Forbidden (15 page)

afraid she wil feel, afraid she wil know. I close my eyes and inhale deeply in an effort to keep calm, but she kisses my eyelids and her hair tickles my neck and face and I hear my breathing become shalow and rapid.

‘It’s al right,’ she says with a smile in her voice. ‘I love you.’

I open my eyes and lift my head off the pilow and start kissing her back, gently at first, but then she puts her arm round my neck and puls me closer, and our kisses begin to quicken, growing deeper and more urgent until it’s difficult to find time to breathe. I cradle her head with one arm, clasping her hand with the other. Every kiss is becoming fiercer than the one before until I’m frightened I’m hurting her. I don’t know where to go from here, I don’t know what to do. I press my face into the hot curve of her neck with a strange sound and find myself stroking her breasts, the cotton shirt rough beneath my fingers. I feel her fingertips running up and down my back, beneath my shirt, then traveling round beneath my arms to reach my chest, touching my nipples. Smal electric shocks ricochet though my body. My mouth reaches for hers again and I’m gasping for air and she’s making sounds that make my heart pound harder and harder. I feel swept up in some kind of burning whirl of madness, barraged by a milion sensations at once – the heat of her lips, the pressure of her tongue, the taste of her mouth, the smel of her hair, the feel of her breasts – the buttons of her shirt scratching my palm as I slide my hand down them, the peaks of her ribs abruptly giving way to the soft inward curve of her stomach, the shock of reaching under her shirt and feeling taut, warm skin. Maya has one hand in my hair and the other on my stomach. My muscles convulse in response to her touch, puling away yet desperate for her hand to folow, and I’m acutely aware of her fingers sliding under the top of my trousers, pressing against my stomach, hesitating at the waistband of my boxers; I have to break away from the kiss and press my face into the pilow to stop myself from begging her to keep going. I can’t think of anything any more except for this blind madness; I want to stop myself but I’m unable to hold stil. I want to pretend that it’s an accident, that I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do. My hands claw at the sheet, twisting it into knots as I push myself towards her, rubbing myself against her, imperceptibly at first, in the hope she won’t notice – but soon that too is out of my control as the pace and the pressure increase of their own accord, my crotch against her pelvic bone, the thin, soft material of our clothing al that is left between us. I wish I could feel her bare skin, yet even the feel of her body under her uniform is enough to send me into a whirl of longing and desire. I can hear the sound of my rasping breath, the friction between our two bodies. I know I should stop, I know I must stop now, because if I keep going, if I keep going, I know what wil happen . . . I have to stop, I must, I must . . . Then her mouth finds mine, she kisses me deeply, and a crackling, spitting electric current shoots through my body, sending out red sparks of exquisite elation. And suddenly I’m shuddering hard against her, ecstasy exploding throughout my body like the sun . . . Maya rols onto her side to face me and strokes the hair away from my face, looking startled, a touch of amusement on her lips. As her laughing eyes meet mine, I take a sharp breath and feel a strong wave of embarrassment wash over me.

‘I got – I got a bit carried away.’ I pul a face to try and disguise my acute discomfort. Does she actualy know what happened? Is she disgusted?

She raises her eyebrows and bites back a smile. ‘No kidding!’

She does. Fucking hel.

‘Wel, that’s what happens when you – when you do stuff like that.’ My voice comes out louder than I intended: defensive, shaky, uneven.

‘I know.’ She says quietly. ‘Wow.’

‘I couldn’t – I couldn’t stop.’ My heart is pounding. I feel frantic with embarrassment. She kisses my cheek. ‘Lochie, it’s OK – I didn’t want you to stop!’

Relief floods through me and I pul her closer so that her hair is in my face. ‘Realy?’

‘Realy!’

I close my eyes with relief. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

A long moment passes, then hot spasmodic breaths blow against my cheek: silent laughter.

‘You’ve gone al sleepy!’

I force my eyes open and give an embarrassed laugh. It’s true. I’m wiped out. My eyelids are dragged down by invisible weights and every ounce of energy has evaporated from my body. I have just experienced the most intense few minutes of my life and my whole body feels weak. I shift uncomfortably against the bed and pul an embarrassed face. ‘I think I need a shower . . .’

