Mary the Canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She’s an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballass. She’s so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I’m bring trained to hate her even though I’ve never met her.

The second time I try to kill a man I’m fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do – like writing in Biro.

There’s no place like home. No place safer. No place scarier.

In the water, in the dark. It doesn’t matter whose fingers find whose toes. Nobody can see. The stars are saying nothing.

I want to watch you walk through the world before you leave it and if you stumble I'll rush forward to catch you. I like to think I'd show you the kindness you never showed me. I'd like you to owe me a favour. I want to show you that I did it. I want you to be proud of me.

Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.

The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.

Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy,” he says. “And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I’m not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.

The news is a never-ending horror movie and nobody knows how it's going to end

Memory implies that there is some static time and place you can go back to, whereas if you relive it by trying to put yourself back in that context, its more nuanced, less black and white. More traumatic, but also more exciting. When I knew I had to write about things that would be painful, I put off doing it for ages. But then eventually the fear of not doing it becomes greater than the fear of doing it.