Forbidden

‘But it keeps falling off!’

‘Just try a bit at a time.’

‘I can’t,’ she moans. ‘Lochie, cut it up for me?’

‘Willa, you need to learn—’

‘But fingers is easier!’

Kit’s place remains empty as he works his way round the kitchen, opening and slamming cupboard doors.

‘Let me save you some time – the only food we’ve got left is on the table,’ Lochan says, picking up his fork. ‘And I haven’t put any arsenic in it, so it’s unlikely to kill you.’

‘Great, so she’s forgotten to leave us any money for Asda again? Well, of course, it’s all right for her – Lover Boy’s taking her to the Ritz.’

‘His name’s Dave,’ Lochan points out from behind a forkful of food. ‘Calling him that doesn’t make you sound in any way cool.’

Swallowing my mouthful, I manage to catch Lochan’s eye and give a barely perceptible shake of the head. I sense Kit is gearing up for an argument, and Lochan, usually so adept at sidestepping confrontation, looks tired and on edge and seems to be steering blindly for a head-on collision tonight.

Kit slams the last cupboard with such force that everyone jumps. ‘What makes you think I’m trying to sound cool? I’m not the one stuck in an apron because his mother is too busy spreading her legs for—’

Lochan is out of his chair in a flash. I lunge for him and miss. He launches himself at Kit and grabs him by the collar, slamming him up against the fridge. ‘You speak like that in front of the little ones again and I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’ Kit has his older brother’s hand round his throat, and despite the cocky smirk, I recognize a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Lochan has never threatened him physically before, but in recent months their relationship has deteriorated. Kit has begun to resent Lochan more and more deeply for reasons I struggle to understand. Yet, despite his initial shock, he somehow manages to retain the upper hand with the mocking expression, the look of condescension for the brother nearly five years his senior.

Suddenly Lochan seems to realize what he is doing. He lets go of Kit and springs back, stu

Kit straightens up, a slow sneer creeping onto his lips. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Gutless. Just like at school.’

He has gone too far. Tiffin is silent, munching slowly, his eyes wary. Willa is gazing anxiously at Lochan, tugging nervously at her ear, her meal forgotten. Lochan is staring at the now empty doorway through which Kit has just departed. He wipes his hands on his jeans and takes a long, steadying breath before turning round to face Tiffin and Willa. ‘Hey, come on, guys, let’s finish up.’ His voice quavers with false cheer.

Tiffin eyes him dubiously. ‘Were you go

‘No!’ Lochan looks deeply shocked. ‘No, of course not, Tiff. I’d never hurt Kit. I’d never hurt any of you. Jeez!’

Tiffin returns to his meal, unconvinced. Willa says nothing, solemnly sucking each finger clean, silent resentment radiating from her eyes.

Lochan doesn’t return to his seat. Instead he appears at a loss, chewing the corner of his lip, his face working. I lean back in my chair and reach for his arm. ‘He was just trying to wind you up as usual . . .’

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he takes another deep breath before glancing at me and saying, ‘D’you mind finishing this up?’

‘Course not.’

‘Thanks.’ He forces a reassuring smile before leaving the room. Moments later I hear his bedroom door close.

I manage to persuade Tiffin and Willa to finish their food, and then put Lochan’s barely touched plate in the fridge. Kit can have the stale bread on the counter for all I care. I give Willa a bath and force a protesting Tiffin to take a shower. After vacuuming the front room, I decide that an early bedtime would do them no harm and studiously ignore Tiffin’s furious protests about the lingering evening sunlight. As I kiss them in their bunks, Willa puts her arms round my neck and holds me close for a moment.

‘Why does Kit hate Lochie?’ she whispers.

I draw back a little in order to look into her eyes. ‘Sweetheart, Kit doesn’t hate Lochie,’ I say carefully. ‘Kit’s just in a bad mood these days.’

Her deep blue eyes flood with relief. ‘So they love each other really?’

‘Of course they do. And everybody loves you.’ I kiss her again on the forehead. ‘Nighty-night.’

I confiscate Tiffin’s Gameboy and leave the two of them listening to an audio book, then make my way down to the far end of the corridor, where a ladder leads up to the box-sized attic, and shout up at Kit to turn the music down. Last year, after one pitiful complaint after another about having to share a room with his younger siblings, Kit was helped by Lochan to clear the previously unused tiny attic of all the junk left there by former owners. Even though the space is too small to stand up in properly, it is Kit’s lair, the private den in which he spends most of his time when at home, its sloping walls painted black and plastered with rockchicks, the dry, creaking floorboards covered with a Persian rug Lochan unearthed from some charity shop. Cut off from the rest of the house by a steep ladder that Tiffin and Willa have been strictly forbidden to climb, it is the perfect hideaway for someone like Kit. The music fades to a monotonous bass thud as I finally close the door to my room and start my homework.

The house is quiet at last. I hear the audio book come to an end and the air falls silent. My alarm clock reads twenty past eight, and the golden dusk of the Indian summer is fading rapidly. Night is falling, the streetlamps coming on one after the other, casting a funereal light on the exercise book in front of me. I finish off a comprehension exercise and find myself staring at my own reflection in the darkened window. On an impulse I stand up and walk out onto the landing.

My knock is tentative. Had it been me, I’d have probably stalked out of the house, but Lochan isn’t like that. He’s far too mature, far too sensible. Never once in all the nights since Dad left has he stormed out – not even when Tiffin plastered his hair down with treacle then refused to have a bath, or when Willa sobbed for hours on end because someone had given her doll a Mohican.

However, things have been going rapidly downhill lately. Even before his adolescent metamorphosis, Kit was prone to throwing a tantrum whenever Mum went out for the evening – the school counsellor claimed that he blamed himself for Dad leaving, that he still harboured the hope that he might return and therefore felt deeply threatened by anyone trying to take his father’s place. Personally I always suspected it was something far simpler: Kit doesn’t like the little ones getting all the attention for being small and cute and Lochan and I telling everyone what to do, while he’s stuck in noman’s-land, the archetypal middle child with no partner in crime. Now that Kit has gained the necessary respect at school by joining a gang who sneak out of the gates to smoke weed in the local park at lunch time, he bitterly resents the fact that at home he is still considered just one of the children. When Mum’s out, which is increasingly often, Lochan is the one in charge, the way it’s always been; Lochan, the one she dumps on whenever she has to work overtime or fancies a night out with Dave or the girls.

There is no answer to my knock, but when I wander downstairs I find Lochan asleep on the couch in the front room. A thick textbook rests against his chest, its pages splayed, and sheets of scrawled, spidery calculations litter the carpet. Uncurling his fingers from the book, I gather his things into a pile on the coffee table, pull the blanket off the back of the couch, and lay it over him. Then I sit in the armchair and draw up my legs, resting my chin on my knees, watching him sleep beneath the soft orange glow of the streetlamps falling through the curtainless window.