A Prison In The Sun E-Book

Isobel Blackthorn

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

After ghostwriter Trevor Moore rents an old farmhouse in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, he moves in to find his muse.

But instead of creative inspiration, he discovers a rucksack filled with cash. Who does it belong to, and what should he do with it?

Struggling to make up his mind, Trevor gradually finds more clues, and unravels the harrowing true story of a little-known concentration camp that incarcerated gay men in the 1950s and 60s.

Leseprobe

A Prison in the Sun

Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3

Isobel Blackthorn

Copyright (C) 2019 Isobel Blackthorn

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Edited by Veronica Schwarz

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For Chris Roy

And in memory of Octavio Garcia, a former prisoner of Colonia Agrícola Penitenciaria in Tefía, Fuerteventura, who campaigned for justice and whose testimony enabled the terrible story of this concentration camp to be known.

Author Note

I wrote A Prison in the Sun to honour and remember all those men imprisoned under General Franco's regime because they were gay. On Fuerteventura, where this story is set, prison conditions were brutal and likened to a concentration camp. To the best of my knowledge, nothing substantial about this prison has been written in English. All of my research I conducted in Spanish. In 2008 the story of the prison broke after professor Miguel Ángel Sosa Machín interviewed prison survivor, Octavia Garcia. I have known of the prison's existence since 1989, when I lived in Lanzarote and my close friends from the island told me what went on there.

I have purposefully juxtaposed life in the prison with that of the present day, counterpointing the gravity of the prisoners' situation with a touch of bathos in the main narrative, striving not only for balance, but also to entice reflection on who we were, who we are, and where we want to be.

A Prison in the Sun is my fourth Canary Islands' novel and was written in keeping with that narrative style.

I offer the following story in all sincerity.

Part One

The Farmhouse

The farmhouse had walls three feet thick, a staunch reminder of what it took to live around there and what I refused to get used to: the wind, the dust, the heat, the excoriating sun. I've been on the island two and a half weeks, and I am still not sure what attracts visitors to that locale. The island itself, I can understand. Winter sun, beaches galore, plenty of space and a safe, laid-back atmosphere. It's the Canary Islands' tourist mecca of Fuerteventura. Most of the tourists are corralled in enclaves along the east coast. There, on that barren plain where the ocean views are cut off by hills, and a range of mountains separates the inhabitants from the more populated areas, there cannot be described as anything other than inhospitable. Yet there people dwell; the holiday let, the last of a smattering of farmhouses that calls itself a village: Tefía.

My island getaway.

A rational choice at the time I booked. A Friday, as I recall, and a dreary English afternoon in June, the sun struggling to send its light through layers and layers of cloud. In my cramped one-bedroom flat, ignoring the windows fogging and the radio that the tenant below insisted on playing all day and half the night, I surveyed the island onscreen and considered my criteria. I wanted no beach, no people, no noise, no distractions. A list of negatives, true, but I had enough mayhem going on inside me without suffering the usual gamut of holiday amusements. I wanted a retreat, and I was booking a holiday for good reason. I was booking a holiday to straighten myself out.

When I studied the photos of the holiday let, the numerous small and neatly furnished rooms that appeared to be arranged around an internal patio, the shuttered casements, the beam ceilings, the four-poster bed and claw-foot bath, I thought I had stumbled on the perfect accommodation, if a little large for one person. Views of tawny mountains beneath brilliant skies drew me too. I overlooked the obvious fact that such a photograph would not convey the harshness of a landscape. In all, I didn't give the matter another thought. Impatient, I booked the flights and accommodation in under an hour and went out in the dismal rain to buy a new suitcase and a bottle of Sancerre to celebrate.

A week later I boarded the plane, endured the plastic seats and the crush of bodies in the cabin and, five hours later, collected a hire car at the airport. Fuerteventura greeted me with thirty-five-degree summer heat. I had to locate the car somewhere in a glare of metal and tarmac as I broke out in a sudden sweat.

I extracted the mud map I had drawn on a paper serviette back at Gatwick airport – consisting of three spidery lines and a couple of intersections – and used that rather than GPS to navigate my way the twenty miles to Tefía.

