Dangerous to Know (3 page)

“No,” Jono hissed. “We can’t sit down, we can’t. Oh, shit.”

Bethany patted him on the shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said, kindly. “There’s really nothing to worry about, is there? We’re going to be fine.”

And all the time Bethany was talking Jono out of his freak-out, I was thinking,
I don’t want her ever to leave. I want her to always be here. She’s amazing
. I mean, she didn’t even like the guy. It wasn’t as if Jono had gone out of his way to be friendly.

At last, Jono got shakily to his feet. Bethany linked arms with him, nodding at me. I took his other arm.

“It’s all right, Jono,” I told him. “We’re going to be fine, man.”

“It’s cool,” Jono said, shrugging us away, standing up on his own. He sounded more like his usual cocky self now. As if it had never happened. “It’s all cool.”

Bethany shot me a glance, raising one eyebrow slightly. Having a laugh but not rubbing his face in it. I took her by the hand, a silent thank-you.

Sammy took a drag of his rollie and stood surveying the landscape like some kind of explorer down the Amazon. “I reckon the actual fence for the festival is behind those trees. We’ve just got to get up there and it’ll be fine. The security last year was well slack – I remember Dad saying.”

It didn’t appear that the security this year was slack, but I wasn’t about to bring everyone down again. “You’re right, that’s where the music’s coming from. Let’s go.”

We pegged it across the field and I was pretty pleased with myself; I thought we were doing nicely, all things considered.

Well, I was wrong. We got close, very close, and then there was a bit of a disaster.

I could see the boundary fence through the trees just beyond the next field, a rickety corrugated-iron thing. It was hardly worth the my-job-is-more-important-than-God guys in yellow jackets on the gate.

I laughed. “Let’s get in there. I could do with a beer.” I grabbed Bethany’s hand, feeling her fingers grip mine, warm and dry. A wild burning rush shot through my body as we sped for the trees, peeling ahead of Jono and Sammy. Bethany was fast, especially considering she was running in wellies – not the easiest thing in the world. I could hear her ragged breathing as we sprinted across the tussocky grass and every now and then she would explode into a little fit of giggles, like she couldn’t believe what we were doing. I got the impression she’d never done anything like this before – not the breaking-into-a-festival-bit; neither had I – but breaking the rules. She wasn’t used to it.

“My mum thinks I’m painting watercolours on the beach!” she gasped, and then, “Jack, what was that?” She stopped suddenly and so did I. Jono and Sammy ran up behind us.

“Guys, it’s not a race.” Sammy was panting like a dog. He obviously hadn’t noticed anything was wrong.

Jono was the next to react – probably still wired with paranoia, despite the tough act. It worked in our favour, though. “Get down!” he hissed and we threw ourselves flat on the ground under trees. As we lay there, slightly damp, I heard voices getting louder, laughter, and faintly in the distance something that sounded like a car engine.

“What’s that light?” Sammy whispered. “In the trees?”

“Shut up!” I said. I was trying to think more clearly and get a hold of myself, but I could see it, too: an orangey pulsing glow. Now I could hear branches cracking, more laughter.

“Helloooooo! We know you’re theeeeere – we saw you!”

I heard Bethany breathe in sharply.

More crashing. Lurching.

“Yooo-hoooo!”

None of us said a word. By the sound of it, we’d been spotted by a bunch of piss-heads, no doubt also trying to find a gap in the fence: annoying but manageable. But then it got bad. Bethany and I were still holding hands, face down on the ground; the whirring, grinding of a car engine grew louder and the flashing orange lights grew brighter. Then the growling engine stopped, leaving just the pulsing light. It was pretty sinister. I heard the creak of a door opening, the crunch of someone heavy stepping down onto last autumn’s dried leaves.

Bethany squeezed my hand tighter. I knew what she must have been thinking: what was the worst that could happen? Being turned over to the cops? Bethany’s parents thought she was on a school trip. Talk about blowing your cover. And her dad? Well, he wasn’t in hospital any more but I don’t think I’d really realized what Bethany was risking till that moment.

“Oh, God,” Bethany whispered, so low that I was the only one who heard her. There was an edge of panic in her voice. I grasped her hand a bit tighter, too. She let out a long, steady breath. Taking control. She had guts, always.

