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‘It must have been a neighbour. We weren’t careful enough with the curtains.’ Maya shakes with a silent sob. ‘You’ve still got time. Lochie, I just don’t understand! Why won’t you run?’ Her voice rises in anguish.
Because then I won’t be around to tell my version of the story. The version I want the police to hear. The version that absolves you of all wrongdoing. If I run, they could arrest you instead. And if we both go, we expose ourselves as accomplices and it’s all over.
I say nothing, just hold her tighter in the hope that she will trust me.
The sound of the siren makes us both start. Maya jack-knifes from the bed and tries to leap for the door. I force her back and she starts to cry.
‘No, Lochie, no! Please! Let me go downstairs and explain. It looks so much worse like this!’
I need it to look worse. I need it to look as bad as it can. From now on I have to think like a rapist, act like a rapist. Prove I’ve been holding Maya against her will.
Sounds of slamming car doors rise from the street below. Mum’s hysterical voice starts up again.
The front door bangs. Heavy treads in the hallway. Maya screws up her eyes and clings to me, sobbing silently.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I whisper desperately in her ear. ‘This is just protocol. They’ll only arrest me so they can question me. When you tell them you don’t want to press charges, they’ll just let me go.’
I hold her tight, stroking her hair, hoping that one day she’ll understand, that one day she’ll forgive me for lying. Careful not to think, careful not to panic, careful not to waver. Loud voices from below, Mum’s mainly. The sound of multiple footsteps on the stairs.
‘Let go of me,’ I whisper urgently.
She doesn’t respond, still pressed up against me, her head buried against my shoulder, arms wound tightly around my neck.
‘Maya, let go of me, now!’ I try to unhook her arms. She won’t let go. She won’t let go!
The thuds against the door make us both start violently. The noise is followed by a sharp, authoritative voice: ‘This is the police. Open the door.’
I’m sorry, but I’ve just raped my sister and am holding her here against her will. I ca
They give me a warning. Then the first strike is heard. Maya lets out a terrified scream. She still won’t let go of me. It’s vital I turn her round so that when they get in, they find me grasping her with her back to me, arms pi
I push Maya away from me with all my strength. I look into her eyes – her beautiful blue eyes – and feel the tears surge. ‘I love you,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so sorry!’ Then I raise my right hand and strike her hard across the face.
Her scream fills the room seconds before the lock breaks and the door crashes open. The doorway is suddenly crowded with dark uniforms and crackling radios. My arm circles Maya’s arms and waist, pi
When they order me to let go of her and step away from the bed, I ca
They ask me to put my hands up. I begin to loosen my grip on Maya. No, I’m screaming inside. Don’t leave me, don’t go! You are my love, my life! Without you, I am nothing, I have nothing. If I lose you, I lose everything. I raise my hands very slowly, fighting to keep them in the air, fighting against the overwhelming urge to take Maya back into my arms, kiss her one last time. A female officer cautiously approaches as if Maya were a wild animal, about to take flight, and coaxes her out of the bed. She lets out a small, muffled sob, but I hear her take a deep breath and hold it. Someone wraps a blanket around her. They are trying to usher her from the room.
‘No!’ she screams. Bursting into a sudden volley of broken sobs, she turns frantically back towards me, blood staining her lower lip. Lips that once touched me so gently, lips I know so well, love so much, lips I could never have imagined hurting. But now, with her cut lip and tear-stained face, she looks so shocked and battered that even if she were to lose her resolve and tell the truth, I’m almost confident she would not be believed. Her eyes meet mine, but under the officers’ watchful gaze I’m unable to give her the slightest sign of reassurance. Go, my love, I beg her with my gaze. Follow the plan. Do this. Do this for me.
As she turns, her face crumples and I fight against the urge to cry out her name.
As soon as Maya is out of the way, the two male officers descend upon me. Each grabbing me by an arm, they instruct me to stand up slowly. I do so, tensing every muscle and clenching my teeth in an effort to stop shaking. A thick-set officer with small eyes and a puffy face smirks as I get up from the bed and the sheet falls away and I’m left standing in my boxers. ‘Don’t think we need to frisk this one,’ he chuckles.
I can hear the sound of Maya crying downstairs. ‘What are they going to do to him? What are they going to do to him?’ she keeps shouting.
The reply is repeated over and over by a soothing female voice. ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now. He won’t be able to hurt you again.’
‘Have you got some clothes?’ the other officer asks me. He looks not much older than me. How long has he been in the police force? I wonder. Has he ever been involved in a crime as disgusting as this?
‘In my b-bedroom . . .’
The young officer follows me to my room and watches me get dressed, his radio sputtering into the silence. I feel his eyes on my back, on my body, full of disgust. I can’t seem to find anything clean. For some irrational reason, I feel the need to wear something that’s freshly washed. The only thing to hand is my school uniform. I sense the man’s impatience in the doorway behind me but I am so desperate to cover my body that I can’t even think straight, can’t remember where I keep my things. Finally I pull on a T-shirt and jeans, shoving my bare feet into my trainers before realizing that my T-shirt is inside out.
The bulky officer joins us in the room. They seem far too big for this confined space. I’m painfully aware of my unmade bed, the socks and underwear that litter the carpet. The broken curtain rail, the old chipped desk, the peeling walls. I feel ashamed of it all. I glance at the small family snapshot still tacked to the wall above my bed, and suddenly wish I could take it with me. Something, anything, to remind me of them all.
The older officer asks me some basic questions: name, date of birth, nationality . . . My voice still manages to shake despite all my efforts to keep it steady. The more I try not to stammer, the worse it gets. When my mind goes blank and I can’t even remember my own birthday, they stare me down, as if they think I’m deliberately withholding this information. I strain for the sound of Maya’s voice but can hear nothing. What have they done to her? Where have they taken her?
‘Lochan Whitely,’ the officer states in a flat, mechanical tone. ‘An allegation has been made to the police that you raped your sixteen-year-old sister a short time ago. I am arresting you for breach of Section Twenty-five of the Sexual Offences Act for engaging in sexual activity with a child family member.’
The accusation hits me like a fist in my stomach. This makes me sound like more than a rapist: a paedophile. And Maya, a child? She hasn’t been one for years. And she isn’t below the age of consent! But of course, I realize suddenly, even just two weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday, she is still considered a child in the eyes of the law. At eighteen, however, I am an adult. Thirteen months. Might as well be thirteen years . . . The officer is now reading me my rights. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ His voice is deliberate, heavy with authority; his face a mask – blank, cold, devoid of all expression. But this is not some cop show. This is real. I have committed a real crime.