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‘No, Lochie, no! Please! Let me go downstairs and explain. It looks so much worse like this!’

I need it to look worse. I need it to look as bad as it can. From now on I have to think like a rapist, act like a rapist. Prove I’ve been holding Maya against her wil. Sounds of slamming car doors rise from the street below. Mum’s hysterical voice starts up again. The front door bangs. Heavy treads in the halway. Maya screws up her eyes and clings to me, sobbing silently.

‘It’l be al right,’ I whisper desperately in her ear. ‘This is just protocol. They’l only arrest me so they can question me. When you tel them you don’t want to press charges, they’l just let me go.’

I hold her tight, stroking her hair, hoping that one day she’l understand, that one day she’l forgive me for lying. Careful not to think, careful not to panic, careful not to waver. Loud voices from below, Mum’s mainly. The sound of multiple footsteps on the stairs.

‘Let go of me,’ I whisper urgently.

She doesn’t respond, stil pressed up against me, her head buried against my shoulder, arms wound tightly around my neck.

‘Maya, let go of me, now!’ I try to unhook her arms. She won’t let go. She won’t let go!

The thuds against the door make us both start violently. The noise is folowed by a sharp, authoritative voice: ‘This is the police. Open the door.’

I’m sorry, but I’ve just raped my sister and am holding her here against her will. I cannot be so obliging.

They give me a warning. Then the first strike is heard. Maya lets out a terrified scream. She stil won’t let go of me. It’s vital I turn her round so that when they get in, they find me grasping her with her back to me, arms pinned by her sides. Another crack. The wood around the bolt splinters. Just one more strike and they wil be in.

I push Maya away from me with al my strength. I look into her eyes – her beautiful blue eyes –

and feel the tears surge. ‘I love you,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so sorry!’ Then I raise my right hand and strike her hard across the face.

Her scream fils the room seconds before the lock breaks and the door crashes open. The doorway is suddenly crowded with dark uniforms and crackling radios. My arm circles Maya’s arms and waist, pinning her back against me. Beneath the hand clapped over her mouth, I feel a reassuring trickle of blood.

When they order me to let go of her and step away from the bed, I cannot move. I need to cooperate, but physicaly I can’t. I am frozen in fear. I am terrified that if I uncover Maya’s mouth, she wil start to tel them the truth. I’m terrified that once they take Maya away, I wil never see her again. They ask me to put my hands up. I begin to loosen my grip on Maya. No, I’m screaming inside. Don’t leave me, don’t go! You are my love, my life! Without you, I am nothing, I have nothing. If I lose you, I lose everything. I raise my hands very slowly, fighting to keep them in the air, fighting against the overwhelming urge to take Maya back into my arms, kiss her one last time. A female officer cautiously approaches as if Maya were a wild animal, about to take flight, and coaxes her out of the bed. She lets out a smal, muffled sob, but I hear her take a deep breath and hold it. Someone wraps a blanket around her. They are trying to usher her from the room.

‘No!’ she screams. Bursting into a sudden voley of broken sobs, she turns franticaly back towards me, blood staining her lower lip. Lips that once touched me so gently, lips I know so wel, love so much, lips I could never have imagined hurting. But now, with her cut lip and tear-stained face, she looks so shocked and battered that even if she were to lose her resolve and tel the truth, I’m almost confident she would not be believed. Her eyes meet mine, but under the officers’ watchful gaze I’m unable to give her the slightest sign of reassurance. Go, my love, I beg her with my gaze. Follow the plan. Do this. Do this for me.

As she turns, her face crumples and I fight against the urge to cry out her name. As soon as Maya is out of the way, the two male officers descend upon me. Each grabbing me by an arm, they instruct me to stand up slowly. I do so, tensing every muscle and clenching my teeth in an effort to stop shaking. A thick-set officer with smal eyes and a puffy face smirks as I get up from the bed and the sheet fals away and I’m left standing in my boxers. ‘Don’t think we need to frisk this one,’ he chuckles.

I can hear the sound of Maya crying downstairs. ‘What are they going to do to him? What are they going to do to him?’ she keeps shouting.

The reply is repeated over and over by a soothing female voice. ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now. He won’t be able to hurt you again.’