Beyond the bustle of the coastal strip, the island bared its authentic self. For the duration of the drive, through nothing but dry earth and rock and low barren mountains, I allowed in a curious fascination, the larger part of me remaining disturbed by the strange desert landscape.

A final bend and I headed north across a plain, following the line of the mountains to the east. When I saw the Tefía sign, I slowed, knowing my accommodation was close, keeping an eye out for the cottage, spotting its drive.

Stationary at last, I opened the car door on a light breeze. The temperature was not much cooler up on the plain. Looking back the way I'd come, I noticed a haze on the eastern horizon. Dust? I had read something on one of the tourist websites about the Saharan dust.

The farmhouse was stout and quaint, with a flat roof and small, multi-paned windows positioned randomly in walls protected by verandas. There was no house on the other side of the drive, and behind the farmhouse was a field. Other houses were scattered about haphazardly.

I hefted my luggage out of the boot, found the keys under the doormat and let myself in.

The interior was cool, the air freshened with a flowery perfume. I dumped my suitcase and rucksack in the first room I entered and explored the layout of the place – rooms leading on to others, the occasional dead end – ending up in the kitchen where a hamper had been left out on the bench.

Curious, I unpacked the goodies, only to find that everything came in pairs, including two flutes for the champagne. At the sight of the holiday accoutrements of coupledom, a disconsolate hand fisted my insides. I headed to the main bedroom to find two chocolates centred on the coverlet of the four-poster bed. Love hearts in pink wrapping. By now the fist had reached my throat, and I let out a whimper and couldn't hold back a rush of tears.

I'm a man not given to emotion and I made every effort to curb the flow, but I admit it felt good to cry a little, or even a lot. I guess I hadn't faced up to my aloneness until it was so caringly thrust in my face.

The hamper kept me in provisions for the first two days of my stay. The thoughtful owners were not to know how relieved I was not to have to leave the farmhouse. I wanted to venture out and explore my surroundings, but I had arrived with a backlog of work and needed to rid myself of the burden as fast as possible.

I'm a freelance ghostwriter– not my chosen career, if such a job can be called a career. I knock out memoirs, finish novels, write articles, create blog and website content – non-fiction pieces on health and diet, top tips and travel pieces – and even the occasional short story. The last won the author a prize. I give other people voices, help them to communicate whatever they need to say. I work for small businesses and corporations and writers with more wealth than ability. On some level, it is satisfying work and I am proud to say I make a decent living out of it, but at that moment when I arrived in Fuerteventura, I had begun to feel stale.

I had an article to write for a fitness website, five blog posts to compose for various companies – the sorts of posts I churn out with ease, making for a half-decent hourly rate – and a short story to complete for a woman who couldn't conjure an ending. And I could see why – she was white and British and had crossed the cultural-appropriation line by choosing to be an indigenous Australian. Worse, she was writing in the first person, a culturally sensitive move, and she had entered dangerous post-Shriver territory. I felt uncomfortable maintaining the pretence she had created, but she was paying handsomely, and I could always do with the cash and besides, no one would know of my involvement. My name would not appear anywhere on the finished piece.

Being a ghost has some advantages.

The work kept me indoors staring at my laptop. I was so caught up in the backlog, I barely took my eyes off the screen. I might as well have been back in my crummy flat in West London.

On the second day, as the hours slid by, irritation gnawed at me. I had saved the short story till last and I found myself trudging through Australian desert scrub in the searing heat, acutely aware of a similar landscape outside my front door, sweating as the day grew hotter, reminding myself the protagonist would probably not be suffering as I was, probably not feeling sticky and irritable; she was probably entirely at ease as the sun blazed down, but what would I know? Do indigenous Australians get sunburnt? Do indigenous Australians suffer heatstroke? The Internet didn't seem to know. I felt rude, possibly racist even asking.

I managed to insert the paragraphs the draft had been lacking and polish the ending which had lacked pizzazz, but when I hit Save and then Send, I reminded myself freelancing was not what I had come here for and I needed to set up some boundaries, ignore the ghost-writing jobs filling my Inbox.

I had booked a three-month stay because I thought that would be ample time to write something in my own right. No better way to smooth out the battle scars of life and find inner peace than compose a book-length work of fiction in monastic isolation far away from one's regular life.

The writer's retreat.

