Forbidden (28 page)

‘Would you answer the question!’ The temperature is rising. He thinks I’m staling in order to try to exonerate myself, when in reality it’s the opposite.

‘I – I’m not sure of the exact date. It m-must have been November sometime. Y-yes, November—’ Or was it October? Oh God, I am messing this al up already.

‘Tel me what happened.’

‘OK. She – she came home from a date with a guy from school. We – we got into an argument because I was giving her the third degree. I was worried – I mean, angry – I wanted to know if she’d slept with him. I got upset—’

‘What do you mean by upset?’

No. Please.

‘I started—I began to cry . . .’ Like I’m going to do now, just at the memory of the pain I felt on that night. Turning my head towards the wal, I bite down hard, but the pain of my teeth cutting into my tongue doesn’t work any longer. No amount of physical pain can cover up the mental agony. Five minutes into the interrogation and already I’m faling apart. It’s hopeless, everything’s hopeless, I’m hopeless, I’m going to fail Maya, fail them al.

‘Then what happened?’

I try every trick in the book to keep the tears at bay, but nothing works. The pressure mounts, and I see from Sutton’s expression that he thinks I am staling for time, pretending to feel remorse, lying.

‘Then what happened?’ This time, his voice is raised.

I flinch. ‘I said to her – I tried to – I said she had to – I forced her to—’

I can’t get the words out, even though I’m desperate to, wishing I could scream them from the rooftops. It’s like being forced up in front of the class again, the words clogging up my throat, my face burning with shame. Except this time I’m not being asked to read out an essay, I’m being interrogated about the most intimate and personal details of my life, al those tender moments spent with Maya, al those precious times that have made the last three months the happiest I’ve ever known. Yet now they are being smeared across our family like the faeces in the cel – putrid, foul, horrific abuse, myself as perpetrator, forcing my younger sister into revolting sexual acts against her wil.

‘Lochan, I strongly suggest you stop wasting our time and start to co-operate. As I’m sure you’re aware, in the UK, the maximum sentence for rape is life imprisonment. Now, if you co-operate and show remorse for what you’ve done, that sentence wil almost certainly be reduced, perhaps even to as little as seven years. But if you lie or try to deny anything, we wil find out anyway and a judge wil be far less lenient.’

Again I try to answer, again I fail. I see myself through their eyes – the sick, screwed-up, pathetic sex addict, reduced to abusing a younger sister he once played with, his own flesh and blood.

‘Lochan . . .’ The female detective is leaning towards me, clasped hands stretched out across the table. ‘I can see you feel bad about what happened. And that’s good. It means you’re beginning to take responsibility for your actions. Perhaps you didn’t realy believe that having a sexual relationship with your sister would harm her, perhaps you never meant it when you threatened to kil her, but you need to tell us exactly what happened, exactly what you did, what you said. If you try to gloss over things or leave things out or stal or lie, then things are going to get much, much worse for you.’

Taking a deep breath, I nod, trying hard to show them that I’m wiling to co-operate, that they don’t have to keep up this Good Cop, Bad Cop charade in order for me to confess. Al I need is the strength to pul myself together, hold back the tears and find the right words to describe al the things I forced Maya to do to me, al the things I forced her to endure.

‘Lochan, do you have a nickname?’

Detective Kaye is stil doing her paly stuff, where she pretends to comfort and befriend me in the hope that I wil trust her enough to relax, calm down, believe she is trying to actualy help rather than to extract a confession.

‘Loch—’ I blurt. ‘Lochie—’ No, oh no. Only my family cal me that. Only my family!

‘Lochie, listen to me now. If you co-operate with us today, if you tel us everything that happened, it wil make a big difference to the outcome of al this. We’re al human. We al make mistakes, right?

You’re only eighteen, I’m sure you didn’t realize the severity of what you were doing, and a judge wil take that into consideration.’

Yeah, right. How stupid do you think I am? I’m eighteen and I’ll be tried as an adult. Save your manipulating lies for the ones who are really trying to conceal their actions. I nod and dry my eyes on my sleeve. Tearing at my hair with cuffed hands raised above my head, I begin to talk.