I can’t stop thinking about it – at night, but during the daytime too. What have we done? What have we done? Even though we never took our clothes off, even though what we did isn’t technicaly against the law, I know we have started on a dangerous slippery slope. Where it could eventualy land us is both too terrifying and too fantastic to even think about. I try teling myself that it was nothing, that I was just trying to comfort her – but even I’m not self-deluded enough to believe my own ridiculous excuse. And now it’s like a drug, and I cannot believe I have managed to live so long, in the daily presence of Maya, without this new level of closeness . . .

At the end of the day, it’s al about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves. I wanted to be strong – wanted to show Lochan that if he could walk away after that first night, then so could I; that if he could distract himself by going out with a girl, then I could do the same with a guy. My mind was set on the idea but the rest of me wouldn’t obey. Rather than go through with our deal, my body chose to take a dangerous tumble down a flight of stairs.

Lochan is stil Lochan, except he’s not. When I look at him, he seems different to me now. My mind keeps flashing back to that afternoon on the bed: the taste of his hot mouth, the brush of his fingertips against my skin. I want to be with him al the time. I folow him from room to room, finding any excuse to be near him, to look at him, to touch him. I want to hold him, stroke him, kiss him, but of course, with the others always around, I can’t. Loving him like this has become a deep physical ache. I am overcome by a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions: on the one hand fizzing with so much adrenaline and excitement I find it difficult to eat, on the other, consumed with terror that Lochan is suddenly going to say we cannot do this because it’s wrong. Or that someone may find out and force us apart. I wil not listen to the ticking time bomb inside my head, wil not think of the future, that gaping dark hole in which neither of us can exist, together or apart . . . I refuse to alow my fears for the future to ruin the present. Al that matters right now is that Lochan is here with me, and that we love each other. I have never felt so happy in my life.

Lochan too seems more alive. The strained look of exhaustion and false cheer is erased from his face. He cracks up at Tiffin’s jokes, tickles Wila and swings her round and round until I beg him to stop. He humours Kit and lets the usual inflammatory remarks go; he has even stopped chewing his lip. And every time his eyes meet mine, his face ignites with a smile.

On Friday morning, two whole weeks after we last held each other on the bed, I come up behind him as he stands alone at the sink with his back to the door, sipping his morning coffee and staring out of the window. His raven hair is stil tousled from the night, his white shirtsleeves roled up to the elbows as usual. The skin on his arms looks so smooth, I long to stroke them. Unable to hold back, I slip my hand into his loose one. He turns to me with a smile of surprise but I recognize a hint of alarm in his eyes, accompanied by another emotion: a longing ache, a painful desperation.

‘The others wil be down in a minute,’ Lochan warns me softly.

I glance at the closed kitchen door, wishing it had a lock. Turning back, I stroke the inside of his palm with my fingertips. ‘I miss you,’ I whisper.

He smiles slightly but his eyes are sad. ‘We just have to – to wait for the right moment, Maya.’

‘There never is a right moment,’ I reply. ‘Between the kids and school and Kit up half the night, we’re never alone.’

He starts on his lip again, turning to stare out of the window. I rest my head against the top of his arm.

‘Don’t!’ he says hoarsely.

‘But I was just—’

‘Don’t you get it? It makes it even harder. It makes it even worse.’ He takes an unsteady breath.

‘I can’t – I can’t bear it when you . . .’

‘When I what?’

He doesn’t reply.

‘Why are you tuning me out?’

‘You don’t understand.’ He turns to me almost angrily, his voice beginning to shake. ‘Seeing you, being with you every day but not being able to do anything – it’s like cancer, it’s like this cancer growing inside my body, inside my mind!’

‘OK. I know. I’m sorry.’ I try to disengage my hand but his fingers tighten round mine.

‘Don’t—’

I lean towards him and hold him tight as he wraps his arms around me. The warmth of his body flows into mine like an electric current. His hot cheek brushes against my face, his lips touch mine then pul away again; his breath is moist and urgent against my neck. I want him to kiss me so much, it hurts.

The door crashes open like the sound of a gunshot. We reel apart. Tiffin stands there, trailing his tie, his shirt untucked. His eyes are wide, flicking from my face to Lochan’s.

‘Wow, first one to be ready!’ My voice comes out shril with false cheer. ‘Come here and I’l do your tie. What d’you fancy for breakfast?’

He stil doesn’t move. ‘What happened?’ he asks at length, his face worried.