Most writers on retreat already have a clear idea of what they plan to work on. I did not. I knew what the novel would not concern. I would not draw on my own experiences, recent or from my childhood. I was emphatic about that. I would leave self-cannibalisation to others. Neither would I delve into the genres. I would compose something literary, contemporary, with a hint of history. I wasn't thinking about sales or prizes. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing my own name on the cover. I wanted to call myself an author.

My problem, therefore, was that of the blank page. I lacked inspiration and had no idea where to look to find it. All I knew was that I would not find that inspiration inside of me. I had nothing in my makeup that would form the basis of a good story, period.

I spent the rest of the day pacing around the farmhouse, standing in the various rooms, trying to imagine who had lived there. A large family. Farmers. Traditional people. Boring. The afternoon faded into evening and I hadn't so much as conjured a character.

Early the following morning, finding I had eaten the entire contents of the hamper, I ventured into the village, taking advantage of the relative cool of the day. The walk took me past a few shabby-looking dwellings – white cuboids with shuttered windows, austere, no frills – the bulk of the village spread higgledy-piggledy to either side of the arterial road.

The shop was located at the other end of the village, set back from the road opposite a bus shelter. Inside, the shelves were surprisingly well-stocked. I bought local bread, cheese, tomatoes, onions, garlic and eggs, along with a length of chorizo, two tins of tuna and three bottles of a promising-sounding red. The woman who served me was friendly, and I gave her my warmest smile. A benevolent soul, her broad face beamed into mine, but I was unable to understand a thing she said. I extracted my wallet and held out what I thought was near enough the correct amount. She took the notes to the till drawer and then placed a few coins in my palm. Gracias, I said, no doubt appallingly. De nada. Then, 'See you later', which she delivered in a staccato monotone, and I could tell we shared the same handicap.

In the time it had taken to shop, the sun had gathered its forces and now had a bite to it. On the walk back to the house, all of five minutes, I was buffeted along by a bossy breeze.

The mountains held my attention. I vaguely enjoyed picking out the various shades of pale brown.

In Fuerteventura, the eye has no choice but to attune to the colour brown and discern the nuances. Perhaps we are predisposed to find beauty wherever we can, but it would be stretching the concept to describe the landscape around Tefía beautiful. It was anything but. 'Desolate' best labels the place. and I was relieved to find myself back at the farmhouse, which already felt like a sanctuary against the elements.

Surveying my meagre purchases, realising they would get me past lunch and possibly dinner but little further, and knowing I didn't plan on popping up to the local shop every day, I decided to do a proper grocery shop that afternoon. After all, I thought, I had a hire car and planned on using it.

I found Internet reception up at Tefía excellent. I jumped online and had no trouble locating a decent-sized supermarket. I had two options to choose from. I could head north to Lajares or south to Antigua, either route an easy drive through open country. I chose the southern route as it was a good deal shorter. After lunching on a baguette filled with cheese, tuna and thick slices of onion and tomato, a combination that proved tricky to eat, I wrote a comprehensive shopping list. I thought through all my needs and wants, and wrote them down in discrete groupings: dry goods, tins, deli, meats, frozen and fresh veg.

I'm one of those house husbands accustomed to the grocery shop. I'm not a browser and I do not dilly dally. I like to be in and out in the fastest possible time. It is something of a sport with me. A game. I have never resorted to a stopwatch, I wouldn't take it that far, but it brings out my competitive side, and I am proud to think how efficient I am. The only challenge I faced this time was the language. I needed to get past the basic level of my free, online language course if I was to be anything other than mute when it came to communicating with the natives.

The drive proved more pleasing than anticipated. There are some fetching vistas along the way heading south, and the barren landscape did begin to hold some appeal, if only through the sheer sameness of it. Round every bend, more bone-dry fields and barren mountains. And the mountains stole the attention yet again. None of them are all that high, but their shapes are visible in their entirety, there being nothing growing on their flanks. That day, I found there was something absorbing about them on an aesthetic level, and I felt the faint stirrings of the muse. Although I would need a lot more inspiration than a landscape could provide, no matter how inhospitable or starkly magnificent, before I could even begin to think about writing a novel.

