Forbidden

On Saturday evening Mum surprises us by slamming into the house, her make-up ru

‘Mummy!’ Willa leaps up and runs over, holding up her arms for a hug. Mum pats her on the head without looking down, and Willa settles for hugging her legs instead.

‘Mum, Mum, look what I can do!’ Tiffin shouts triumphantly, launching himself into an aerial somersault and knocking my pile of books to the floor.

‘How come you’re not at Dave’s?’ I ask her acerbically.

‘He had to go and rescue his ex-wife,’ she replies, her lip curling in disgust. ‘Apparently she’s now an agoraphobic or something. More like a chronic attention-seeker, if you ask me.’

‘Mummy, let’s go out somewhere. Please!’ Willa begs, hanging onto her leg.

‘Not now, sweetie pie. It’s raining and Mummy’s very tired.’

‘You could take them to the cinema,’ I suggest quickly. ‘Superheroes starts in fifteen minutes. I was going to take them, but since they haven’t seen you in over two weeks . . .’

‘Yeah, Mum! Superheroes sounds well cool – you’ll love it! Everyone in my class has seen it.’ Tiffin’s face lights up.

‘And popcorn!’ Willa begs, jumping up and down. ‘I love popcorn! And Coke!’

Mum manages a tight smile. ‘Kids, I’ve got a splitting headache and I’ve only just got in.’

‘But you’ve been at Dave’s for two whole weeks!’ Tiffin suddenly shouts, his face puce.

She flinches slightly. ‘OK, OK. Fine.’ She shoots me an angry look. ‘You do realize I’ve been working for the past two weeks, right?’

I stare back at her coldly. ‘So have we.’

She turns on her heel, and after an argument over an umbrella, furious yells about a missing coat and anguished wails about someone’s foot being stepped on, the front door bangs shut. I drop my head back against the edge of the couch and close my eyes. After a moment I open them again and smile. They’ve gone. They’ve all gone. This is too good to be true. We finally have the house to ourselves.

I tiptoe upstairs, my heart-rate picking up. I’m going to surprise him. Creep up behind him, slide onto his lap and a

Slowly I push the door ajar. Then I stop. He is not at his desk, head bent over his book as I expected. Instead he’s by the window: one hand fiddling intently with the broken mobile he still thinks he can salvage, the other trying to pull off a sock as he wobbles precariously on one leg. He is half turned away from me so he hasn’t noticed me behind the door and I watch him in amusement as he struggles to remove his other sock, eyes still fixed on the phone’s cracked screen. Then, with a sigh of a

Sneaking up behind him, I slide my arms around his waist and feel him tense.

‘She’s taken them out,’ I whisper in his ear.

He turns in my arms and suddenly we are kissing hard, frantically – no one to stop us, no limit on our time. But instead of making us languorous, it adds a new element of excitement and urgency to the situation. Lochan’s hands shake as he cups my face in them. Between kisses, he pants gently against my cheek and the pain of longing pulses through my whole body. He kisses every part of my face, my ears, my neck. I run my hands up and down the warmth of his bare chest, his arms, his shoulders. I want to feel every part of his body. I want to inhale him. I want him so much, it hurts. He is kissing me so fiercely now he hardly gives me time to draw breath. His hands are in my hair, against my neck, beneath my collar. His bare skin tingles beneath my touch. But there are still too many clothes, too many obstacles between our two bodies. I slip my hand under the top of his jeans. ‘Wait . . .’ I whisper.

His breath shudders against my ear and he tries to kiss my neck but I push him gently away. ‘Wait,’ I tell him. ‘Stop for a second. I have to concentrate.’

As I lower my head, I feel his body tauten in frustration and surprise. I force myself to focus on what I’m doing, careful not to rush. I don’t want to get this wrong, make a mistake, make a fool of myself, hurt him . . .

Undoing the button is easy. Sliding down the zip is less so – on the first try it sticks and I have to draw it back up before sliding it down all the way. But suddenly Lochan is grabbing me by the wrists, wrenching back my hands.

‘What are you doing?’ He sounds incredulous, almost angry.

‘Shh . . .’ I return to his open trousers.

‘Maya, no!’ He is panting hard, a frantic edge to his voice. His hands are between mine now, trying to zip himself up again, but his fingers are fumbling, shaking in shock.

Pulling back the waistband of his boxers, I slide my fingers inside, and feel a rush of elation as I make contact. It feels surprisingly warm and hard. With a small gasp, Lochan buckles forward, sucking in his breath, tensing and staring at me with a look of complete astonishment, as if he has forgotten who I am, the colour flooding his cheeks, his breathing fast and shallow. Then, with a small cry, he grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me backwards.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

I recoil, speechless, as he grapples with his flies. He is yelling at the top of his voice, literally shaking with rage. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? What the hell were you trying to do? You know we can never ever—’

‘I’m sorry,’ I gasp. ‘I – I only – I only wanted to touch—’

‘This whole thing’s completely out of hand!’ he screams at me, the cords standing out in his neck. ‘You’re just sick, you know that? This whole thing’s just sick!’ He pushes past me, his face puce, and slams into the bathroom. Moments later I hear the shower ru

Downstairs in the front room, I pace the floor, breathing hard, anger and guilt coursing through me in equal measures. Anger at the way he just screamed at me. Guilt at not having stopped when he first told me to. Still, I don’t understand, I just don’t understand. I thought we’d decided not to bother with what other people thought. I thought we’d decided we would be together no matter what. I hadn’t been trying to trick him into anything. I’d just suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to touch him everywhere, even there – especially there. But fear now tugs at my throat, my shoulders, my chest. Fear that I’ve ruined what I thought we had.

The sound of his feet pounding on the stairs makes me back into the furthest corner of the room. But from the hall I hear only the jangle of keys, the squeak of trainers, the zip of a jacket. And then the front door bangs.

I stand there, stu

I shove my feet into my shoes and grab my school coat. Without even bothering to stop for my keys, I run out of the house. I can just make out his figure disappearing into the wet darkness at the end of our street. I break into a run.