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‘I can’t wait another whole fortnight—’

‘What if we don’t have to?’ she says suddenly, eyes igniting. ‘We could spend every night together, like yesterday. Once we’re sure Tiff and Wila are asleep, you can come and get into my bed—’

‘Every night? What if one of them walks in? We can’t do that!’ But she has my attention.

‘There’s that rusty bolt at the bottom of my door, remember? We can just lock it! Kit always fals asleep plugged into his headphones. And the other two hardly ever wake up in the night any more.’

I chew on my thumbnail, thinking hard about the risks, desperately torn. I look up into Maya’s bright eyes and remember last night, feeling her smooth naked body beneath my hands for the first time. ‘OK!’ I whisper with a smile.

‘Lochie? Are you better, Lochie? Are you taking us to school tomorrow, Lochie?’ Wila is al concern, climbing onto my lap as I sit sprawled out in front of the TV.

Tiffin’s concern is more casual, but present nonetheless. ‘You got flu or what?’ he asks me in his growing East End accent, blowing the long fair hair out of his eyes. ‘Are you il? You don’t look il. How long are you gonna be il for, anyway?’

With a jolt, I realize that my taking a day off school has thrown them. Previously I’ve gone in with flu and even bronchitis, just because the kids had to be taken in, Kit had to be watched, Social Services had to be kept off our backs, so taking a day off wasn’t usualy an option. I realize too that they associate any kind of ‘serious’ ilness with Mum: Mum colapsing drunk on the doorstep, Mum retching over the toilet bowl, Mum lying passed out on the kitchen floor. They aren’t worried about my supposed headache, they are worried I wil disappear.

‘I’ve never felt better,’ I reassure them truthfuly. ‘My headache’s al gone. Why don’t we al go and play outside together for a bit?’

It is amazing the difference a day off school can make. Usualy, by this time, I am dragged down with exhaustion, snappy and on edge, desperate to get the kids into bed so I can get a moment alone with Maya and a start on homework before I find myself faling asleep at my desk. Today, as the four of us set up a game of British Buldog, I feel almost weightless, as if the Earth’s gravity has dramaticaly decreased. So, as the sun begins to set on the mild March day, I find myself standing in the middle of the empty street, hands on knees, waiting for the three of them to come tearing towards me, hoping to make it to the opposite side without getting caught. Tiffin looks al ready for takeoff, one sneakered foot pressed back against the wal, his arms bent, hands clenched into fists, a look of fierce determination in his eyes. I know that on the first round, I have to give him a run for his money without actualy catching him. Wila is receiving last-minute instructions from Maya who, by the looks of things, is planning diversionary tactics to alow her to run straight across the road without getting caught.

‘Come on!’ Tiffin yels impatiently.

Maya straightens up, Wila hops up and down in excitement and I count down, ‘Three, two, one, go!’

Nobody moves. I galop sideways so that I’m directly facing Wila and she squeals in delighted terror, pressing herself back against the wal like a starfish, as if trying to push herself right through. Then Tiffin is off like a bulet, heading away from me at a sharp angle. Anticipating his move, I race towards him, blocking his trajectory. He hesitates, torn between the humiliation of running back to the safety of the wal and the risk of making a run for it. Boldly, he chooses the latter. I give chase immediately, but he’s surprisingly fast for his size. He makes it to the other side by the skin of his teeth, face glowing pink with exertion, eyes triumphant.

Maya has used this diversion to send Wila on her way. She runs wildly towards Tiffin, so intent on reaching safety she almost launches herself straight into my arms. I take a step back and growl in an attempt to send her off in a different direction. She freezes, a rabbit caught in headlights, her blue eyes huge with the thril of fear. From either side of the street, the other two scream out instructions.

‘Go back, go back!’ Tiffin screeches.

‘Go around him, dodge him!’ Maya yels, confident in the knowledge that I’l only pretend to try and catch her.

Wila makes a move to my right. I lunge for her, my fingers brushing the hood of her coat, and with a squeal she hurls herself towards the wal, head-butting Tiffin in the stomach, who promptly doubles over with a dramatic yel.

Maya is now the only one left, dancing about on the other side of the street, making Tiffin and Wila laugh.

‘Run, just run for it, Maya!’ Tiffin screams helpfuly.