In Antigua, the supermarket was easy to find. I was in and out in under half an hour with a boot load. As I opened the driver's side door I knew that next time, I would have that half hour reduced to twenty minutes; I would write my shopping list in the order of the aisles.

I felt triumphant on the drive home. I didn't even mind the heat.

There is something comforting about a well-stocked fridge and pantry, the thought that there is no need to leave the house. Liberating, too, leaving me free to think over important matters. Above all, if I went out, I wanted it to be for something pleasurable, something interesting. Not for a chore.

With the groceries all put away, I stared into the hours of nothing ahead and wondered how I would fill the time. I felt like talking to someone, but in those first days of my stay I refrained from letting Jackie and the kids or even my best friend, Angela, know my superb connectivity, preferring to let them think I had adopted a hermit style of existence and had committed myself to silence. Let them wonder how I was faring. Let them all miss me.

As I wandered from room to room, I began to relish the solitude. It was refreshing having space around me, both inside the house and out on the plain, space that acted as a salve. I sat down in one room then another, spending a sufficient period out in the internal patio as was good for my health. I must have occupied every seat in the place by the end of the afternoon, and I deposited something of mine – a book, a magazine, a device – in every room, carefully centred on a table or poised on the arm of a chair.

That evening, the sunset was tremendous. Bands of deep crimson swept across the sky, distracting me as I prepared a chorizo and pasta bake. When the dish was in the oven, I poured a large glass of red and then stood at the kitchen window and sipped the wine as I watched the changing colours, the deepening, the fading into night.

I took much pleasure later that evening gazing at the stars. The sky was especially clear, and after spotting the firmament in the portion afforded by the patio, I went and stood outdoors and soaked in the twinkling pinpricks in their various arrangements, a reminder of the wonders of the universe unknown to us in daylight. Eventually, I felt sleepy and took myself to bed.

The bedroom, with its four-poster bed centred against the eastern wall, was the defining feature of the farmhouse. The décor was pleasing, blocks of strong colour, no frills, no lace. In those early days of my stay, I enjoyed being in that room. I had never slept in a four-poster before, and I went to sleep each night feeling like a king.

The next day, I awoke at sunrise. I sat up in bed and then went and gazed out the window. I found the view nothing to speak of save for a lonely windmill perched on a rise in the mid-distance. A stout affair, probably not in use, its blades appearing still in the wind. It being the only feature of interest beyond the farmhouse walls, my gaze remained drawn, and I pressed my face against the glass as though to get closer.

My curiosity grew stronger, and I felt compelled to unearth the windmill's secrets. What was its story? It must have one. A story tied to the ancient history of the island and local farming practices. Not exactly fuel for any sort of story I might compose, but then again, I shouldn't prejudge. Besides, there was no telling what I might find there that might stimulate inspiration – a fallen handkerchief, a dropped wallet, the chip of some artefact, anything at all that would provoke that inner spark.

Having reasoned things through, I determined to venture forth across the dusty plain and investigate.

The Windmill

I was a man on a mission. My first real exploration of what the island had to offer and despite the short distance, the walk to the windmill felt like an expedition. I needed to be prepared. Above all, I need sustenance.

After diving into a tub of strawberry yoghurt, I scoffed a bowl of cold pasta bake, leftovers from the night before. Then I washed up the spoons and the bowl and left them to drain, took a cool shower and donned joggers, shorts and a t-shirt. Tourist attire. I couldn't help but be aware of how white my skin looked. I gazed in horror in the bedroom mirror at two spindly legs and a pair of flaccid arms poking out the limb holes of my apparel. I was carrying much too much flesh around my middle. Flesh that was covered by my t-shirt but not obscured.

I sucked in my paunch with self-disgust. I had let myself go. Middle-age spread had arrived far too early. I was a heart attack in the making, gurney material, destined for an early grave. Too many nights watching Netflix while downing red wine. Wake up to yourself, Trevor Moore!

Worse, I hadn't got laid in how long? A year? More like two, and little wonder. I was a porker.

After making the bed, which I was unable to leave in disarray, I shoved my feet into a pair of plimsolls and headed off armed with only a water bottle, determined to make the most of the vast, empty outdoors.

The pavement was narrow, but at least there was one. The wind came up behind me, cool on my skin, nudging me along. The sun, still low to the east, had as yet no sting. It was pleasant going, the trajectory a touch downhill, and as I went along, I admired the rugged terrain and the mountains to the south, indistinct in the dust haze.

