Forbidden

I press myself back into the chair and bite down hard to stop myself from intervening.

‘I p-pulled her down.’ His chin quivers briefly. He doesn’t look up.

‘Could you explain exactly how you did that?’

‘I went – I went over and g-grabbed her by the arm and then – and then I pulled her off the counter.’ His voice cracks and he raises his fist to his face, pressing his knuckles hard against his mouth.

Lochan, what the hell are you talking about? You would never deliberately hurt Willa – you know that as well as I do.

‘You grabbed her arm and pulled her to the floor?’ The woman arches her eyebrows.

Silence stretches out across the room. I can hear my own heartbeat. Finally Lochan lowers his fist from his mouth and takes a ragged breath. ‘I pulled her arm and – and—’ He looks up at the corner of the ceiling, tears amalgamating in his eyes like translucent marbles. ‘I know I shouldn’t have – I wasn’t thinking—’

‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘I p-pulled her arm and she slipped. She – she was wearing tights and her feet just slid off the counter’s surface. I – I kept hold of her arm as she fell to try and stop her from hurting herself and that’s when I felt this – this snap!’ He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, as if in terrible pain.

‘So you were holding onto her arm when she hit the floor and the weight of her body pulled the bone out of the socket?’

‘It was counter-intuitive to let go of her as she fell. I – I thought I’d c-caught her, not – not wrenched her arm out of its socket. Jesus!’ A tear glances off his cheek. He swipes at it rapidly. ‘I didn’t think—’

‘Lochie!’

His eyes meet mine this time. ‘It – it was an accident, Maya.’

‘I know!’ I exclaim in soft outrage.

The damn woman is scribbling again. ‘Are you often left in charge of your siblings, Lochan?’ she asks.

I recoil back into the chair. Lochan presses his fingers against his eyes and takes some steady breaths, trying to pull himself together. He shakes his head vehemently. ‘Only when our mother has to go away on business.’

‘And how often does that happen?’

‘It – it depends . . . Every couple of months or so . . .’

‘And when she’s away, I presume you have to fetch them from school, cook for them, help them with homework, entertain them, put them to bed—’

‘We do it together,’ I say quickly.

The woman turns towards us both now. ‘That must be exhausting after a long school day—’

‘They’re good at entertaining themselves.’

‘But when they misbehave, you must have to discipline them.’

‘Not really,’ I say firmly. ‘They’re pretty well-behaved.’

‘Have you ever hurt one of your siblings before?’ the woman asks, turning towards Lochan.

He takes a breath. The fight with Kit flashes through my mind. ‘No!’ I exclaim in outrage. ‘Never!’

In the cab on the way home we are all three silent, spent, exhausted. Willa is curled up on Lochan’s lap, her arm strapped up across her chest, the thumb of her other hand in her mouth. Her head rests against Lochan’s neck, spots of light from passing cars float over her golden hair. Lochan holds her tightly against him, staring blankly out of the window, face pale and stu

We arrive home to a tornado-hit kitchen, the front room’s carpet embedded with crisp, biscuit and cereal crumbs. To our amazement, however, Tiffin is actually in bed and Kit is still in the house, up in the attic, music pounding down through the ceiling. While Lochan gives a groggy Willa a drink and some Calpol and puts her to bed, I climb up the ladder to let Kit know we’re back.

‘So has she broken her arm, or what?’ Despite the nonchalant tone of his voice, I recognize a spark of worry in his eyes as he glances up at me from his Gameboy. I push his legs to one side to make room on his mattress and sit down beside his sprawled-out figure.

‘She hasn’t actually broken anything.’ I explain about the dislocated shoulder.

‘Yeah. Tiff said Loch lost his temper and pulled Willa off the kitchen counter.’ His face darkens suddenly.

I pull my knees to my chest and take a deep breath. ‘Kit, you know it was an accident. You know Lochan would never hurt Willa intentionally, don’t you?’ My voice is questioning, serious. I know the answer, I know he does too, but I need him to be honest with me for a moment and actually admit it.

Kit takes a breath, ready for a sarcastic retort, but then seems to hesitate as his gaze locks into mine. ‘Yeah,’ he confesses after a moment, a hint of defeat in his voice.

‘I know you’re angry,’ I say quietly, ‘about how things turned out with Mum and Dad, about Lochan and me always being the ones in charge – and Kit, you have every right to be . . . but you know what the alternative is.’

His eyes have slid away, back to his Gameboy, uncomfortable about the sudden change in conversation.

‘If Social Services found out that Mum was no longer living at home, that we were on our own—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ he interrupts gruffly, pounding the buttons of his games console viciously with his thumbs. ‘We’d be taken into care and split up and all that shit.’ His voice sounds fed up and angry, but I can sense the fear behind it.

‘It’s not going to happen, Kit,’ I reassure him quickly. ‘Lochan and I will make sure of that, I promise. But it does mean we have to be careful, really careful, about what we say to other people. Even if it’s just some mate at school. All it would take would be for him to mention it to his parents, or to another friend . . . all it would take is one call to Social Services—’

‘Maya, I get it.’ His thumbs stop moving against the buttons and he looks up at me sombrely, suddenly appearing much older than his thirteen years. ‘I won’t tell anybody about Willa’s arm – or anything else that could get us into trouble, OK? I promise.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lochan

We keep Willa off school for the rest of the week in order to avoid awkward questions, and I call in sick and stay at home with her. But by Monday she is bored, has lost the sling and is eager to return to her friends. Mum returns from Devon, and when I finally track her down at Dave’s for money, she shows scant interest in Willa’s injury.

I am having trouble sleeping again. Whenever I ask Willa about her shoulder, she gives me this worried look and assures me that it’s ‘all mended now’. I know she reads the guilt on my face, but this only makes me feel worse.

The green glow of my digital alarm reads 02:43 when I get up and creep out of my room and down the corridor. Released from the warmth of the duvet, I quickly start to shiver in my holey T-shirt and boxers. The creak of the bedroom door makes Maya stir and I wince, anxious not to wake her. Closing it softly behind me, I pad over to the wall opposite her bed, sliding down against it, my bare arms turning silver in the light of the moon. She continues to shift sleepily, nuzzling her face against the pillow, then abruptly raises herself on one elbow, pushing back her long curtain of hair.

‘Lochie, is that you?’ A startled, frightened whisper.

‘Yeah – shh – sorry – go back to sleep!’

She struggles to sit up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Finally her eyes focus on me and she shivers, pulling the duvet around her. ‘Are you trying to give me a heart attack? What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’m sorry – I really didn’t mean to wake you—’

‘Well, you have now!’ She gives me a sleepy smile and holds up the edge of the duvet.

I quickly shake my head. ‘No . . . I just – can I watch you sleep? I know that sounds weird but – but I can’t sleep at the moment and it’s doing my head in!’ I give a sharp, painful laugh. ‘Watching you sleep makes me feel—’ I inhale deeply. ‘I du