The lies are the easy part – forcing Maya to stay off school, getting into bed with her every night, repeating the same threat, again and again, whenever she begged me to leave her alone. It’s when I have to tel them the truth that I flounder – it’s our truth, our innermost secrets, our most intimate times, the precious little details of our brief, idylic moments together. Those are the parts that make me stammer and shake. But I force myself to continue, even when I can’t hold back the tears any longer, even when they start spiling down my cheeks and my voice starts to shake with repressed sobs, even when I feel their looks of revulsion merge with ones of pity.

They want to know every little detail. The time on the bed, our first night together. What I did, what she did, what I said, what she said. How I felt . . . How I responded . . . How my body responded . . . I tel them the truth, and someone reaches into my chest and slowly starts splitting me apart. When we finaly reach this morning’s events, when it comes to what they refer to as

‘penetration’, I want to die to stop the pain. They ask me if I used protection, they ask me if Maya cried out, they ask me how long it lasted . . . It hurts so much, feels so utterly humiliating, so completely degrading, that I feel sick.

The interrogation seems to go on for hours. It feels like the middle of the night and we have been shut up in this tiny, airless room for al eternity. They take turns popping out for coffee or snacks. They offer me water, which I decline. Eventualy I am so wrung out that al I can do is suck on my middle two fingers like I used to as a smal child and slump sideways against the wal, my voice completely hoarse, face sticky with congealed sweat and tears. Through a thick haze, I hear them inform me that I wil be escorted back to my cel and that the interview wil continue tomorrow. The tape is switched off, another officer comes to colect me, but for a few moments I can’t even get to my feet. Detective Sutton – who, for the most part, has remained cold and impassive – sighs and shakes his head with a look bordering on pity. ‘You know, Lochan, I’ve been in this job for years and I can tel that you’re feeling remorse for what you’ve done. But I’m afraid it’s al rather too late. Not only are you charged with committing a very serious crime, but your threats appear to have left your sister so terrified, she has signed a statement swearing that your sexual relationship together was fuly consensual and instigated by her.’

Al the air exits my body. My exhaustion evaporates. Suddenly only the thudding of my horrified heartbeat fils the air. She told them the truth? She told them the truth?

‘A signed statement – but that’s void now, right? Now that I’ve admitted everything, told you exactly what happened. You know she only said those things because I told her to, because I said I’d have her kiled if I ended up in prison. So no one believes her, do they? Not now I’ve confessed!’ My cracked, dried-up voice is shaking hard, but I must stay calm. Showing remorse is one thing, but I have to somehow disguise the extent of my horror and disbelief.

‘That’l depend on how the judge sees it.’

‘The judge?’ I’m shouting now, my voice verging on hysteria. ‘But Maya’s not the one being accused of rape!’

‘No, but even consensual incest is against the law. Under Section Sixty-five of the Sexual Offences Act, your sister could be tried for “consent to being penetrated by an adult relative”, which carries a sentence of up to two years in prison.’

I stare at him. Speechless. Stunned. It cannot be. It cannot be.

The detective sighs and tosses the file back onto the table in a sudden gesture of weariness. ‘So unless she retracts her statement, your sister now faces arrest too.’

Why? Maya, my love? Why, why, why?

Colapsed on the floor, half propped up against the metal door, I stare blindly at the opposite wal. My whole body hurts from lying completely motionless for what must be several hours now. I no longer have the strength to continue banging my head back against the door in a desperate, frenzied attempt to think of a way of somehow getting Maya to retract her statement. After shouting over and over, pleading with the guards to let me cal home, I eventualy lose my voice completely. Maya and I wil never be alowed to contact each other again – at least not until I’ve served out my sentence which, according to that interrogation officer, could be over a decade from now!

