It was Aunty Iris who said I was different. I grew up with that sense of otherness superimposed on my psyche by my overbearing relative, singled out from the rest of the household in our detached house in Heene Way – a leafy street in the well-to-do end of West Worthing, Sussex – after my father ran off with the woman next door. The family seemed to want someone to blame. I couldn"t understand why I was chosen, other than that I was the only male remaining in the house. All I knew was I went from being a happy and innocent little boy to an unhappy child saddled with observing the tortured emotions of others.
My mother was beside herself. She was a god-abiding Catholic who refused her husband a divorce. Consumed by shame, she took no solace in mass or confession or the sympathies of her pr