The pavement ran out at the intersection, where remnants of another windmill had been restored and decorated the landscape, serving as a sort of monument. After standing on the corner, noting how the main road disappeared as it neared the mountains on the southern horizon, I took the road west, which was sealed for a stretch before turning to grit.

Some of that grit found its way into my plimsolls, which made for unpleasant going. In an effort to distract myself from the discomfort, I shifted my focus back onto the surroundings, telling myself that somewhere amid the scree and the scrub might be a source of inspiration for a novel, if only my imagination would find it.

I focused hard on the details. The fields to either side of the track were strewn with small rocks, and the soil had a pinkish tinge to it. I wasn't sure if that was a trick of the light because, in the heat of the day, taken as a whole, the soil had a creamy look. In all, there were too few trees.

The walk took about fifteen minutes. I passed a farmhouse in ruins and paused to take it in, but the crumbling abode failed to provoke even a spark of enthusiasm from my parsimonious muse. Just past the ruin, the track took a sharp turn to the left and, up ahead, set in a swathe of gravel in this most desolate of landscapes, was my destination.

The windmill, a stout affair constructed from large brown stones and pointed with thick, pale-cream mortar, stood proud on its gritty concourse. The six sails, comprising dark-wood shutters, were motionless. The domed roof of the windmill, made of the same dark wood, formed an austere cap. At the rear, the tail pole was anchored to the ground minus the capstan wheel. A simple arrangement of rocks along with a dry-stone wall surrounded the windmill's base and completed the restoration.

Looking around, I supposed the landscaping was one way of clearing the ground of unwanted rock. Even so, without any foliage to speak of – at all – the place felt as though the workmen had packed up and left after hammering in the last nail, and the local government had signed off on the project as a good-enough job done. Perhaps the authorities thought no one passing through Tefía would bother coming out here, I thought, not even to see the windmill, the island no doubt having bigger and better windmills elsewhere.

I walked around the base then climbed the steps that led up to a locked door. There was nothing to see other than a glimpse of ocean to the west. I paused and soaked in the small portion of blue, enjoying the sense it gave of being on an island. Inland, amid all the dry, it was easy to forget the ocean was there.

Before I left, I sat on the stone steps of the windmill and emptied my plimsolls. Not that there was much point. Three steps were enough to shuffle in some more. I took a slug from my water bottle and had one last look around.

In the distance to the south was a farmhouse, and immediately to the north, leading off from the swathe of gravel surrounding the windmill, a drive led to some sort of compound. The owners had made an effort at beautification; flanking the drive were rows of infant palm trees set in garden beds of deep black gravel and edged with large stones. Those beds were a mark of significance, as though an indication of a place of eminence, one incongruous with everything else around. At the end of one of the rows of palms was a sign.

I went over and found an explanation of the ins and outs of the windmill. Turned out in bygone years, this dry-as-dust land produced enough grain to warrant a mill. Incredible. Then again, of course, there would have been enough grain, ample grain, or the windmill would not have been built. It was self-evident.

The sun began to heat the skin on my face and head and neck, and I decided I better return to the farmhouse. Until that moment when I started making my way back, I hadn't realised the entire walk to the windmill had been downhill. The return, I found to my chagrin, was, therefore, uphill, and now I faced into the blustery wind as well and the going was much harder.

My stride soon became a trudge, and the wind seemed to delight in my struggle and strengthened and blew in my face, pushing up hard against me in intermittent bursts. My pleasant morning stroll took on the proportions of a marathon. By the time I arrived back at the farmhouse, I was sweating and panting, and my legs ached.

I went and stood in the internal patio where I pulled off my plimsolls, depositing the grit at the base of a potted plant. I was ashamed of myself. Two years of divorce litigation misery and I hadn't so much as walked to the local shops not a hundred yards from my tired little London flat. I was a man broken, and my body was a shambles. I had always taken for granted my fitness, my muscle tone, my relative youth. To find myself gasping for air like an old man was abhorrent in the extreme.

After downing two glasses of water in quick succession, I took a long cool shower, returning to the patio with my laptop, determined to find the nearest gym.