‘Nothing!’ Lochan turns from making the coffee and gives him a reassuring smile. ‘Everything’s fine. Now, muesli, toast or both?’

Tiffin ignores Lochan’s attempts at distraction. ‘Why were you cuddling Maya?’ he asks instead.

‘Because – because – Maya was feeling a bit upset about this test she’s got today,’ Lochan replies raggedly. ‘She’s feeling very nervous.’

I nod in agreement, quickly erasing my false smile.

Unconvinced, Tiffin walks slowly over to his chair, forgetting his usual complaints as Lochan fils his bowl with muesli.

My heart is hammering. We only heard the door after it had swung open al the way and hit the corner of the sideboard. Did Tiffin see Lochan kiss my neck – notice my lips brush against his? Tiffin starts eating his muesli without further comment and I know he doesn’t believe our story. I know he senses something isn’t right. It’s almost a relief when Kit and Wila arrive, loud and complaining, one protesting about the breakfast menu, the other about the loss of her sticker album. I glance nervously at Tiffin but he stays unusualy silent.

Lochan is clearly shaken too. The colour is high in his cheeks and he is gnawing at his lip. He knocks over Wila’s juice and spils 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’l have forgotten al about it, or if he hasn’t, he’l realize you’re OK. Everything’s fine.’

I can stil 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 al 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 basicaly whenever we are. And I stil 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 al?

It’s my turn to pick up Tiffin and Wila 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 al out at footbal 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; Wila 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 fel!’ she announces, her eyes lighting up in anticipatory relish as she begins her account of the drama. ‘It was very, very serious. My knee gashed open and there was blood al down my leg and the nurse said we was gonna have to go to hospital to get stitches!’ She glances at Tiffin to make sure she has a captive audience. ‘I hardly cried much at al. Only til the end of break time. The nurse said I was realy brave.’

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

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

‘What d’you mean, the wrong number?’

‘I kept teling her that she had to cal 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 granny or a grandpa who could come and pick me up instead.’

‘Oh God, let me see. Does it stil 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 tel the nurse she has to cal me or Lochie. You say she has to, Wila, OK? She has to!’ I suddenly find myself almost shouting. Wila 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 cal 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 al. What – what on earth made you think that?’

Tiffin continues to fix me with his penetrating stare and I find myself literaly 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 wil be in a few years’ time.

‘You’re lying,’ he says in a low voice. ‘Al 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? Wila is puling at my sleeve, demanding to be played with, the conversation thankfuly 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 teling 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 stil 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 al five of us to carry the tree home from the high street, and Wila gets a pine needle in her eye, and for a few dreadful moments we think we’l have to take her to Casualty, but Lochan finaly manages to remove it. Tiffin and Wila adorn the tree with home-and school-made decorations, and even though the end result is a great lopsided, glittery mess, it cheers us al up tremendously. Even Kit deigns to join in with the preparations, although he spends most of his time trying to prove to Wila that Santa isn’t real. Mum gives us our Christmas money and I go shopping for Wila while Lochan takes care of Tiffin – a system we devised one unfortunate year when I bought Tiffin a pair of footbal 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 til 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. Mum makes an appearance late Christmas morning, when the turkey is already in the oven. She has presents too – mostly second-hand stuff that Dave’s children have grown tired of: Lego and toy cars for Tiffin, despite the fact he stopped playing with such things some time ago, a second copy of Bambi on DVD and a grubby Teletubby for Wila, which she gazes at with a mixture of confusion and horror. Kit gets some old video games that don’t work with his console but that he reckons he can sel at school. I get a dress several sizes too big that looks as if it probably once belonged to Dave’s exwife, and Lochan is the proud new owner of an encyclopaedia, generously adorned with obscene drawings. We al make the appropriate exclamations of joy and surprise, and Mum sits back on the couch, pours herself a large glass of cheap wine, lights up a cigarette and puls Wila and Tiffin onto her lap, her face already flushed with alcohol.

Somehow we survive the day. Dave is spending the occasion with his family, and Mum passes out on the couch just before six. Tiffin and Wila are cajoled into bed early by being alowed to take their presents up with them, and Kit disappears upstairs with his video games to start wheeling and dealing. Lochan offers to clean up the kitchen and, to my shame, I let him do it and colapse into bed, thankful that the day is at an end.