‘Have you got some clothes?’ the other officer asks me. He looks not much older than me. How long has he been in the police force? I wonder. Has he ever been involved in a crime as disgusting as this?

‘In my b-bedroom . . .’

The young officer folows me to my room and watches me get dressed, his radio sputtering into the silence. I feel his eyes on my back, on my body, ful of disgust. I can’t seem to find anything clean. For some irrational reason, I feel the need to wear something that’s freshly washed. The only thing to hand is my school uniform. I sense the man’s impatience in the doorway behind me but I am so desperate to cover my body that I can’t even think straight, can’t remember where I keep my things. Finaly I pul on a T-shirt and jeans, shoving my bare feet into my trainers before realizing that my Tshirt is inside out. The bulky officer joins us in the room. They seem far too big for this confined space. I’m painfuly aware of my unmade bed, the socks and underwear that litter the carpet. The broken curtain rail, the old chipped desk, the peeling wals. I feel ashamed of it al. I glance at the smal family snapshot stil tacked to the wal above my bed, and suddenly wish I could take it with me. Something, anything, to remind me of them al.

The older officer asks me some basic questions: name, date of birth, nationality . . . My voice stil manages to shake despite al my efforts to keep it steady. The more I try not to stammer, the worse it gets. When my mind goes blank and I can’t even remember my own birthday, they stare me down, as if they think I’m deliberately withholding this information. I strain for the sound of Maya’s voice but can hear nothing. What have they done to her? Where have they taken her?

‘Lochan Whitely,’ the officer states in a flat, mechanical tone. ‘An alegation has been made to the police that you raped your sixteen-year-old sister a short time ago. I am arresting you for breach of Section Twenty-five of the Sexual Offences Act for engaging in sexual activity with a child family member.’

The accusation hits me like a fist in my stomach. This makes me sound like more than a rapist: a paedophile. And Maya, a child? She hasn’t been one for years. And she isn’t below the age of consent! But of course, I realize suddenly, even just two weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday, she is stil considered a child in the eyes of the law. At eighteen, however, I am an adult. Thirteen months. Might as wel be thirteen years . . . The officer is now reading me my rights. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ His voice is deliberate, heavy with authority; his face a mask – blank, cold, devoid of al expression. But this is not some cop show. This is real. I have committed a real crime.

The young officer informs me they wil now take me outside to the ‘transport vehicle’. The corridor is too narrow for the three of us. The big officer leads the way, his tread heavy and slow. The other grips me tightly just above the elbow. I’ve been able to hide the fear until now, but as we approach the staircase, I suddenly feel a surge of panic begin to rise. Stupidly, it’s triggered by nothing more than the need to pee. But suddenly I realize I’m desperate to go and have no idea when I’m next going to get the chance. After hours of questioning, locked up in some cel, in front of a whole bunch of other prisoners? I stumble to a halt at the top of the stairs.

‘Keep moving!’ I feel the press of a firm hand between my shoulder blades.

‘Can I – can I please just use the bathroom before I go?’ My voice comes out frightened and frantic. I feel my face burn, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back. I sound pathetic.

They exchange glances. The thick-set man sighs and nods. They let me into the bathroom. The younger officer stays in the open doorway.

The cuffs don’t make it easy. I feel the man’s presence fil the smal room. Shuffling round so I have my back to him, I struggle to unbutton my jeans. Sweat prickles across my neck and down my back, trapping the T-shirt against my skin. The muscles in my knees seem to vibrate. I close my eyes and try to relax, but I need to go so badly it’s impossible. I can’t. I just can’t. Not like this.

‘We haven’t got al day.’ The voice behind me makes me flinch. I button up and flush the empty toilet. Turning round, I’m too embarrassed to even raise my head.

As we jolt and shuffle our way down the narrow stairs, the young officer says in a gentler tone,

‘The station’s not far. You’l have some privacy there.’

His words throw me. A smal hint of kindness, a note of reassurance, despite the terrible thing I’ve done. I feel my façade begin to slip. Breathing deeply, I bite my lip hard. Just in case Maya sees me, it’s imperative I make it out of the house without faling apart.

Voices rise and fal from the kitchen. The door is firmly shut. So that’s where they’ve taken her. I hope to God they are stil treating her as the victim, comforting her rather than bombarding her with questions. I have to grit my teeth, clench every muscle in my body to prevent myself from running to her, hugging her, kissing her one last time.

