Forbidden

CHAPTER THREE

Lochan

Our mother looks raddled in the harsh grey morning light. She nurses a mug of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Her bleached hair is a tangled mess, and smudged eyeliner has leaked into black halfmoons beneath her bloodshot eyes. Her pink silk robe is knotted over a skimpy nightdress – her dishevelled appearance a clear sign that Dave did not stay over last night. In fact I don’t even remember hearing them come in. On the rare occasions they come back to this house, there is the bang of the front door, muffled laughter, keys being dropped on the doorstep, loud shushes and more thuds, followed by cackling laughter as he attempts to give her a piggyback up the stairs. The others have learned to sleep through it, but I have always been a light sleeper and their slurred voices force me to acknowledge consciousness, even as I press my eyelids closed and try to ignore the grunts and squeals and the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings from the main bedroom.

Tuesday is Mum’s day off, which means that for once she gets to sort out breakfast and take the little ones to school. But it’s already quarter to eight, Kit has yet to appear, Tiffin is eating breakfast in his underwear and Willa has no clean socks and is bemoaning the fact to anyone who will listen. I fetch Tiffin’s uniform and force him to get dressed at the table since Mum seems unable to do much more than sip coffee and chain-smoke at the window. Maya goes off in search of Willa’s socks and I hear her pound on Kit’s door and yell something about the consequences of getting another late slip. Mum finishes her last cigarette and comes to sit with us at the table, talking about plans for the weekend that I know will never materialize. Both Willa and Tiffin start chatting away at once, delighted by the attention, their breakfast forgotten, and I feel my muscles tense.

‘You’ve gotta be out of the house in five minutes and that breakfast needs to be eaten before then.’

Mum catches me by the wrist as I pass. ‘Lochie-Loch, sit down for a moment. I never get a chance to talk to you. We never sit down like this – as a family.’

With a monumental effort I swallow my frustration. ‘Mum, we’ve got to be at school in fifteen minutes and I have a maths test first thing.’

‘Oh, so serious!’ She pulls me down into the chair beside her and cups my chin in her hand. ‘Look at you, so pale and stressy – always studying. When I was your age I was the most beautiful girl at school – all the guys wanted to go out with me. I used to cut class and spend all day in the park with one of my boyfriends!’ She winks conspiratorially at Tiffin and Willa, who both burst into paroxysms of giggles.

‘Did you kiss your boyfriend on the mouth?’ Tiffin enquires with an evil snicker.

‘Oh yes, and not just on the mouth.’ She winks at me, running her fingers through her tangled hair with a girlish smile.

‘Yuck!’ Willa swings her legs violently under the table, throwing back her head in disgust.

‘Did you lick his tongue,’ Tiffin persists, ‘like they do on TV?’

‘Tiffin!’ I snap. ‘Stop being disgusting and finish your breakfast.’

Tiffin reluctantly picks up his spoon, but his face breaks into a grin as Mum quickly nods her head at him with a mischievous smile.

‘Aargh, that’s gross!’ He starts making gagging noises just as Maya comes in, trying to coax Kit through the doorway.

‘What’s gross?’ she enquires as Kit slinks grumpily into his chair and drops his head to the table with a thud.

‘You don’t want to know,’ I begin quickly, but Tiffin fills her in anyway.

Maya pulls a face. ‘Mum!’

‘Yeah, well, that little story really kick-started my appetite,’ Kit snaps irritably.

‘You’ve got to eat something,’ Maya insists. ‘You’re still growing.’

‘No he’s not, he’s shrinking!’ Tiffin guffaws.

‘Shut up, you little shit.’

‘Loch! Kit called me a little shit!’

‘Sit down, Maya,’ Mum says with a gooey smile. ‘Ah, look at all of you, so smart in your uniforms. And here we are having breakfast all together as a family!’

Maya gives her a tight smile as she butters toast and places it on Kit’s plate. I feel my pulse begin to rise. I can’t leave until they’re all ready or there’s a good chance that Kit will cut school again and Mum will keep Tiffin and Willa at home until mid-morning. And I can’t be late. Not because of the test . . . because I can’t be the last one to walk into the classroom.

‘We’ve got to go,’ I inform Maya, who is still trying to persuade breakfast into Kit as he remains slumped with his head on his arms.

‘Oh, why are my bunnies in such a rush this morning!’ Mum exclaims. ‘Maya, will you get your brother to relax? Look at him . . .’ She rubs my shoulder, her hand like a burn through the fabric of my shirt. ‘So tense.’

‘Loch’s got a test and we really are going to be late if we don’t make a move,’ Maya informs her gently.

Mum still has her other hand clenched tightly round my wrist, preventing me from getting up to grab my usual cup of coffee. ‘You’re not honestly nervous about a stupid test, are you, Loch? Because there are far more important things in life, you know. The last thing you want to do is turn into a nerd like your father, nose always buried in a book, living like a tramp just to get one of those useless PhD thingies. And look where his posh Cambridge education got him – a flipping poet, for chrissakes! He’d have earned more money sweeping the streets!’ She gives a derisive snort.