‘Go this way – no this way!’ Wila squeals, pointing wildly in al directions. I flash Maya an evil grin to signal that I have every intention of catching her, and she bites back a smile, a hint of mischief in her eyes. Hands in pockets, I start sauntering towards her. She goes for it. Catching me off guard, she sets off at an acute angle. I match her pace for pace and start laughing in anticipated triumph as we approach the boundary. Then, out of nowhere, she wrong-foots me and goes tearing back the opposite way. I hurl myself after her but it’s no use. She makes it to the other wal, yelping in triumph.

In the next round I catch Tiffin, whose disappointment soon turns to glee as he finds himself in the role of predator. Ruthlessly, he goes straight for Wila and catches her within seconds of her leaving the safety of the wal, sending her flying. Bravely she picks herself up, briefly examines her scraped palms, and then dances about excitedly in the middle of the road, stretching her arms out as if hoping to block our path. As we surge towards her, Maya and I both try so hard to alow her to catch us that we end up coliding and she grabs us both, provoking much hysteria. Maya has just begun her turn when, in the distance, I make out a lone figure trailing down the road towards us, and recognize Kit, dragging himself home dejectedly after an hour spent in detention for swearing at a teacher.

‘Kit, Kit, we’re playing British Buldog!’ Tiffin yels excitedly. ‘Come and join in! Please! Lochie and the girls are al rubbish. I’m ruling this game!’

Kit stops at the gate. ‘You al look like a bunch of retards,’ he announces coldly.

‘Wel, come and liven up the game then,’ I suggest. ‘You know, I could do with some competition. This game is piss easy for a runner like me.’

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’l 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 puls back. Abruptly, he takes off his blazer.

‘Yay!’ Tiffin screams.

‘You can be on our team!’ Wila screams.

‘We don’t have teams, you dumbhead!’ Tiffin yels back.

Soon we are embroiled in yet another round. I am back in the middle and determined to chase Kit into the ground – without actualy catching him, obviously. Typicaly, he is the last to peel himself off the wal after al 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 al my tricks. Only when I am a couple of metres away from him does he finaly move, deliberately making it as difficult for himself as possible. He wrongfoots 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 milimetres 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 colar just as his hands slap the wal. When he turns to face me, his face is aglow with a delight I haven’t seen in him for years.

We play on, wel into the dark. Wila eventualy colapses in exhaustion and goes to sit in the warmth of the halway, watching us and yeling instructions through the open door. Maya is next to join her. I am left with Tiffin and Kit, and suddenly we’re al playing for real. Tiffin’s footbal skils 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. Finaly, in exhaustion, I go for Kit like a demented bul. I catch him inches away from safety but he refuses to surrender, reaching out desperately for the wal and half dragging me along with him. We fal 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 wal.

‘I won, I won!’ Kit yels.

‘No way! You have to touch the wal, you big cheat!’

‘I touched it!’

‘You didn’t!’

‘I touched Tiff’s hand and he’s touching the wal!’

‘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 wal but immediately gets puled down on top of us. ‘Got you both!’ I cry.

‘Cheater, cheater!’ They deafen me with their yels.

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 wal. We finaly peel ourselves off the road, filthy and battered. Kit’s face is streaked with dirt and Tiffin’s shirt colar 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 colapse around the kitchen table with Maya and Wila, feasting on snacks and Nutela 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.

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 al go out to Burger King to celebrate and Wila and I make a delicious, albeit lopsided cake. Mum neglects even to phone. Taking the odd day off school alows 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 finaly gets enough cash from Mum to buy new uniforms and pay some of the overdue bils. 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 al, 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, resentfuly puling out her chequebook to pay the bils 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 stil 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 Wila 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 wil 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 actualy—?’

‘Al 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 al. 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’l get to see him properly at home. Sitting on the low wal 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 folow 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 al 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 actualy stopped and asked me how I was.’

I feel an incredulous smile light up my face.

‘So, you see, he can talk to people.’ Francie lets out a wistful sigh. ‘Maybe I can finaly get him to go out with me.’

I look back up at the steps again with a smile of delight. ‘Oh my God . . .’ Declan is stil there. He seems to be showing Lochan something on his mobile phone. I watch Lochan make a funny gesture in the air and Declan laughs.