Peering through the trees, I saw a Land Rover parked up, more men in fluorescent yellow jackets. Festival security.

“Right, move along, please,” I heard one of them call. “Go back to your vehicles. This is a ticketed event and the gate is now closed till eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Come back then.” Christ, he sounded like a robot.

“Give us a break, mate!”

“Yeah, come on. It’s no skin off of your nose, is it?”

We lay there, silent and still, as an argument broke out between security and the piss-heads. My heart was thudding like mad. What were we going to do if they caught us? OK, so even if they didn’t take us to the police, which seemed a bit extreme anyway, I didn’t fancy sleeping in some field till the gates opened again. We didn’t have tents: Sammy’s mum had said we could use the café’s dry store as long as we helped out for at least an afternoon – we’d be nice and cosy among the tins of kidney beans and wholemeal burger buns.

We’ll just have to lie here till they’ve gone
, I thought, squeezing Bethany’s hand again and hoping that mine wasn’t starting to sweat.
All we’ve got to do is stay cool and keep our heads down. It’ll be fine. Absolutely fine.

Then one of the piss-heads started shouting. “Yeah, well, we’re not the only ones, are we? If you’re going to be a jobsworth, do it properly. There’s a load of kids hiding in the trees – just over there.”

The bastards had grassed us up.

The argument started again but it was all just a jumble of words to me: adrenalin was surging through my body like boiling tar and I couldn’t make any sense of what they were saying.

There was no choice. We couldn’t get caught. It was as simple as that.

“Run!” I muttered. “Now! Run for the fence or we’re totally shafted.”

With Bethany at my side, I got up and pegged it, hoping like hell that Jono and Sammy had the sense to do the same. It was our only chance. I heard footsteps behind us, people shouting. The fence got closer and closer. We sprinted through the trees and slammed into the fence. I heard Sammy yelling, “Here, here! There’s a hole!”

He was right – the fence was made of corrugated-iron sheets wired together and mounted on breezeblocks. There was a gap where someone had cut the wiring and lifted open one of the sections like a gate.

One after the other, we squeezed through: Bethany first, then Sammy and Jono. I went last, and those were the longest thirty seconds of my life. I could almost feel a heavy hand landing on my shoulder, pulling me backwards.

But then I was through and I couldn’t hear the guards any more. Had they given up? We stumbled forwards and I knocked over a plastic crate leaning against this old-style gypsy caravan, a proper wooden one with huge wheels and steps going up to the door. We were in some kind of camping field. Someone nearby was playing the guitar. I could hear low voices, music and laughter. Then the night burst open with howling and barking and this massive ball of muscle and teeth hurled itself right at me.

I froze.

What is it they say about dogs?
Show no fear.
Well, I was bricking it but I stood my ground, mainly because I knew Bethany was watching. I didn’t want her to think I was a coward.

The dog backed off, snarling – it looked like a Staffy: all fangs and no brains – and I let out a long breath. I felt kind of sorry for him: he’d been left all on his own, chained to the caravan wheel. The others were standing there totally still but as I edged past the Staffy, I saw Bethany smile.

We had escaped. We were in. We had done it.

“Oh, my life,” Sammy said. “Oh, my God.”

“I never, ever want to do that again,” said Jono, not even pretending to be cool, and none of us could stop laughing at him.

And as we walked away from the caravan and the wired dog, this guy stepped down from the back of a Sprinter van with a chimney pipe jammed into the roof. The guitar music had stopped.

Did I know who it was just from the loping, catlike way he moved?

“Are you all right?” he said. “That bloke’s a knob. Always going off and leaving his dog on its own. Sends the poor thing mad.” His voice was the same; still sounding like he’d just smoked sixty Marlboro Reds and washed them down with a pint of whisky.

I couldn’t move; I stood there like an idiot as he walked over.

“What’s wrong?” Bethany said, quietly. I drew my hand away from hers. I couldn’t hack it, but even so I felt like I’d lost something just by not touching her.

Jono and Sammy said nothing. They knew. They remembered.

Owen. There he was: my brother, the eldest, older than Herod by four and a half minutes. They were eight when I turned up, an attempt to rescue the marriage of our parents (I failed, miserably).

