Chapter Twenty Seven
The silence in the house was like the silence on the ward. The kind of silence that is at once inaudible and deafeningly loud. I remember back then being fixated on it, terrified of it. It sounded like the vacuum of space. I felt it slide around my neck and choke the life from me. And all the rooms were white. I remember staring at the wall, chasing the black flecks on the periphery of my vision left and right; visible enough to always be distracting but never able to focus on it properly, always a little out of reach.
I was sectioned after the incident with Ollie and my dad. I couldn’t cope with the shame. Homosexuality was taboo back then in those neighbourhoods and was especially despicable to someone like my father. He stopped loving me. He turned it off like a t