My mind is faling apart and I can barely think, but as far as I understand it, the fact is that unless Maya retracts her statement, she wil be arrested just as I was, possibly even in front of Tiffin and Wila. With no one to look after them, no one to cover for our mother’s drinking and neglect, al three children wil doubtlessly be taken into care. And Maya wil be brought to the police station, subjected to the same humiliations, the same interrogations, and accused, just as I was, of committing a sexual crime. Even with my word against hers, there wil be little I can do. If I continue to insist I am the abuser, they wil immediately question why I am suddenly so desperate to absolve Maya of al wrongdoing – especialy after having both repeatedly abused and threatened to kil her should she tel anyone. I wil be cornered, powerless to protect her, for the more I insist that Maya is innocent and I am the guilty one, the more likely they wil be to believe Maya’s confession. It won’t take them long to figure out that I’m taking the blame to protect her, that I’m lying because I love her and that I would never abuse, threaten or harm her in any way. And of course there’s Kit – the only real witness. Even Tiffin and Wila, if they are questioned, wil insist that never once did Maya ever appear afraid of me –

that she was always smiling at me, laughing with me, touching my hand, even hugging me. And so they wil realize that Maya is as complicit in this crime as I am.

Whatever I try to do now is hopeless, especialy as any attempts to catch Maya out wil fail as she wil be the one teling the truth. She’l easily be able to explain away the blow to her lip as my last, desperate attempt to make it look as if I was abusing her.

Maya wil be brought to court and sentenced to two years in prison. She wil start off her adult life behind bars, separated not only from me, but from Kit, Tiffin and Wila, who love her so much. Even after serving out her prison sentence, she wil emerge emotionaly scarred, and stuck with a criminal record for the rest of her life. Denied al access to her other siblings for her crime, she wil find herself utterly alone in the world, ostracized by her friends, while I remain locked up, serving out a considerably longer sentence because I’l have been tried as an adult. The thought of al this is, quite simply, more than I can bear. And I know that, unless I can somehow get through to her, the stubborn, passionate Maya who loves me so much wil not capitulate. She has made her choice. How I wish I could tel her I would rather be locked away for life than put her through any of that . . . No use sitting here faling apart. None of this can happen. I will not let it. Yet despite thinking and thinking for hours on end, lashing out sporadicaly against the cold concrete around me in utter frustration, I cannot come up with any way to get Maya to change her mind. I’m beginning to realize that nothing wil make Maya retract her statement and accuse me of rape. She’l have had time now to realize that, by doing so, she wil send me to prison. If I’d run, as she initialy suggested, if by some miracle I’d managed to avoid getting caught, she would have lied in a heartbeat for the sake of the children. But knowing that I am sitting here, locked in a prison cel, the rest of my life dependent on her accusation or confession, she wil never capitulate. I realize this now with earth-shattering certainty. She loves me too much. She loves me too much. I so wanted her love, al of it. I got my wish . . . and now we are both paying the price. How stupid I was to ever ask her to do this, I realize, to expect her to sacrifice my freedom for hers. My happiness meant everything to her, as much as hers did to me. Had the situation been reversed, would I have even considered falsely accusing Maya in order to avoid a punishment of my own?

Yet stil the regret gnaws away at me. If I’d run when I had the chance, if I’d left and somehow escaped arrest, Maya would not have confessed. Nothing would have been gained by teling the truth, it would have only hurt the children. She would have never confessed if I hadn’t been caught . . . My gaze travels slowly up the wal to the smal window in the corner, just below the ceiling. And suddenly the answer is right there in front of me. If I want Maya to retract her confession, then I must not be here to receive a sentence, I must not be trapped in a cel facing jail time. I must leave. Unpicking the threads of the sheet sewn onto the mattress soon causes my hands to stiffen and my fingers to go numb. I keep track of the time between guard checks, counting rhythmicaly to myself beneath my breath as I carefuly, methodicaly, sever the seams. Whoever designed these cels has done a good job of ensuring their security. The smal window is so high off the ground it would require a three-metre ladder to reach it. It is also barred, of course, but the bars stick out at the top. With an accurate throw, I feel confident that I can lasso a loop over the spiked bars so that the knotted strips of torn sheet hang down just low enough for me to reach, like those ropes we used to climb in PE. I was good at that, I remember, always the first to the top. If I can achieve a similar result this time, I wil reach the window, that smal patch of sunlight, my gateway to freedom. It’s a crazy plan, I know. A desperate one. But I am desperate. There are no options left. I have to go. I have to disappear.