How many years had it been? Five. I’m pretty sure it was five years. I lost track of where he’d gone after India and South America, and so did Mum, I think. He hadn’t changed much, though – except his hair was shorter and the dreds were gone, now it just hung dark and ragged around his shoulders. His eyes were always what I remembered. A weird honey colour, tilted. We’d all been stamped with the same eyes: the legacy of a Shoshone woman my great-grandfather married after he stepped off the boat from Ireland and out onto the quay at Ellis Island, New York City.

Owen stood and stared at me a moment: it was a strange feeling, like he was looking through me and seeing someone else. “What are you doing here?” he said at last, and he laughed. That hadn’t changed either – a lazy, sarcastic cackle. “Jesus Christ.”

I could have asked him the same thing. I’d spent five years planning what I would say to Owen if I ever saw him again –
Thanks a lot, mate. Now they want
me
to get into Oxford
had been pretty high on the list – but now he was here I couldn’t think of anything.

Instead, I ran. I’d been running a lot that night. Maybe I’d just got into the habit.

The others came after me, and as I ran I could still hear Owen laughing. He didn’t follow, but then Owen never followed anyone in his life. He was always a leader. A ringleader they used to say.

I stopped at this little stall selling cold beers on the way into the main festival and stumped up the cash for four. They were two quid each as well, but I didn’t care. I needed a beer.

We drank in silence and it felt good. Jono and Sammy kept looking at each other, nervous. Bethany had taken my hand again and now I let her. A warm rush of relief washed through me as her fingers gripped mine. It was like the times when you wake up from a bad dream and the panic washes away as you realize your leg hasn’t been amputated, or that person hasn’t died or whatever.

“Look,” I said to them all, lighting a rollie, “it’s fine. I’m not going to wig out on you, OK. Let’s just pretend that never happened.”

Jono shrugged. “Fair enough, mate.” Back once again to his usual cocky self, he was grinning and looking around at the strings of fairy lights hanging between stalls, people lurching in and out of these big Indian tents. The smell of weed hovered over everything like some kind of nuclear fall-out cloud. A couple of hard-looking Traveller girls the same age as us were driving pony traps from the car park, laden with stuff people couldn’t be bothered to carry to the campsite.

“Are you sure?” Sammy said. “I mean, that’s pretty weird, him turning up after all this time—”

“I’m sure.”

Bethany said nothing, just lit up a fag and passed it to me, then took my hand in hers again. Our fingers twined together. I was grateful. Most girls would have asked what had just happened, demanded to know, and then wanted to endlessly discuss it. They’re such a bunch of psychologists. But not Bethany.

So we went off to the Veggie Café and told a few little white lies to Sammy’s mum about how our taxi had got lost in the lanes.

“And we missed the first train as well,” Sammy said. “We had to take the slow one.”

“Oh for goodness’ sake – it stops at every hole in the hedge.” Yvonne glanced at her watch. She was wearing a blue and white striped apron over jeans, a long bright pink cardigan covered in tiny mirrors, and a pair of wellies. “But that taxi of yours must have headed halfway to Bristol and back. Didn’t you run out of cash?” Yvonne asked. “I hope the driver didn’t charge you extra for getting lost.” She gave Sammy a long look and he shrugged. Yvonne’s no one’s fool. If there hadn’t been a mile-long queue in the café she might have asked a few more awkward questions.

Bethany smiled. “He did, but there was no point arguing. My mum gave me taxi money, too. So we were fine.”

I could see that Sammy was starting to sweat.
Mum asks all these really innocent-sounding questions
, he’s said before.
Just kind of tricks things out of you. I can’t get anything past her.

Yvonne looked a bit surprised to see Bethany but, again, she played it cool. “Oh, well that was lucky. I’m Yvonne, by the way.”

“This is Bethany,” I said, relieved that the questioning seemed to be over. That didn’t last long.

“Are you OK, Jack?” Yvonne asked me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m just a bit tired,” I said.

Yvonne gave me another one of those long looks. “Come and help me a second will you, J? I need to reach a box of teabags from the dry store, and I think you’re the only one tall enough. Franky’s in the beer tent.” She sighed. “Why don’t the rest of you all sit down and have a cup of tea, hot chocolate – we’ve got chai on the go if you fancy it. Sounds like you had a long journey.”

When I’d climbed past the tins of beans and packets of burger buns stashed in the tent next to the kitchen, and finally found the teabags, Yvonne said “Are you OK, Jack?”