I was distracted by my inbox. Scanning the messages, I wished I hadn't bothered when I saw the email.

I am not the sort of man others may imagine when they think of a downtrodden wretch, but just then, that was how I felt. I have always considered myself even in temperament, not quick to anger, observant and detached, unlike the more involved and emotional types that seem to gravitate towards me like iron filings in need of a magnet to cling to. Life, in the form of a wife, can destabilise a man's composure on the inside where others cannot see, rendering a smoothly functioning machine a decrepit mess of contorted metal. She had turned me into a heap of junk.

She, being my ex-wife Jackie. Jackie pushed me, pushed us, pushed all of our little nuclear family off a cliff, and we landed on a rocky beach facing a thrashing ocean, gazing up at the halcyon days of our former domestic life. She couldn't help it, and I do not blame her, these things happen after all, but the fallout as we clambered back up that cliff to safety, was more than any of us had anticipated. As if that were not bad enough, she had me scaling a different cliff.

What could she possibly want from me now? Money? Surely not.

I didn't want to look. I put the email in the folder labelled, “pending”.

Jackie and I had been married for more than twenty years. It was twenty years, two months and five days in fact when she called time out. What ensued was a further two years of torment, more or less, for I had trained myself to be imprecise when it came to the duration of the divorce, not caring to quantify the arguments, the hurt, the anguish and the loss as we fought over the house and the kids. Two years and at last we reached a settlement, and I naturally found myself with a lot less than I had anticipated.

After perusing my options, involving relocating to some far-flung county where the roads were too narrow, the weather worse than anywhere, and a visit to the supermarket an expedition, I put in an offer on a tiny cottage in the Norfolk Broads.

The cottage was a long way from London, where Jackie and the kids were determined to remain, but at least the new abode was close to my publisher friend, Angela, who had been my closest ally since primary school.

Close we undoubtedly were, but for a long time, too long maybe, Angela and I had maintained our friendship via Skype and the occasional real-life catchup.

After the separation, Angela became my mainstay. I generally Skyped her once a week. It was the only time I took in the man I'd become, my once pleasingly aquiline face gaunt, eyes sunken, lips turned down. A small and depressing square of me and a large image of her, all round-faced and cheery-eyed.

During the entire divorce episode, Angela insisted I was having a mid-life crisis. The term had me feeling like a cliché. In those last weeks before I flew to Fuerteventura, she made a point of telling me my shortcomings, too. I've been putting on weight – I knew that – I need a haircut – I was cultivating the bedraggled look – and, if she saw me wearing that worn-thin Jimi Hendrix t-shirt one more time, she'd make the three-hour drive from Norfolk and rip it off my back. She bought it for my eighteenth.

Angela was the sort of woman who strode through life. Always smart in her black trousers and figure-hugging tops, she brimmed self-assurance. She was who she was, and she was unapologetic about it. Her hair was never kempt. She wore no makeup. Her wife, Juliette, wore the skirts.

I was at their wedding, one of quite a few straight men in attendance who felt strangely threatened, a reaction summed up by an acquaintance, Simon, a commissioning editor at Hedgehog Pie Press who whispered to me in a drunken slur, 'If this same-sex marriage catches on, we'll be redundant.' I laughed to be polite, but in that instant, I saw that my own unease had the same source. I left Simon to quaff champagne and dish his inappropriate banter elsewhere, and found a quiet corner of the village hall in which to regain my equanimity.

Jackie had announced she wanted a divorce over breakfast that same morning, as she was salting her boiled egg. The harsh words dropped like stones in my cereal bowl.

'We don't have anything in common anymore.'

'What makes you say that?'

She paused, eggy spoon mid-air. 'I've been thinking for a long time that our relationship is past its use-by. Don't you think we're in a rut?'

'No, I don't, as it happens.'

She wasn't listening. 'The kids are almost grown up so now is a good time.'

'It is?'

She went all reflective at that point. I began to think she was reading from a script she had written and rehearsed. 'I think we married too young. We've grown apart.'

'We have tons in common.'

'Look, Trevor, I need to rediscover myself.'

