Forbidden

Heart slamming against my ribs, I withdraw to the couch, coiling into myself, groping for the nearest textbook to pull across my lap. Still standing where I left her, Maya looks at me, a bemused expression on her face.

‘They’re going to be back any minute,’ I tell her by way of explanation, my voice rushed and ragged. ‘I’ve – I’ve got to finish this.’

Seemingly unperturbed, she sighs, still smiling, and flops down onto the couch beside me. Her leg touches my thigh and I recoil violently. I need an excuse to leave the room but I can’t seem to think straight, my mind a mess of jumbled thoughts and emotions. I feel flushed and breathless, my heart hammering so loudly I’m afraid she will hear it. I need to get as far away from her as possible. Pressing the textbook against my thighs, I ask her if she could make me some more coffee and she obliges, picking up the two used mugs and heading off to the kitchen.

The moment I hear the rattle of crockery in the sink, I dash upstairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. I lock myself in the bathroom and lean against the door as if to reinforce it. I pull off all my clothes, almost tearing at them in my haste, and, careful not to look down at myself, step under an icy shower, heaving with shock. The water is so cold it hurts, but I don’t care: it’s a relief. I have to stop this . . . this – this madness. After just standing there for a while, eyes tightly closed, I start to go numb and my nerve endings deaden, erasing all signs of my earlier arousal. It stills the racing thoughts, relieves the pressure of the madness that has begun crushing my mind. I lean forward against the wall, letting the frigid water lash my body, until all I can do is shiver violently.

I don’t want to think – so long as I don’t think or feel, I will be fine and everything will return to normal. Seated at my bedroom desk in a clean T-shirt and jogging bottoms, wet hair sending cold rivulets down the back of my neck, I pore over quadratic equations, grappling to keep the figures in my head, fighting to make sense of the numbers and symbols. I repeat the formulae under my breath, cover page after page with calculations, and every time I sense a crack in my self-imposed armour, a chink of light entering my brain, I force myself to work harder, faster, obliterating all other thoughts. I am dimly aware of the others returning, of their raised voices in the hall, of the clatter of plates from the kitchen beneath me. I concentrate on tuning it all out. When Willa comes in to say they’ve ordered pizza, I tell her I’m not hungry: I must finish this chapter by tonight, I must work my way through every exercise at top speed, I have no time to stop and think. All I can do is work or I will go crazy.

The sounds of the house wash over me like white noise, the evening routine for once unfolding without me. An argument, a door slamming, Mum shouting – I don’t care. They can sort themselves out, they have to sort themselves out, I must concentrate on this until it’s so late all I can do is collapse into bed, and then it will be morning and none of this will have happened. Everything will be back to normal – but what am I on about? Everything is normal! I just forgot, for one insane moment, that Maya was my sister.

For the remainder of the weekend I keep myself closeted in my room, buried in schoolwork, and leave Maya in charge. In class on Monday I struggle to sit still, jittery and restless. My mind has become strangely diffuse – I am possessed by myriad different sensations at once. There is a light flashing in my brain, like the headlight of a train in the dark. A vice is slowly tightening around my head, gripping my temples.

When Maya came into my room yesterday to say goodnight, informing me she had left my di

No, that’s ridiculous. My problem is that I need someone to focus my attention on, some object of desire, some girl to fantasize about. I look around the class but there is no one. Attractive girls – yes. A girl that I care about – no. She can’t just be a face, a body; there has to be more than that, some kind of co

I send Maya a text asking her to pick up Tiffin and Willa, then skip last period, go home to change into my ru

Over half-term I play footie out in the street with Tiffin, attempt to strike up conversations with Kit and play endless games of Hide-and-Seek and Guess Who? with Willa. At night, after my mind shuts down from information overload, I rearrange kitchen drawers and cupboards. I go through Tiffin and Willa’s bedroom, collecting outgrown clothes and discarded toys, and haul them off to the charity shop. I am either entertaining or tidying or cooking or studying: I comb through revision notes late into the night, pore over my books until the small hours of the morning, until there is nothing else to do but collapse on my bed and fall into a short, deep and dreamless sleep. Maya comments on my boundless energy but I feel numb, utterly drained from trying to keep myself occupied at all times. From now on I will just do and not think.

Back at school, Maya is busy with coursework. If she notices a difference in my behaviour towards her, she doesn’t mention it. Perhaps she too feels uncomfortable about that afternoon. Perhaps she too realizes that there needs to be more distance between us. We negotiate each other with the caution of a bare foot avoiding shards of glass, confining our brief exchanges to practicalities: the school run, the weekly shop, ways to persuade Kit to take over the laundry, the likelihood of Mum turning up sober on parents’ evening, weekend activities for Tiffin and Willa, dental appointments, figuring out how to stop the fridge leaking. We are never alone together. Mum is increasingly absent from family life, the pressure of balancing schoolwork and housework intensifies and I welcome the endless chores: they literally leave me with no time to think. Things are begi

The sound is like a bomb exploding in an open field.

‘What?’ I am horribly jumpy from an overdose of caffeine. My daily coffee consumption has reached new heights, the only way to keep up my energy levels through the days and late into the sleepless nights. There is no reply but I hear the door open and close behind me. I turn from my desk, biro still pressed against the indentations in my fingers, my borrowed school laptop anchored amidst a sea of scribbled notes. She is in that nightdress again – the white one that she has long outgrown and that barely reaches her thighs. How I wish she wouldn’t walk around in that thing; how I wish her copper hair wasn’t so long and shiny; how I wish she didn’t have those eyes, that she wouldn’t just wander in uninvited. How I wish the sight of her didn’t fill me with such unease, twisting my insides, tensing every muscle in my body, setting my pulse thrumming.