Stil reeling with shock, I decide to take the plunge and ask Francie the question I’d been wanting to put to her for some time now.

‘Hey, I’ve been wondering about something . . . Do you – do you think that any two people, if they realy and truly love each other, should be alowed to be together no matter who they are?’ I ask. Francie shoots me a look of amusement, sees that I’m serious, and narrows her eyes in thought.

‘Sure, why not?’

‘What if their religion forbade it? If their parents were devastated or threatened to disown them or something – should they stil go ahead anyway?’

‘Sure,’ Francie answers with a shrug. ‘It’s their lives, so they should be alowed to pick who they like. If the parents are crazy enough to try and stop them from seeing each other, they could run away, elope.’

‘What if it was something even more difficult?’ I ask, thinking hard. ‘What if it was – I dunno – a teacher and a pupil?’

Francie’s eyes widen and she suddenly grabs my arm. ‘No way! Who the hel is it? Mr Eliot?

That guy in the IT department? The one with the tattoo?’

Laughing, I shake my head. ‘Not me, sily! I was just thinking hypotheticaly. Like we were talking about in history, about society having changed so much over the last half-century . . .’

‘Oh.’ Francie’s face fals in disappointment.

I look at her with a snort. ‘Mr Eliot? Are you kidding me? He’s about sixty!’

‘I think he’s kind of sexy!’

I rol my eyes. ‘That’s because you’re crazy. But seriously though. Hypotheticaly . . .’

Francie lets out a laboured sigh. ‘Wel, they should probably wait until the pupil was over the legal age limit for starters—’

‘But what if she was? What if she was sixteen and the guy was in his forties? Should they run away together? Would that be right?’

‘Wel, the guy would lose his job and the girl’s parents would be worried sick, so they’d probably be better off keeping it secret for a few years. Then, by the time the girl was nineteen or so, it wouldn’t even be a big deal any more!’ She shrugs. ‘I think it would be kinda cool to go out with a teacher. Just imagine, sitting in class, you could . . .’

I tune her out and inhale deeply, frustrated. There is nothing, I suddenly realize, nothing that can compare to our situation.

‘So nothing is taboo any more?’ I interrupt. ‘You’re saying there are no two people who, if they love each other enough, should be forced apart?’

Francie thinks for a moment and then shrugs. ‘I guess not. Not here, anyway, thank God. We’re lucky enough to live in a country which is pretty open-minded. As long as one person isn’t forcing the other one, then I guess any love is alowed.’

Any love. Francie isn’t stupid. Yet the one kind of love that wil never be alowed hasn’t even crossed her mind. The one love so disgusting and taboo, it isn’t even included in a conversation about ilicit relationships.

The conversation haunts me over the folowing weeks. Although I have no intention of ever confiding our secret to anyone, I can’t help wondering what Francie’s reaction would be if she somehow found out. She is an inteligent, broad-minded person with a rebelious streak in her. Despite her bold declaration that no love is wrong, I strongly suspect that she would be as horrified as the next person if she knew of my relationship with Lochan. But he’s your brother! I can hear her exclaim. How could you ever do it with your brother? That’s so gross! Oh God, Maya, you’re sick, you’re really sick. You need help. And the strangest thing is that a part of me agrees. Part of me thinks: Yes, if Kit was older and it was with him, then it would be totally gross. The very idea is unthinkable, I don’t even want to imagine it. It actually makes me feel physically sick. But how to get across to the outside world that Lochan and I are siblings only through a biological mishap?

That we were never brother and sister in the real sense, but always partners, having to bring up a real family as we grew up ourselves. How to explain that Lochan has never felt like a brother but like something far, far closer than that – a soul mate, a best friend, part of the very fibre of my being?

How to explain that this situation, the love we feel for one another – everything that to others may seem sick and twisted and disgusting – to us feels completely natural and wonderful and oh – so, so right?

At night, after kissing and cuddling and touching each other, we lie there and talk, late into the night. We talk about anything and everything: how the kids are doing, funny anecdotes from school, how we feel about each other. And ever since I spotted him on the steps having a conversation, we talk about Lochan’s new-found voice. Although he is keen to play it down, he does confess to having made a sort of friend in Declan, who initialy approached Lochan because they both had offers from UCL. Speaking to anyone else is stil something he avoids, but I’m overjoyed. The fact that he has made a connection with one person outside the family means that he can, that there wil be others, and that once he goes to university he wil finaly meet people he has something in common with. And the night Lochan tels me he actualy managed to stand up in front of the whole of his English class and read out one of his essays, I let out a squeal that has to be silenced by a pilow.

