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Chapters (93)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Chapter 3
  9. Chapter 4
  10. Chapter 5
  11. Chapter 6
  12. Chapter 7
  13. Chapter 8
  14. Chapter 9
  15. Chapter 10
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter 1
  18. Chapter 2
  19. Chapter 3
  20. Chapter 4
  21. Chapter 5
  22. Chapter 6
  23. Chapter 7
  24. Chapter 8
  25. Chapter 9
  26. Chapter 10
  27. Chapter 11
  28. Chapter 12
  29. Part Three
  30. Chapter 1
  31. Chapter 2
  32. Chapter 3
  33. Chapter 4
  34. Chapter 5
  35. Chapter 6
  36. Chapter 7
  37. Part Four
  38. Chapter 1
  39. Chapter 2
  40. Chapter 3
  41. Chapter 4
  42. Chapter 5
  43. Chapter 6
  44. Chapter 7
  45. Chapter 8
  46. Chapter 9
  47. Part Five
  48. Chapter 1
  49. Chapter 2
  50. Chapter 3
  51. Chapter 4
  52. Chapter 5
  53. Chapter 6
  54. Chapter 7
  55. Chapter 8
  56. Chapter 9
  57. Chapter 10
  58. Chapter 11
  59. Part Six
  60. Chapter 1
  61. Chapter 2
  62. Chapter 3
  63. Chapter 4
  64. Chapter 5
  65. Chapter 6
  66. Chapter 7
  67. Part Seven
  68. Chapter 1
  69. Chapter 2
  70. Chapter 3
  71. Chapter 4
  72. Chapter 5
  73. Chapter 6
  74. Chapter 7
  75. Chapter 8
  76. Chapter 9
  77. Chapter 10
  78. Chapter 11
  79. Part Eight
  80. Chapter 1
  81. Chapter 2
  82. Chapter 3
  83. Chapter 4
  84. Chapter 5
  85. Chapter 6
  86. Chapter 7
  87. Chapter 8
  88. Chapter 9
  89. Epilogue
  90. Acknowledgments
  91. Reading Group Guide
  92. About the Author
  93. Copyright

His name was Edward, but Mum and Dad always called him Bunny. I was seven years old when he died. In fact, he was the reason I got sent to school in the first place. Till then, Mum had looked after me at home, but after my brother was born, she decided that she couldn’t look after two children at once. And so I was sent to Netherton Green, while Mum looked after Bunny.

I didn’t want to go to school. Netherton Green was noisy, and big, and filled with other children. I didn’t like other children much. They frightened me a little. So when I arrived, I didn’t speak. I barked like a dog for the first three days. I figured people liked dogs. I thought it would make them like me. Turns out it made me a weirdo. I’ve been a weirdo ever since.

They never told me exactly what happened to Bunny. Perhaps they thought I was too young. All they said was: God took him. Other people told me the rest. Bunny had been having his bath. My mother had gone to answer the phone. She’d only been gone a minute. Bunny was nearly two by then. He drowned in six inches of water.

I think that’s when I first started to really be afraid of God. If He could take Bunny, then He could take me. And worse, my parents talked about it like it was a kind of treat, like maybe going to Disney­land. Except that sometimes, I could hear Mum crying in her room, and at Church I heard Mrs. Plum say to Mrs. Constable that Mum was no better than she should be, and that maybe now she’d understand that God doesn’t play favorites.

Mrs. Constable didn’t like my parents, because Dad had told some people at Church that Mrs. Constable’s daughter was living in sin with a woman in Leeds. After that, Mrs. Constable didn’t talk to my parents at all, and Mr. Constable started a Gay Families Support Group, which Dad said was a gateway to approving immorality. I was a bit young to understand, but Dad explained that being gay was wrong; that it was in the Bible. Of course, that was in the olden days. Now it’s not even illegal. How can that be? Did the rules change? And if they did, what happened to the people who went to Hell for being gay? Do they get a free pardon? Or do they just have to stay there?