Kit lowers his bag and I see him hesitate, torn between expressing the usual contempt for his family and the desire just to be a kid again.
‘Unless you’re worried I’ll outrun you,’ I say, throwing down the gauntlet.
‘Yeah, right, in your dreams,’ Kit sneers. He turns towards the front door but at the last minute pulls back. Abruptly, he takes off his blazer.
‘Yay!’ Tiffin screams.
‘You can be on our team!’ Willa screams.
‘We don’t have teams, you dumbhead!’ Tiffin yells back.
Soon we are embroiled in yet another round. I am back in the middle and determined to chase Kit into the ground – without actually catching him, obviously. Typically, he is the last to peel himself off the wall after all the others have made it safely to the other side. He waits for what feels like an eternity, clearly trying to test my patience. I start wandering off, turning my back on him, even bending down to tie my shoelace, but he is wise to all my tricks. Only when I am a couple of metres away from him does he finally move, deliberately making it as difficult for himself as possible. He wrong-foots me, legs it sharp right, hesitates as I block him, then begins to back away. He gives me his cocky, mocking smile, but I can see the sharp determination in his eyes. I lunge for him. He dodges me by millimetres and sets off at a blinding sprint. I charge after him, intent on making up the short gap between us. I grab him by his shirt collar just as his hands slap the wall. When he turns to face me, his face is aglow with a delight I haven’t seen in him for years.
We play on, well into the dark. Willa eventually collapses in exhaustion and goes to sit in the warmth of the hallway, watching us and yelling instructions through the open door. Maya is next to join her. I am left with Tiffin and Kit, and suddenly we’re all playing for real. Tiffin’s football skills come in handy, making him impossibly slippery to catch. Kit uses every trick in the book to distract me, and soon the two of them are ganging up on me, using each other as foils, locking me into the role of chaser. Finally, in exhaustion, I go for Kit like a demented bull. I catch him inches away from safety but he refuses to surrender, reaching out desperately for the wall and half dragging me along with him. We fall to the ground and I’m tearing at his shirt to stop him sliding out of my grasp while Tiffin is trying to use himself as a human chain between Kit and the wall.
‘I won, I won!’ Kit yells.
‘No way! You have to touch the wall, you big cheat!’
‘I touched it!’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I touched Tiff’s hand and he’s touching the wall!’
‘That doesn’t count!’
I have Kit pinned to the ground and he screams to Tiffin for help. Tiffin bravely leaves the safety of the wall but immediately gets pulled down on top of us. ‘Got you both!’ I cry.
‘Cheater, cheater!’ They deafen me with their yells.
Soon we can’t move for laughter and exhaustion, Tiffin straddling my back and Kit, shaking with mirth, reaching out for a nearby twig and using that to touch the wall. We finally peel ourselves off the road, filthy and battered. Kit’s face is streaked with dirt and Tiffin’s shirt collar torn as we limp inside, long after dinner time, long after the homework hour. Once the boys have been persuaded to wash their hands, we collapse around the kitchen table with Maya and Willa, feasting on snacks and Nutella straight from the jar.
Kit tries to trip me as I get up to put the kettle on. ‘We should have a rematch,’ he informs me. ‘You need the practice.’
And then he smiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Maya
Over the last few weeks a momentous change seems to have occurred. Suddenly everyone seems so much happier, so much more at ease. Kit starts behaving like a civilized human being. Lochan turns eighteen – we all go out to Burger King to celebrate and Willa and I make a delicious, albeit lopsided cake. Mum neglects even to phone. Taking the odd day off school allows Lochan and me time for us, time to tackle the mountain of things that needed doing long ago: trips to the doctor’s, the dentist’s, the hairdresser’s. Lochan helps Kit fix his bike and finally gets enough cash from Mum to buy new uniforms and pay some of the overdue bills. Together, we clean the house from top to bottom, devise a fresh set of house rules to encourage the kids to take on a few responsibilities of their own, but, most important of all, we make time to do things as a family – to play in the park or sit around the kitchen table with a board game. Now that Lochan and I spend our nights together and skip school whenever things start to get too stressful again, time on our own is no longer so limited, and having fun with the children becomes as important as looking after them.
Mum ‘checks in on us’ from time to time, rarely staying more than a night or two, reluctantly handing us the cash that’s supposed to get us through the week, resentfully pulling out her chequebook to pay the bills that Lochan thrusts at her. A lot of her anger stems from the fact that Lochan and I refuse to leave school and get jobs, but there is a deeper reason there too. She is still forced to support a family she is no longer a part of – has chosen to no longer be a part of. But apart from the financial side of things, none of us expect anything from her any more, so no one is disappointed. Tiffin and Willa cease rushing to greet her, no longer beg for a few minutes of her time. Lochan is already starting to look for a job after his A-levels. At university, he insists, he will be able to work part-time and we won’t have to keep begging Mum for money. As a family, we are now complete.
But I live for the night. Stroking Lochan, feeling every part of him, arousing him with just the touch of my hand, makes me long for more.
‘D’you ever wonder what it would be like?’ I ask him. ‘To actually—?’
‘All the time.’
There is a long silence. He kisses me, his lashes tickling my cheek.
‘Me too,’ I whisper.
‘One day,’ he pants softly as I graze my fingers up his thigh.
‘Yes . . .’
Yet some nights we come so close. I feel the longing ache in my body and sense Lochan’s frustration as keenly as my own. When he kisses me so hard it almost hurts and his body thrums against mine, desperate to go further, I begin to worry that by sharing a bed every night we are tormenting each other. But whenever we talk about it, we always agree we would far, far rather be together like this than go back to our separate rooms and not touch each other at all.
At school, as I gaze up at Lochan sitting alone on the steps at break time and he looks back down at me, the gulf between us seems enormous. We discreetly raise a hand in greeting and I count down the hours until I’ll get to see him properly at home. Sitting on the low wall with Francie at my side, I often lose track of the conversation and sit there daydreaming about him, until one day, to my astonishment, I see that he is not alone.
‘Oh my God, who’s he talking to?’ I cut Francie off mid-sentence.
Her eyes follow my gaze. ‘Looks like Declan, that new guy in the Upper Sixth. His family just moved here from Ireland, I think. Apparently he’s super smart, applying for all these universities . . . You must have seen him around!’
I haven’t, but unlike Francie I don’t spend most of my time ogling every male pupil in the Sixth Form.
‘Jesus!’ I exclaim, astonishment sounding in my voice. ‘Why d’you think they’re talking?’
‘They were having lunch together yesterday,’ Francie informs me.
I turn to stare at her. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. And when I passed Lochan in the corridor the other day, we kind of had a conversation.’ She opens her mouth wide.
‘What?’
‘Yeah! Instead of walking straight past me, pretending he hadn’t seen me, he actually stopped and asked me how I was.’