‘Why?’ I ask, gasping in delight. ‘How come? What happened? What changed?’

‘I’d been thinking about – about what you said, that I should take one step at a time and that, wel, mainly that you thought I could do it.’

‘What was it like?’ I ask, struggling to keep my voice a whisper, looking into eyes that, even in the half-light, sparkle with a gentle triumph.

‘Horrible.’

‘Oh, Loch!’

‘My hands were trembling and my voice was shaking and the words on the page suddenly turned into this mass of hieroglyphics, but somehow I got through it. And when I finished there were some people – and not just the girls – who actualy clapped.’ He lets out a short exclamation of surprise.

‘Wel, of course they did! Your essays are completely amazing!’ I reply.

‘There was also this guy – a guy caled Tyrese who’s OK – and he came up to me after the bel and said something about the essay. I don’t know what exactly, because I was stil deafened by terror’ – he laughs – ‘but it must have been vaguely complimentary because he slapped me on the back.’

‘See?’ I crow softly. ‘They were inspired by your essay! No wonder your teacher was so keen for you to read one out. Did you say anything back to Tyrese?’

‘I think I said something along the lines of oh-umyeah-uh-cheers.’ Lochan lets out a derisive snort.

I laugh. ‘That’s great! And next time you’l actualy say something a little more coherent!’

Lochan smiles and turns on his side, propping his head up on his hand. ‘You know, recently, even when we’re apart, I sometimes think that maybe I’m going to beat this thing, that one day I might be normal.’

I kiss his nose. ‘You are normal, sily.’

He doesn’t respond but begins pensively rubbing a strand of my hair between his fingers.

‘Sometimes I wonder . . .’ He tails off abruptly, suddenly examining my hair in great detail.

‘Sometimes you wonder . . . ?’ I tilt my head and kiss the corner of his mouth.

‘What – what I’d do without you,’ he finishes in a whisper, gaze studiously avoiding mine.

‘Go to sleep at a reasonable time, in a bed where you can actualy rol over without faling out . . .’

He laughs softly into the night. ‘Oh yeah, an easier life in so many ways. Mum should never have got pregnant again so quickly after me . . .’

His joke tails off uncomfortably and the laughter is sucked up into the darkness as the truth behind his words sinks in.

After a long silence Lochan suddenly says, ‘She certainly wasn’t meant to have children, but, wel, not that I realy believe in fate or anything – but what if we were meant to have each other?’

I don’t respond immediately, not quite sure what he’s getting at.

‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe what seemed like a shitty situation for a bunch of abandoned kids actualy, because of the way it happened, led to something realy special.’

I think about this for a moment. ‘Do you think, if we’d had conventional parents, or just parents, you and I would have falen in love?’

Silence from him now. Moonlight iluminates the side of his face, a silvery-white glow washing across one half, leaving the other in shadow. He has that distant look in his eyes which either means that his mind is on something else, or that he’s giving my tentative question some very serious consideration.

‘I’ve often wondered . . .’ he begins quietly. I wait for him to continue. ‘Many people claim that the abused often go on to abuse, so for most psychologists, our mother’s neglect – which is considered a form of abuse – would be linked directly to our “abnormal” behaviour, which they would interpret as abuse too.’

‘Abuse?’ I exclaim in astonishment. ‘But who would be abusing who? In abuse, there’s an attacker and a victim. How could we be seen as both abusers and abusees?’

The blue-white glow of the moon casts just enough light for me to notice Lochan’s expression turn from pensive to troubled.

‘Maya, come on, think about it. I’d be automaticaly seen as the abuser and you the victim.’

‘Why?’

‘How many cases of younger sisters sexualy abusing older brothers have you read about? Come to think of it, how many female rapists and female paedophiles are there?’

‘But that’s crazy!’ I exclaim. ‘I could have been the one to force you into a sexual relationship!

Not physicaly, but by – I dunno – bribes, blackmail, threats, whatever! Are you saying that even if I’d abused you, people would stil assume I was the victim just because I’m a girl and one year younger?’