Forbidden

Sitting across from him at the kitchen table, watching him help Willa with her homework, I’m overcome with this terrible ache, this profound sense of loss. Stirring my long-cold tea, I watch all his familiar traits: the way he blows the hair out of his eyes every few minutes, chews on his lower lip whenever he feels tense. I look at his hands, with their bitten-down nails, resting on the tabletop, his lips, which once touched mine, now chapped and raw. The pain I feel when looking at him is more than I can bear but I force myself to keep watching, to soak in as much of him as I can, trying to recapture, in my mind at least, all that I’ve lost.

‘The boy went into the c – a – v – e.’ Willa sounds the letters out. Kneeling up on the kitchen chair, she points at each letter in turn, her fine golden hair curtaining her face, the ends brushing the page of her book with a faint whispery sound.

‘What word does that make?’ Lochan prompts her.

Willa studies the picture. ‘Rock?’ she says optimistically, glancing up at Lochan, her blue eyes wide and hopeful.

‘No. Look at the word: c – a – v – e. Put the sounds together and say them quickly. What word does it make?’

‘Kav?’ She is restless and inattentive, desperate to go and play but pleased, nonetheless, by the attention.

‘Nearly, but there’s an e at the end. What do we call that e?’

‘A capital e?’

Lochan’s tongue darts out, rubbing his lip in impatience. ‘Look, this is a capital e.’ He flicks through the book in search of one, fails, and writes one himself on a piece of used kitchen roll.

‘Eugh. Tiffin blew his nose on that.’

‘Willa, are you looking? That’s a capital e.’

‘A snotty capital e.’ Willa begins to laugh; she catches my eye and I feel myself smile too.

‘Willa, this is very important. It’s an easy word – I know you can read it if you try. This is a magic e. What does a magic e do?’

She frowns hard and leans over the book again, curling her tongue above her lip in concentration, her hair partially obscuring the page. ‘It makes the vowel say its name!’ she shouts out suddenly, punching the air triumphantly with her small fist.

‘Good. So which one’s the vowel?’

‘Hm . . .’ She returns to the page with the same frown, the same curled tongue. ‘Hm . . .’ she says again, stalling for time. ‘The a?’

‘Good girl. So the magic e turns the a sound into an—’

‘Ay.’

‘Yes. So try and sound out the word again.’

‘C – ay – v. Cave! The boy went into the cave! Look, Lochie, I read it!’

‘Clever girl! See, I knew you could do it!’ He smiles, but there is something else in his eyes. A sadness that never fades.

Willa finishes reading her book and goes to join Tiffin in front of the TV. I pretend to sip my tea, watching Lochan over the rim of the mug. Too tired to move, he sits back, limp, bits of paper and scattered books and school letters and Willa’s book bag spread out in front of him. A long silence stretches out between us, as taut as a rubber band.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask him eventually.

He gives a wry smile and appears to hesitate, gazing down at the littered table. ‘Not really,’ he replies at length, avoiding my gaze. ‘You?’

‘No.’ With the rim of my mug I press my lip down against my teeth in an attempt to stop the tears. ‘I miss you,’ I whisper.

‘I miss you too.’ He is still staring down at the cover of Willa’s reading book. His eyes seem to catch the light. ‘Maybe—’ His voice comes out unsteady so he tries again. ‘M-maybe you should give DiMarco another chance. Rumour has it he’s – he’s pretty crazy about you!’ A forced laugh.

I stare at him in stu

‘No – no. That’s not what I want at all. But maybe it would . . . help?’ He glances up at me with a look of pure desperation.

I continue pressing my teeth into my lip until I’m sure I’m not going to start crying, swirling his outrageous proposition around in my head. ‘Help me or help you?’

His bottom lip quivers for a moment and he immediately bites down on it, apparently unaware that he is making a concertina out of the cover of Willa’s reading book. ‘I don’t know. Maybe both of us,’ he says in a rush.

‘Then you should go out with Francie,’ I shoot back.

‘OK.’ He doesn’t look up.

I am momentarily speechless. ‘You – but – I thought you didn’t fancy her?’ The horror in my voice resonates across the room.

‘I don’t, but we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to go out with other people. It’s – it’s the only way—’

‘The only way to what?’

‘To – to get over this. To survive.’

I slam my mug down on the table, sloshing tea over my hand and shirt cuff. ‘You think I’m just going to get over this?’ I shout, the blood pounding in my face.

Ducking his head and flinching as if I am about to deal him a blow, he raises a hand to ward me off. ‘Don’t – I can’t – please don’t make it worse.’

‘How could I?’ I gasp. ‘How could I possibly do anything to make this worse?’

‘All I know is that we have to do something. I can’t go on – I can’t go on like this!’ He inhales raggedly and turns away.

‘I know.’ I lower my voice, forcing myself back into some semblance of calm. ‘Neither can I.’

‘What else can we do?’ His eyes plead with mine.

‘Fine.’ I shut down my thoughts, shut down my senses. ‘I’ll tell Francie tomorrow. She’ll be over the moon. But she’s a decent person, Lochan. You can’t just dump her after a week.’

‘I won’t.’ He looks at me, his eyes full. ‘I’ll stay with her for as long as she likes. I’ll marry her, if that’s what she wants. I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can’t be you?’

Everything feels different today. The house is chilled and alien. Kit, Tiffin and Willa seem like impersonators of their real selves. I can’t even look at Lochan, the embodiment of my loss. The streets on the way to school seem to have changed overnight. I could be in some foreign town, in some far-flung country. The pedestrians around me don’t feel quite alive. I don’t feel alive. I’m not sure who I am any more. The girl who existed before that night, before the kiss, has been erased from life. I am no longer who I was; I still don’t know who I will become. The nervous honks of cars jar me, as do the sounds of feet on the pavement, buses going by, shops opening their shutters, the high-pitched chatter of children making their way to school.

The building is bigger than I remember: a stark, colourless concrete landscape. Pupils hurrying this way and that look like extras on a film set. I must move in order to fit into all this activity, just as an electron must obey the current. I take the stairs very slowly, one at a time, as people shove and push past me. When I reach my form room, I see things I have never noticed before: the fingerprints on the walls, the speckled lino, cracked like a delicate eggshell, disappearing rhythmically beneath my feet. Far off, voices try to bump up against me, but I repel them. The sounds bounce off me without registering: the scraping of chairs, the laughs and the chatter, Francie’s nattering, the history teacher’s drone. Sunlight breaks through the blanket of cloud, slanting in through the great glass windows, across my desk, into my eyes. White spots form in the space in front of me, dancing bubbles of colour and light that hold me captive until the bell goes. Francie is at my side, her mouth full of questions, her painted red lips forming and re-forming – lips that will soon touch Lochan’s. I have to tell her now before it’s too late, but my voice is gone and all that comes out is empty air.

I skip second period to escape her. Walk around the empty school, my giant prison cell, searching for answers that can never be found. My shoes tap against the steps as I go up and down and round and round each floor, searching for – what – some kind of absolution? The harsh winter light strengthens, flooding through the windows and bouncing off the walls. I feel the pressure of it against my body, burning holes into my skin. I am lost in this maze of corridors, staircases, floors stacked one above the other like a pile of cards. If I keep going, maybe I will find my way back – back to the person I used to be. I am moving more slowly now. Maybe even floating. I swim through space. The earth has lost its gravity, everything feels liquid around me. I reach another staircase, the treads melting down. The sole of my shoe peels off the topmost one and I step into nothingness.