‘Would you mind making me a cup of coffee?’ she asks with a tentative smile.
‘Course . . .’ I glance down unseeingly at the envelopes in my hand. ‘Of c-course . . .’
She smiles at me properly this time. ‘I think I might curl up on the couch in front of some crappy daytime TV.’
There is a silence. I flick through some junk mail and take a moment to reply as a pain, like a sliver of glass, slowly pierces the back of my throat.
‘Come and keep me company?’ She is hesitating now, still waiting for my reply.
An invisible noose tightens round my neck. I cannot answer.
‘Lochie?’
I don’t move. If I do, I lose. ‘Hey . . .’ She takes a sudden step towards me and I immediately back up, banging my elbow against the front door.
‘Lochie, I’m all right.’ Slowly she holds up her hands. ‘Look at me, I’m fine. You can see that, can’t you? I just slipped, that’s all. I was tired. Everything’s all right.’
But it’s not, it’s not, because I’m slowly being torn in two. You stand there, covered in cuts and bruises that I might as well have inflicted on you with my own hands. And I love you, so much that it’s killing me, yet all I can do is push you away and hurt you until eventually your love will turn to hate.
The pain wells up in my chest, my breathing starts to fragment and scalding tears force their way into my eyes. Abruptly I crumple up the glossy ads in my hands and lean heavily against the wall, pressing the shiny paper against my face.
There is a moment of shocked silence before I feel Maya by my side, gently pulling at my hands. ‘Don’t, Lochie, it’s all right. Look at me. I’m fine!’
I take an uneven breath. ‘I’m sorry – I’m just so sorry!’
‘Sorry about what, Lochie? I don’t understand!’
‘The idea – last night – it was so awful, it was so stupid—’
‘It doesn’t matter about that now. It’s finished, OK? We know we can’t do it so we’re never going to think about doing anything like that again.’ Her voice is firm, reassuring.
I throw down the paper and bang my head back against the wall, rubbing my arm savagely across my eyes. ‘I didn’t know what else to do! I was desperate – I’m still desperate! I can’t stop feeling like this!’ I am shouting now, frantic. I feel like I’m losing my mind.
‘Listen . . .’ She takes my hands and rubs them in an effort to calm me. ‘I never wanted Nico or anyone else. Just you.’
I look at her, the sound of my breath rough and uneven in the sudden silence. ‘You can have me,’ I whisper shakily. ‘I’m here. I’ll always be here.’
Her face floods with relief as her hands reach for my face. ‘We were stupid – we thought they could stop us.’ She strokes my hair, kisses my forehead, my cheeks, the edge of my lip. ‘They’ll never stop us. Not as long as this is what we both want. But you’ve got to stop thinking it’s wrong, Lochie. That’s just what other people think; it’s their problem, their stupid rules, their prejudices. They’re the ones who are wrong, narrow-minded, cruel . . .’ She kisses my ear, my neck, my mouth.
‘They’re the ones who are wrong,’ she repeats. ‘Because they don’t understand. I don’t care if you happen biologically to be my brother. You’ve never just felt like a brother to me. You’ve always been my best friend, my soul mate, and now I’ve fallen in love with you too. Why is that such a crime? I want to be able to hold you and kiss you and – and do all the things that people in love are allowed to do.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’
I close my eyes and press my hot face against her cheek. ‘We will. We’ll find a way. Maya, we have to . . .’
When I push open her bedroom door with my elbow, a glass of juice in one hand, a sandwich in the other, I find her fast asleep, sprawled out face down on the bed, the duvet kicked back, arms circling her head on the pillow. She looks so vulnerable, so fragile. The bright midday light illuminates the side of her sleeping face, a strip of her crumpled, oversized school shirt, the edge of her white knickers, the top of her thigh. Navigating the discarded skirt, socks and shoes strewn across the carpet, I place the plate and glass beside a stack of papers on her desk and straighten up slowly. I watch her for a long time. After a while my legs begin to ache and I slide down into a sitting position against the wall, arms resting on my knees. I’m afraid that if I leave, even for a moment, something might happen to her again; I’m afraid that if I leave, the black wall of fear will return. But here beside her, the sight of her sleeping face reminds me that nothing else matters, that in this I’m not alone. This is what Maya wants, this is what I want – fighting it is no use, can only hurt us both. The human body needs a constant flow of nourishment, air and love to survive. Without Maya I lose all three; apart we will slowly die.
I must have drifted off, for the sound of her voice sends a jolt through my body and I straighten up, rubbing my neck. She blinks at me sleepily, her cheek resting on the edge of the mattress, russet hair brushing the floor. I don’t know what she said to wake me, but now her arm is outstretched, her palm turned towards me. I take her hand and she smiles.
‘I made you a sandwich,’ I tell her, glancing up at the desk. ‘How are you feeling?’
She doesn’t reply, her eyes drawing me in. The warmth of her hand seeps into mine and her fingers tighten as she pulls me gently towards her. ‘Come here,’ she says in a voice still scratchy with sleep.
I stare back at her, feeling my pulse quicken. She releases my hand and moves back to the far side of the bed, leaving a space for me. I pull off my shoes and socks and stand up unsteadily as she holds out her arms.
As I lower my body onto the mattress beside her, I inhale her smell and feel her legs entwine with mine. She kisses me gently – soft, whispery kisses that make my face tingle and send tremors running through my body, creating instant arousal. I am acutely aware of her bare legs caught between mine – afraid she will feel, afraid she will 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 shallow and rapid.
‘It’s all right,’ she says with a smile in her voice. ‘I love you.’
I open my eyes and lift my head off the pillow and start kissing her back, gently at first, but then she puts her arm round my neck and pulls 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 travelling round beneath my arms to reach my chest, touching my nipples. Small 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 million sensations at once – the heat of her lips, the pressure of her tongue, the taste of her mouth, the smell 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, pulling away yet desperate for her hand to follow, 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 pillow 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
l. 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 all 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 will 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 rolls 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 pull a face to try and disguise my acute discomfort. Does she actually know what happened? Is she disgusted?
She raises her eyebrows and bites back a smile. ‘No kidding!’
She does. Fucking hell.
‘Well, 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 pull her closer so that her hair is in my face. ‘Really?’
‘Really!’
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 all 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 pull 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 technically against the law, I know we have started on a dangerous slippery slope. Where it could eventually land us is both too terrifying and too fantastic to even think about. I try telling 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 . . .
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maya
At the end of the day, it’s all 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 still 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 all the time. I follow 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 will not listen to the ticking time bomb inside my head, will not think of the future, that gaping dark hole in which neither of us can exist, together or apart . . . I refuse to allow my fears for the future to ruin the present. All 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 Willa 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 still tousled from the night, his white shirtsleeves rolled 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 will 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 pull 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 shrill with false cheer. ‘Come here and I’ll do your tie. What d’you fancy for breakfast?’
He still 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 – bec
ause – 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 fills his bowl with muesli.
My heart is hammering. We only heard the door after it had swung open all 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 Willa 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 unusually silent.
Lochan is clearly shaken too. The colour is high in his cheeks and he is gnawing at his lip. He knocks over Willa’s juice and spills 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’ll have forgotten all about it, or if he hasn’t, he’ll realize you’re OK. Everything’s fine.’
I can still 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 all 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 basically whenever we are. And I still 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 all?