‘And really slowly… it took years… hearts and minds were changed: in 2002 gays and lesbians won the right to adopt children; anti-gay hate crimes were recognised in law by 2003, the Civil Partnership Act came in 2004, so Jos and I were able to get married – well, civilised anyway, there’s legislation to prevent us being discriminated against in the workplace, we have equal access to goods and services – so no hotel in Britain can refuse Jos and me a double bed. Perhaps none of this would have happened if there had been no Margaret Thatcher.’

‘May she rot in hell,’ the three queens at the next table said in unison as their champagne glasses clinked.

Elgan rotated the band of Welsh gold Jos had given him to celebrate the legal recognition that they’d claimed in April 2006 – after more than twenty years together. ‘We decided to stick with love because hate is too great a burden to bear.’

Fridolin smiled. ‘My grandparents are so wrong about you,’ he said.

They smiled at one another across their table.

‘So, my lovely Frido,’ Elgan said. ‘When do I get to come and see you dance?’

Kiss and Tell

Kiss and Tell

Some of the girls in Seimon’s class already seemed much older – and a bit scary. Often they’d huddle into exclusive, whispering broods, and there’d be audible sighs and sometimes shrieks of laughter above their murmuring, and furtive glances at no-one-in-particular. A couple acted like they’d already outgrown their peers; Jane Jones, who’d got breasts that were the Promised Land of boys’ dirty talk, almost always had love bites on her neck, and Shân Jenkins boasted about going to the nightclub in Llandudno at the weekends with her boyfriend, who was a management trainee with one of the new, cheap German supermarkets. There was even a rumour that Shân was on the pill.

Seimon had decided it wasn’t easy being fourteen. Most of his classmates had started to muscle-up, which made rugby more of a man’s game; it made the showers afterwards a real embarrassment too. Naked and puny amongst so many well-developed boy-men, he just wanted to disappear. He knew that puberty kicked-in later in some, but why did he have to be the runt, and bear the brunt of so much teasing? Sometimes he imagined himself smaller-than-small so that the others wouldn’t notice him – and sometimes they didn’t. But then, when the boys he hung around with seemed not to want to see him, he wondered if he’d made himself too insignificant. Being lonely was horrible. Feeling isolated, he doubted himself even more.