My brother and I always knew June was more than a lodger – she became your closest friend and integral to our lives. You said your biggest regret was June, the woman we met 21 years before when we moved to a new town after Dad’s death and took in a lodger to help with the bills.
I asked what your biggest regret was, expecting you to say it was not telling us, having to live a lie. You told me you had always known – when the girls at school were looking at the boys, you were looking at them. You seemed relieved and happy to have this conversation. Gone is the romantic image I had built up as a child, of you and Dad finding love later in life before cancer took him away too soon, when I was five.įor months the cancer had taken you – my real mum – away, but on that evening when we talked, you looked better than I had seen you for over a year: your eyes lit up, you were cohesive and eloquent. How did you decide who to tell and who not to? Some of your friends and family knew, but many did not. At least it was a secret to both your children – I was by then 29 and my brother was 30. You being gay must have been the biggest secret you ever kept.
