And then, in the summer of ’88, Charlie Nutter came back into my life. Just turned up at my parents’ house one day, looking tanned and nicely groomed and very different from the nervous Poodle he’d once been. Gone were the little mannerisms; gone were the patches of eczema that had once straggled up his skinny arms. Now he had just turned twenty-one, and had collected his English degree from Durham University. He’d had some years of therapy, both in and out of the Church, but now he was independent, glowing with a new confidence.

He didn’t comment on how much I’d changed, but I could tell he was shaken. He said he’d been visiting Malbry; staying with a friend, with whom he planned to go on holiday to Italy. It took him all of five minutes to admit that this friend was Harry Clarke; five more to admit their relationship. Poodle never could keep his mouth shut; and besides, he was happy. He was past the age of consent. His friendship with Harry was legal now; and college was his escape from his parents, and from his former life.

Turns out that he and Harry had had quite a correspondence over the years. Poodle told me everything: how he had written to Harry from school; how Harry had told him to bide his time; how Harry had said it would only be four years before he could leave home for good; how Harry had saved his sanity.

“It took me a long time to realize,” he said, “that God loves me just the way I am. God isn’t responsible for prejudice and hatred. God made me gay, and He loves me.”

I’d never heard him talk so much. I listened, but inside me, I could feel a little red ball of anger. God made me gay, and He loves me. What rubbish. God made you gay for the same reason that He puts temptation in your path and then fakes surprise when you fall for it.

I made a sympathetic sound. “I presume this is Harry’s philosophy.”

He nodded. “Harry helped me so much. He made me understand that I don’t have to be the person my parents wanted me to be. I don’t have to share their views, or feel guilty because I’m different. For the first time in my life, I’m free.”

Poodle babbled on happily, oblivious in every way. People in love are so boring; supremely unaware of the fact that they have become the dullest, most self-obsessed person on the planet. And I pretended to listen, and nodded in all the right places, as he explained his philosophy, which was mostly Harry’s philosophy. But inside I was all rage, the ball of anger in my gut moving toward nuclear fission.