Free Dangerous to Know by Katy Moran Page A

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