“That’s the thing about people. I suppose…I suppose in a way we’re all complicated men, or women, or nonbinary people. And, thinking about it, if there’s one thing I’ve done today that would really, truly offend David Blackwood, it’s bothering to acknowledge that nonbinary people exist at his funeral. ‘Why do you have to be so bloody politically correct, Oliver,’ he might have said. ‘What about women’s bathrooms?’

“Where was I? My original draft of this speech opened with, as you might recall, ‘David Blackwood was a loving husband, a devoted husband, and a demon on the golf course,’ and all of those things were true. Well, except the thing about golf. He was actually quite bad at it. And so when I say he had it coming, with reference to—in case you’ve forgotten—my telling him to go fuck himself, I don’t think I really mean that. At least, not as it came out. I think what I mean was he needed to hear it and I needed to say it. Because my father provided for me and cared for me and supported me, but he also undermined me, made constant jokes about my sexuality while also being incredibly offended by any suggestion he might be even a little bit homophobic, and wielded his disapproval like—I’m sorry, normally when I’m speaking for work, I’m rather better prepared so I don’t have a good simile to hand. But I spent my entire life repulsed by his beliefs, terrified of his scorn, and desperate for him to think well of me.

“Although, strangely—or perhaps not, I can’t tell—I never once doubted that he loved us. I think that’s what made it so very difficult. Because everything he did, everything he said, every belittling remark about my career, every snide joke about anal sex—and I’m terribly sorry, I’ve now just said anal sex at my father’s funeral; I suppose there’s no coming back from that, really, is there—all of it came from a place that felt to him like affection. And because he was proud and stubborn, and those are qualities I recognise in myself and value in myself and in some ways have to thank him for, it would never have occurred to him—could never have occurred to him—that if he’d just listen…for once just listen to a voice that wasn’t his own…he’d see that…

“And that’s where I run out of words. Because I’m not sure what it was I wanted him to see, not really. I suppose I wanted him to see that he was a complicated man. And that I, too, was a complicated man. That Christopher and I were both complicated men. That being me wasn’t just a failure state of being him.