‘Lochie needs a plaster,’ Willa announces the following evening to Maya, the family’s first-aider, as she comes through the door looking spent. ‘A big one.’
Maya drops her bag and blazer to the floor and gives a tired smile.
‘Rough day?’ I enquire.
‘Three tests.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘And PE in the hailstorm.’
‘I’m helping Lochie make dinner,’ Willa says proudly, kneeling on a kitchen stool and arranging frozen chips into patterns on the oven tray. ‘Wanna help, Maya?’
‘I think we’re doing pretty good just the two of us,’ I point out quickly as Maya flops into a chair, her tie askew, and pushes the straggly wisps of hair back from her face, blowing me a discreet kiss.
‘Maya, look! I made my name in capital chips!’ Willa pipes up, noting our exchanged looks, anxious to be included.
‘Very clever.’ Maya gets up and lifts Willa onto her lap before settling down with her and leaning over the tray to try and create her own name. I watch them for a moment. Maya’s long arms encircle Willa’s shorter ones. Willa is full of chatter about her day while Maya is the attentive listener, asking all the right questions. Heads bent close, their long straight hair mingles: Maya’s auburn against Willa’s gold. They both have the same delicate, pale skin, the same clear blue gaze, the same smile. On her lap, Willa is solid and alive, full of bubble and laughter. Maya somehow looks more delicate, more fragile, more ethereal. There is a sadness in her eyes, a weariness that never really leaves. For Maya, childhood ended years ago. As she sits with Willa on her lap, I think: Sister and sister. Mother and child.
‘You can do the M like this,’ Willa declares importantly.
‘You’re good at this, Willa,’ Maya tells her. ‘Now, what were you saying about Lochan needing a plaster?’
I realize I have been chopping up the same bunch of spring onions ever since Maya first came in. I have a board full of green and white confetti.
‘Lochie hurt his hand,’ Willa states matter-of-factly, her eyes still narrowed on the chips.
‘With a knife?’ Maya looks up at me sharply, her eyes registering alarm.
‘No, it’s just a graze,’ I reassure her with a dismissive shake of the head and an indulgent smile towards Willa.
Willa turns to look at Maya. ‘He’s lying,’ she stage-whispers conspiratorially.
‘Can I see?’ Maya asks.
I flash her the back of my hand.
She flinches at the sight and instantly moves to get up, but then, anchored to her seat by Willa, is forced to sit down again. She reaches out. ‘Come here.’
‘I don’t want to see it!’ Willa lowers her head towards the tray. ‘It’s all bleeding and sticky. Eek, yuck, gross!’
I let Maya take my hand in hers, just for the pleasure of touching her. ‘It’s nothing.’
She strokes the inside of my hand with her fingers. ‘Jesus, what happened? Surely not a fight—?’
‘Of course not. I just tripped and scraped it against the wall of the playground.’
She gives me a long disbelieving look. ‘We need to clean it properly,’ she insists.
‘I have.’
Ignoring my last comment, she gently slides Willa off her lap. ‘I’m going upstairs to sort Lochie’s hand out,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
In the small confines of the bathroom, I rummage around in the medicine cupboard for the antiseptic. ‘I appreciate the concern, but don’t you think you girls are being a bit paranoid?’
Ignoring me, Maya perches on the edge of the bath and reaches out towards me. ‘It’s only because we love you so much. Come here.’
I oblige, leaning in and closing my eyes for a brief moment, savouring the touch, the taste of her soft lips against mine. Gently she pulls me closer and I turn away, waving the antiseptic bottle aloft. ‘I thought you wanted to play nurse!’
She looks at me with a mixture of uncertainty and surprise, as if trying to gauge whether I’m teasing.
‘Much as I love dabbing up blood, it doesn’t quite match up to grabbing a rare moment to kiss the guy I love.’
I force a laugh. ‘Are you saying you’d rather let me bleed to death?’
She pretends to consider this for a moment. ‘Ah, well, that’s a tough one.’
I start uncapping the bottle. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over and done with.’
Cuffing my wrist gently with her fingers, she draws my hand towards her, inspecting the raw, bloody knuckles, the skin grated back from the wound: a jagged white rectangle surrounding the wet, crimson lacerations. She winces. ‘Christ, Lochan. You did this falling against a wall? It looks like you took a grater to the back of your hand!’
She gently dabs at my savaged knuckles. I take a deep breath and watch her face: her eyes are narrowed in concentration, her touch very gentle. I swallow painfully.
After bandaging it with gauze and putting everything away, she returns to the side of the bath and kisses me again, and as I pull back, rubs my arm with an uncertain smile.
‘Is it really hurting?’
‘No, of course not!’ I exclaim truthfully. ‘I don’t know why you girls get into such a panic at the merest drop of blood. Anyway, thank you, Miss Nightingale.’ I give her a quick kiss on the head, stand up and reach for the door.
‘Hey!’ She reaches out a hand to stop me, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. ‘Don’t you think I deserve a bit more than that for my efforts?’
I pull a face and motion awkwardly towards the door. ‘Willa . . .’
‘She’ll be spaced out in front of the TV now!’
I take a reluctant step forward. ‘OK . . .’
But she stops me before I have time to reach her, hand on my chest, gently holding me at arm’s length. Her expression is quizzical. ‘What’s up with you today?’
I shake my head with a wry smile. ‘I dunno. I think I’m just a bit tired.’
She gives me a long look, rubbing the tip of her tongue against her upper lip. ‘Loch, is everything OK?’
‘Of course!’ I smile brightly. ‘Now, shall we get out of here? This is not exactly the most romantic place!’
I can feel her bewilderment as strongly as if it were my own. Throughout dinner, I keep catching her watching me, her eyes rapidly flicking away as soon as they meet mine. She is distracted, that much is obvious, failing to notice Willa eating with her hands, or Kit openly winding up the little ones by ignoring his meal and eating the Jaffa Cakes meant for dessert. I sense it is better to let them just do what the hell they want rather than object – for fear that if I start, I won’t be able to stop and the cracks will begin to show. I just panicked in the bathroom. I was afraid, too afraid that if I let her get that close she would sense it, realize there was something wrong.
But at night I can’t sleep, my mind plagued with fears. With constant coursework and the day-to-day hassle of living to contend with, added to the fact that we can never, ever show any display of affection in public or even within our own family, the familiar suffocating shackles are tightening still further. Will we ever be free to exist like a normal couple? I wonder. To live together, hold hands in public, kiss on a street corner? Or will we be for ever condemned to lead closet lives, hidden away behind locked doors and drawn curtains? Or worse still, once our siblings are old enough, will we have no choice but to run away and leave them behind?
I keep telling myself to take one day at a time, but how is this really possible? I am about to leave school, start university, and therefore, by default, am forced to contemplate my future. What I’d really like to do is write – for a newspaper or magazine perhaps – but I know that is nothing more than a ridiculous flight of fancy. What matters is money: it’s imperative I aim for a job with a decent starting salary and good earning potential.
For I have little faith that once I’m earning, our mother will continue to support us. By the time I leave uni, Willa will be eight, still requiring a whole decade of financial and practical support. Tiffin will need another seven, Kit another two . . . The years and numbers and calculations blow my mind. I know that Maya will insist on helping too, but I don’t want to have to depend on her, never want her to feel trapped. If she wanted to go on to further study, if she suddenly fancied picking up her childhood dream of being an actress, I could never let the family stand in her way. I could never deny her that right – the right of any human being to choose the life they want to lead.