Raising his head suddenly, Kit asks sneeringly, ‘When’s Lochan ever failed a test? He’s just afraid of coming in late and—’

Maya threatens to stuff the toast down his throat. I disengage myself from Mum’s clasp and rattle through the front room, collecting blazer, wallet, keys, bag. I bump into Maya in the hallway and she tells me to go ahead, she’ll make sure Mum leaves on time with the little ones and Kit gets to school. I squeeze her arm in thanks and then I’m off, running down the empty street.

I reach school with seconds to spare. The huge concrete building rises up before me, spreading its tentacles outwards, sucking in the other ugly, smaller blocks with barren walkways and endless tunnels. I make it to the maths room just before the teacher shuffles in and starts handing out the papers. After my half-mile sprint I can hardly see – red blotches pulsate before my eyes. Mr Morris stops by my desk and my breath catches in my throat.

‘Are you all right, Lochan? You look as if you’ve just run a marathon.’

I nod quickly and take the paper from him without looking up.

The test begins and silence descends. I love tests. I have always loved tests, exams of any kind. As long as they are written. As long as they take up the whole lesson. As long as I don’t have to speak or look up from my paper until the bell goes.

I don’t know when it started – this thing – but it’s growing, muffling me, suffocating me like poison ivy. I grew into it. It grew into me. We blurred at the edges, became an amorphous, seeping, crawling thing. Sometimes I manage to distract myself, trick myself out of dwelling on it, convince myself that I’m OK. At home, for instance, with my family, I can be myself, be normal again. Until last night. Until the inevitable happened; until news finally filtered down the Belmont grapevine that Lochan Whitely was a socially inept weirdo. Even though Kit and I never really got along, the realization that he is ashamed of me takes hold: a horrible, clutching, sinking feeling in my chest. Just thinking about it makes the floor tilt beneath my chair. I feel as if I am on a slippery slope and all I can do is plummet downwards. I know all about being ashamed of a family member – the number of times I’ve wished my mother would act her age in public, if not in private. It’s horrible, being ashamed of someone you care about; it eats away at you. And if you let it get to you, if you give up the fight and surrender, eventually that shame turns to hate.

I don’t want Kit to be ashamed of me. I don’t want him to hate me, even if I feel like I hate him sometimes. But that little messed-up kid full of anger and resentment is still my brother; he’s still family. Family: the most important thing of all. My siblings may drive me crazy at times but they are my blood. They’re all I’ve known. My family is me. They are my life. Without them I walk the planet alone.

The rest are all outsiders, strangers. They never metamorphose into friends. And even if they did, even if I found, by some miracle, a way of connecting to someone outside my family – how could they possibly compare to those who speak my language and know who I am without having to be told? Even if I were able to meet their eyes, even if I were able to speak without the words cluttering up my throat, unable to surface, even if their gaze didn’t burn holes in my skin and make me want to run a million miles, how would I ever be able to care about them the way I care about my brothers and sisters?

The bell goes and I am one of the first out of my seat. As I pass the rows and rows of pupils, they all seem to look up at me. I see myself configured in their eyes: the guy who always buries himself at the very back of every class, who never speaks, always sits alone in one of the outdoor stairwells during break, hunched over a book. The guy who doesn’t know how to talk to people, who shakes his head when picked on in class, who is absent whenever there is some kind of presentation to do. Over the years they have learned just to let me be. When I first arrived here, there was plenty of ribbing, plenty of pushing around, but eventually they grew bored. Occasionally a new pupil has tried to strike up a conversation. And I’ve tried, I really have. But when you can only come up with one-word answers, when your voice fails you altogether, what more can you do? What more can they? The girls are the worst, especially these days. They try harder, are more tenacious. Some even ask me why I never speak – as if I can answer that. They flirt, try and get me to smile. They mean well, but what they don’t understand is that their mere presence makes me want to die.

But today, mercifully, I am left alone. I speak to no one for the whole morning. I catch sight of Maya across the lunch hall, and she glances at the usual girl gabbing away at her side and then rolls her eyes. I smile. As I fork my way through mouthfuls of watery shepherd’s pie, I watch her pretend to listen to her friend, Francie, but she keeps glancing over at me, pulling faces to crack me up. Her white school shirt, several sizes too big, hangs over her grey skirt, several inches too short. She is wearing her white PE lace-ups because she has misplaced her school shoes. She is without socks, and a large plaster, surrounded by a multitude of bruises, covers a scraped knee. Her auburn hair reaches her waist, long and straight like Willa’s. Freckles smatter her cheekbones, accentuating the natural pallor of her skin. Even when she is serious, her deep blue eyes always hold a glimmer that suggests she is about to smile. Over the last year she has turned from pretty to beautiful in an unusual, delicate, unnerving way. Boys chat her up endlessly – alarmingly.

After lunch I take my class copy of Romeo and Juliet, which I actually read years ago, and ensconce myself on the fourth step down of the north stairwell outside the science block, the one least frequently used. This is how my wasted hours accumulate, much like my loneliness. I keep my book open in case anyone approaches, but I’m not really in the mood to read it again. Instead, from my concrete post, I watch a plane trace a white slash across the deep blue of the sky. I look at the tiny aircraft, shrunk down by distance, and marvel at the vast expanse between all those people on that huge crowded plane, and me.