Forbidden

Lochan is clearly shaken too. The colour is high in his cheeks and he is gnawing at his lip. He knocks over Willa’s juice and spills cereal on the table. He downs coffee after coffee and tries to rush everyone through breakfast, even though it is not yet eight, and his eyes keep returning to Tiffin’s face.

After dropping the kids off at school, I turn to him and say, ‘Tiffin couldn’t have seen anything. There wasn’t time.’

‘He just saw you give me a hug and now he’s worried that you’re upset about something more serious than a test. I should never have come up with that pathetic excuse. But by this evening he’ll have forgotten all about it, or if he hasn’t, he’ll realize you’re OK. Everything’s fine.’

I can still feel the knot of fear in my stomach. But I just nod and smile reassuringly.

In maths, Francie chews gum and props her feet up on the empty chair in front, passing me notes about the way Salim Kumar is looking at me and speculating about what he would like to do with me. But all I can think is that something has got to change. Lochan and I have to find a way of being together without fear of interruption for at least a little while every day. I know that after what happened this morning, he isn’t going to touch me again while the others are in the house, which is basically whenever we are. And I still don’t understand why I can’t even stand close to him, hold his hand, rest my head against his arm while we are in an empty room. He says it makes it worse, but how could anything be worse than not touching him at all?

It’s my turn to pick up Tiffin and Willa today because Lochan has a late class. On the way home, they charge ahead as usual, giving me a heart attack at every road-crossing. When we get in, I sort out snacks and rummage through their book bags for teachers’ notes and homework while they fight over the remote in the front room. I put on a wash, clear away the breakfast things and go upstairs to tidy their room. When I return to the front room they have tired of TV, the Gameboy isn’t working properly and Tiffin’s neighbourhood friends are all out at football club. They start to bicker, so I suggest a game of Cluedo. Exhausted from the long week, they agree, and so we set up the game on the carpet in the front room: Tiffin lying on his front with his head propped up on his hand, his blond mane hanging in his eyes; Willa cross-legged at the foot of the couch, an enormous new hole in her red school tights revealing part of an even larger sticking plaster.

‘What happened to you?’ I ask, pointing.

‘I fell!’ she a

‘You had stitches!’ I stare at her, appalled.

‘No, ’cos after a while the blood stopped gushing out, so the nurse said she thought it would be OK. She kept trying to call Mum but I told her and told her it was the wrong number.’

‘What d’you mean, the wrong number?’

‘I kept telling her that she had to call you or Lochie instead, but she didn’t listen, even when I told her I knew the numbers off by heart. She just left a lot of messages on Mum’s mobile. And she asked me if I had a gra

‘Oh God, let me see. Does it still hurt?’

‘Only a bit. No—Ow – don’t take the plaster off, Maya! The nurse said I have to leave it on!’

‘OK, OK,’ I say quickly. ‘But next time, you tell the nurse she has to call me or Lochie. You say she has to, Willa, OK? She has to!’ I suddenly find myself almost shouting.

Willa nods distractedly, intent on setting out the pieces of the game now the account of her drama is over. But Tiffin is looking at me solemnly, his blue eyes narrowing.

‘Why does school always have to call you or Lochan?’ he asks quietly. ‘Are you secretly our real parents?’

Shock runs like icy water through my veins. I am unable to draw breath for a moment. ‘No, of course not, Tiffin. We’re just a lot older than you, that’s all. What – what on earth made you think that?’

Tiffin continues to fix me with his penetrating stare and I find myself literally holding my breath, waiting for him to comment on what he witnessed this morning.

‘’Cos Mum’s never here no more. Even hardly at weekends. She’s got a new family now at Dave’s house. She lives there and she’s even got new kids.’

I stare at him, sadness seeping through me. ‘It’s not her new family,’ I attempt at last in desperation. ‘They only stay over at the weekend and they’re Dave’s children, not hers. We’re her children. She just spends lots of time there at the moment because she works so late – it’s dangerous for her to come home in the middle of the night on her own.’

My heart is beating too fast. I wish Lochan were here to say the right thing. I don’t know how to explain it to them. I don’t know how to explain it to myself.

‘Then how come she’s never even here at weekends any more?’ Tiffin asks, his voice suddenly sharp with anger. ‘How come she never takes us to school or picks us up at hometime like she used to on her day off?’

‘Because—’ My voice wavers. I know I’m going to have to lie here. ‘Because she now works at weekends too and doesn’t take days off during the week any more. It’s just so she can earn more money to buy nice things for us.’

Tiffin gives me a long hard look, and with a start I see the teenager he will be in a few years’ time. ‘You’re lying,’ he says in a low voice. ‘All of you are lying.’ He gets up and rushes off upstairs.

I sit there, paralysed with fear, guilt and horror. I know I should go up after him, but what can I possibly say? Willa is pulling at my sleeve, demanding to be played with, the conversation thankfully lost on her. And so I pick up the pieces with an unsteady hand and start to play.

As time passes, the afternoon I fainted begins to feel like a dream, slowly evaporating from the coils of my mind. I don’t try touching Lochan again. I keep telling myself that this is only temporary – just until things calm down with Tiffin and he starts to focus on other things and gets back to his usual cheeky self. It doesn’t take him long, but I know the memory is still there, along with the doubt, and the hurt, and the confusion. And that is enough to keep me from reaching out to Lochan.

The Christmas nightmare begins: Nativity plays, costumes to be made from scratch, a disco for the sixth formers which Lochan is the only pupil not to attend. Then everyone breaks up and Christmas is upon us, the house decorated with streamers and tinsel that Lochan nicks from school. It takes the combined efforts of all five of us to carry the tree home from the high street, and Willa gets a pine needle in her eye, and for a few dreadful moments we think we’ll have to take her to Casualty, but Lochan finally manages to remove it. Tiffin and Willa adorn the tree with home- and school-made decorations, and even though the end result is a great lopsided, glittery mess, it cheers us all up tremendously. Even Kit deigns to join in with the preparations, although he spends most of his time trying to prove to Willa that Santa isn’t real. Mum gives us our Christmas money and I go shopping for Willa while Lochan takes care of Tiffin – a system we devised one unfortunate year when I bought Tiffin a pair of football gloves with a pink stripe down the side. Kit only wants money, but Lochan and I club together to get him the pair of ridiculously expensive designer trainers he’s been banging on about for ages. On Christmas Eve we wait till we hear him softly snoring before placing the wrapped box at the foot of his ladder with the words From Santa written on it for good measure.