Dangerous to Know Read Online Free PDF Page B

everything.”
    “So you’re meant to do what Owen didn’t. That’s a load of crap. Honestly.” Bethany shrugged. “What about your dad? What’s he like about it?”
    “He’s not around.”
    She didn’t go there, either. Good move.
    Bethany just accepted what I told her, without asking too much. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d given away a piece of myself, even though it was just a fragment of the story. I hadn’t told her why Owen left, had I? Was that how she’d felt talking about her dad, that she was giving too much away? I’ll always remember the look she gave me on the train – so
grateful
.
    It isn’t your fault
, I’d told her.
    Bethany passed me the cider. I finished it and was about to chuck the plastic pint glass away when I remembered what she was like with her fag ends.
    “Come on.” I grinned at her. Bethany had risked a lot for this. “Let’s find a bin and another pint.”

FIVE
    Bethany and me stumbled around the site, drinking and laughing and smoking, hand in hand. I couldn’t believe my luck: that I was there with her. Even so, my mind kept wandering down some pretty strange pathways, as if seeing Owen had unlocked doors kept shut for years. Or maybe it was Bethany, and the way I felt like I could tell her anything. Either way I thought about stuff probably best forgotten; I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was like going back in time – I could see it all so clearly.
    I’m sitting in the doorway of the shed at the bottom of our back garden. There’s nothing on TV so I’m watching Herod work instead. He’s meant to be doing pottery coursework, but Herod is an artist. He would be doing this even if school didn’t make him.
    I’m not sure if he minds me sitting on the step, or if he just hasn’t noticed I’m even here. It’s late on Sunday afternoon. Light slants across the tangled garden. Mum and Louis have had friends over for lunch: I can just hear their laughter drifting down through the mess of flowers and overgrown bushes, the clink of wine glasses too.
    Herod is standing at the workbench where, in the spring, Mum sows lettuce seeds in trays and pokes tiny tomato plants into pots of compost. With total calm and patience, Herod is turning a lump of pale grey clay into a rose. All this takes place inside a plastic salad bowl. He uses damp sponges to prop up the petals as they are formed, keeping them from squashing against the sides of the bowl. His fingers move fast, then slow again, patting, pressing, stroking. The rose is about the size of a football, and perfect – each petal is really growing, unfolding from the tight hard bud of clay. It is as if some bright, hot part of Herod himself passes through his grey-stained fingertips into the clay, bringing it to life.
    Every few minutes, Herod pauses, picks up a roll-up from the terracotta plant pot he is using as an ash tray and takes a draw, breathing out a cloud of sickly sweet smoke – it’s one of the kind he makes himself. I think it might be weed, the stuff Mum and Louis’ friends smoke around the kitchen table late at night when they’ve drunk a lot of wine and they think I’m asleep in bed. Sometimes Herod takes a swig from the cup of tea Mum got me to bring out half an hour ago: I don’t even think he realizes it’s cold. He missed lunch but Mum knows as well as I do that Herod won’t eat till this is finished. When his work is over for the day, Herod will walk into the kitchen, boil a pan of pasta and eat a huge plate of it with cheese and ketchup, then drink two cans of Coke from the fridge and fall asleep on the sofa for an hour.
    “Oh, well,” Mum said last time. “At least he can cook. Well, sort of.”
    “She’s done it again. Bitch.”
    I turn and here is Owen, his hair wet from the shower. He’s got a couple of dreadlocks and beads of water cling to them.
    I think he stayed at someone else’s house last night. He came in through the front door early this morning when I was the