Free Dangerous to Know by Katy Moran Page B

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