I notice a pink skipping rope hanging over the banisters. A single Jely Baby from last night remains on the carpet. Smal shoes are scattered over the rack by the front door. Wila’s white sandals, and the lace-up trainers she has finaly learned to tie – al so tiny. Tiffin’s scuffed school shoes, his much-prized footbal boots, his gloves and ‘lucky’ bal. Above them their school blazers hang discarded, empty, like ghosts of their real selves. I want them back, I want my children back. I miss them, the pain like a hole in my heart. They were so excited to go that I didn’t even have time to hug them. I never got to say goodbye.

Just as I am being jolted past the open door of the front room, a movement catches my eye and makes me stop. I turn my head towards a figure in the armchair and, to my astonishment, find Kit. He is sitting, white-faced and immobile, beside a woman police officer, his carefuly packed Isle of Wight bags lying carelessly discarded at his feet. As he slowly turns towards me, I stare at him, uncomprehending. I am pushed from behind, told to ‘move it’. I stumble against the door-frame, my eyes begging Kit for some kind of explanation.

‘Why are you here?’ I can’t believe he is witnessing this. I can’t believe they somehow got hold of him before he left, involving him too. He’s only thirteen, for chrissakes! I want to scream. He should be on the trip of his life, not watching his brother being arrested for sexualy abusing his sister. I want to kick at them in fury, force them to let him go.

His eyes leave my face, traveling down to the cuffs circling my wrists, then to the police officers trying to drag me away. His face is white, stricken.

‘You told him!’ he shouts suddenly, making me jump.

I stare at him, stunned. ‘What?’

‘Coach Wilson! You told him about the heights thing!’ Suddenly he is screaming at me, his face distorted with fury. ‘As soon as I got to school, he took me off the abseiling list in front of the whole class! Everyone laughed at me, even my friends! You ruined what was going to be the best week of my life!’

Forcing myself to keep breathing, I feel my heart start to pound. ‘It was you?’ I gasp. ‘You knew? About Maya and me? You knew?’

He nods wordlessly.

‘Mr Whitely, you need to come with us right now!’

The comment about Maya and me being left home alone, the sound of the door while we were kissing in the kitchen . . . Why on earth didn’t he confront us? Why wait until now before teling?

Because he didn’t want to be taken into care. Because he never intended to tel. For some strange reason I am desperate for him to know I never asked him to be taken off the abseiling list, never dreamed he might be humiliated in front of his friends, never meant to ruin his first ever trip, the most exciting day of his life. But the officers are shouting at me, pushing me out of the front door with considerable force now, banging my shoulders against the wals, dragging me towards the waiting police car. I twist and turn my head, franticaly trying to cal back to him over my shoulder. The neighbours have come out in ful force, congregating en masse around the waiting police car, watching with fascination as I am pushed down into the back seat. The belt is drawn across me and the door beside me slams. The large officer gets into the front, his radio stil crepitating, the younger one gets into the back, beside me. The neighbours are closing in now like a slow wave, leaning, peering, pointing, their mouths opening and closing with silent questions. Suddenly there is a violent thud against the door at my side. I whip my head round in time to see Kit, pummeling franticaly at the window.

‘I’m sorry!’ he screams, the sound heavily muffled by the reinforced glass. ‘Lochie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t think about what would happen – I never thought she’d cal the police!’ He is crying hard, in a way he hasn’t done for years, tears lashing his cheeks. His body convulses with violent sobs as he punches at the window in a frenzied bid to free me. ‘Come back!’ he screams.

‘Come back!’

I wrestle with the locked door, desperate to tel him it’s OK, that I wil be back soon – even though I am wel aware this isn’t true. More than anything though, I want to tel him it’s OK, that I know he never intended for it to come to this, that I understand he simply lashed out in hurt and anger and bitter, bitter disappointment. I want to let him know that of course I forgive him, that absolutely none of this was his fault, that I love him, that I always have, despite everything . . . A neighbour drags him off and the car begins to pul away from the kerb. As we pick up speed, I turn my head for one last look and, through the back window, see Kit sprinting after us, his long legs pummeling the pavement, the familiar look of single-minded determination on his face – the same determination he showed during al those footbal, catch, and British Buldog games we used to play . .