewhere better – this properly expensive place full of ageing rockers with coke problems. Anyway, Herod got into Buddhism, so now he lives at a retreat. Gets up before dawn to meditate, does advanced yoga, all that stuff. They say it helps keep the mind on track. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but he’s off medication now. You can tell: he’s lost all the weight. It’d made him really fat. He doesn’t even drink now, or hardly at all anyway. Just the odd beer.” I tried to sound casual, but in the back of my mind all I could see was Herod’s face, how firmly he’d held that last white plastic tub of paracetamol. He’d meant to die: they found a note afterwards. I never knew, though what it said. Everyone always says that suicide is gutless but it also takes a kind of courage. “But now he’s left the Peace Centre,” I said, finally. “We’ve just found out. It’s why Mum and Louis were back early. No one knows where he is. My mum even called the police.”

“No way,” Bethany whispered. She looked up at me. “That’s awful. You poor thing, Jack.”

I wanted to stay lying by her side all night, just us.

I hadn’t even come here to tell Bethany about Herod, so what was it about her that had made me spill my guts?

“I reckon I know what we can do,” I said, thinking it was time to change the subject.

There was no discussion, no sidestepping. No playing hard to get. We were staying together and I don’t think either of us questioned it for a second.

I told her about Jono and Sammy. “They’ll be our go-betweens,” I said. “They’ll definitely do it. We can arrange to meet through them, but I don’t reckon we should call each other. It’s too risky.”

Bethany stared at me, deadly serious. “I shouldn’t be doing this at all. I know I shouldn’t.”

For one awful, belly-churning moment I thought she was going to do the sensible thing and finish with me. Instead she let out a long breath, pushed back her hair and reached out, taking my hand, gripping my fingers hard with hers.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she repeated, in a whisper, “but I’m going to do it anyway. I want to see you. This weekend. I’ve made plans.”

A quick hot flame of excitement flared in my stomach. “And what,” I said, “are those plans, exactly?”

Bethany turned and kissed me again, pulling away before I had the chance for more, gave me a dangerous smile. “Mr and Mrs Ferguson,” she said, “are old family friends. She was at school with my mum – they’re the only people my parents really know around here, and they’re having a big party this Saturday night. They live in Hamble St Margaret. You can get the bus there. Bring Sammy and Jono, too – if you come around nine o’clock no one’s going to notice. John Ferguson’s a champagne dealer, so they’ll all be really pissed. And by the way, it’s fancy dress.”

I smiled, holding on to both of her hands. She knew I’d be there, but now it was time to go.

Leaving her that night was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I had another nasty surprise just before last lesson on Monday afternoon. As Sammy and I were leaving Maths and heading to Art.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Sammy was saying. “What if you’d got caught in their house? Jesus Christ.”

I grinned, patting him on the shoulder. “But we didn’t, did we? So are you coming to this party on Saturday, or what?”

Sammy sighed. “All right. Sounds a bit scary, but if there’s free drink and sexy posh girls, I’m in. So did you do anything then? With Bethany?”

At least Sammy doesn’t think he’s the world’s expert on women like Jono. I shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t done before.” Somehow, I didn’t want to talk about Bethany that way. She wasn’t like other girls – not that I’d got particularly far with any of them, either. Unlike Jono, who’d lost his virginity in a car park in the Christmas holidays with Georgie Hicks’s older sister. He made up for the complete lack of style by shagging a girl in the year above us, which I have to admit is pretty impressive. Elle Hicks isn’t bad, either, although why she’d gone for Jono, God only knows.

I looked up. There was someone standing in my way, blocking the double doors out of the Maths block. It was Ben Curtis. His nose really was a mess, swollen and ugly. The bruising had spread to his eyes, blackening both of them like he was some kind of nightmare panda.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Sammy.

“All right, Ben?” I asked, calmly. He’d owed Buggy nine quid. I owed Buggy twenty. OK, so both amounts were peanuts, but still, Buggy obviously didn’t think so.

“What do you think, Jack? Do I look all right?” I struggled not to laugh when Ben spoke. He sounded like Donald Duck. “Buggy reckons you’re next,” he said. “He’s after you.”