It became clear she was not going to brook my defensive remarks. Our marriage, as far as she was concerned, was over. She had all the platitudes. But the truth was she had found Megan, desire had sparked, and she wanted to explore that side of her sexuality. Feeling the need to confess the cold, hard facts, if only to make certain there would be no salvaging what we had, she said, 'I've always been bi, you know that. But this is different. Megan is the one. With her, I can truly be me.'

Jackie could be ruthless with her honesty. It was why she was good at her job. She was a human resources manager. Thanks to her substantial income, I had been able to pursue my own career, although I wasn't sure I'd give ghostwriting such high status.

Not long after Angela and Juliette's wedding, we split up, or rather, Jackie asked me to move out so Megan could move in. She announced that plan along with a sack full of rationalisations when she was suitably fortified by a large glass of Rioja.

I obliged, ever the peacemaker. It wasn't until the solicitors waded in with advice that the wrangling started and the acrimony flared.

Holed-up in a crummy London flat, my frustrations with my ghostly writing existence grew. They soon became the main topic of conversation when I talked with Angela. I want my name on the cover, for once. Then write the damn contents, she would say matter-of-factly. But what would I write?

It was Angela's suggestion that I should book a getaway. By then the lease on my flat was up, and I wasn't due to take possession of my new home for another three months. Jackie and Megan were deep in wedding plans, and the children, Ian and Felicity, were too busy with their own late-teen lives to take much notice.

Where would I go? Shetland? Don't be ridiculous. Nowhere tropical, I told her, I don't do humidity. Have you tried the Canaries? I don't want crowds. Then try Fuerteventura. What's there? Beaches mainly. I don't do beaches. What do you do? Isolation. Then I've found just the place. And she sent me the link to the farmhouse in Tefía on Skype.

Angela was of the opinion I had unresolved issues buried deep in my psyche. Angela would say that. She was one of those women a little bit older and a whole lot wiser than the men she knew. Ran a small press from her home in Norwich. She had forty authors on her books and acted as a kind of benevolent matriarch, smoothing out their concerns with advice and suggestions and oodles of sympathy. When they started to get uppity, she insisted the best way to progress as an author was to write another book, which they then dutifully did, and the anxiety over the lack of sales of the last one waned. Angela then breathed a sigh of relief, and everyone was happy, for a while. Worked every time, she said. Angela thought I should do the same and write a book. She told me she would consider publishing what I came up with. She would even help me knock the manuscript into shape, should I manage to produce one. She said that writing a novel would help me come to terms with my inner demons and move on.

What inner demons?

Which I suppose was partly why I had no intention of reaching within myself to come up with ideas for a plot. That, and I already knew she was wrong; there was nothing in me that I had not already resolved. I had long before dealt with what in essence defined me as a human being: my difference.

Childhood

It was Aunty Iris who said I was different. I grew up with that sense of otherness superimposed on my psyche by my overbearing relative, singled out from the rest of the household in our detached house in Heene Way – a leafy street in the well-to-do end of West Worthing, Sussex – after my father ran off with the woman next door. The family seemed to want someone to blame. I couldn't understand why I was chosen, other than that I was the only male remaining in the house. All I knew was I went from being a happy and innocent little boy to an unhappy child saddled with observing the tortured emotions of others.

My mother was beside herself. She was a god-abiding Catholic who refused her husband a divorce. Consumed by shame, she took no solace in mass or confession or the sympathies of her priest. Instead, she took to drinking heavily, and when she wasn't drinking, she would sit in a chair and stare blankly at a wall. All the family photographs had been removed. My sister, Marnie, who was thirteen when the terrible betrayal took place, started scouring her forearms with blades of various kinds and decided she no longer needed to eat, habits that alarmed Aunty Iris, who had moved in to help.

I couldn't see that Iris helped at all save for attending to the household chores. Along with the sickly-sweet air freshener she sprayed everywhere, she infused the already turbulent atmosphere with her own hysteria, for she was a touch histrionic, was Iris.

I did what any sensible boy my age would do. I retreated to my room. It was the only course of action available to me since I was not the type to run away. Ensconced in the smallest bedroom in the house, I buried my mind in books and comics and, on days when it wasn't raining and I felt a need for fresh air, I would skulk around in the back garden or ride my bike up and down the streets of my neighbourhood.

I was a regular boy, neither shy nor extrovert, and the only difference I could see between me and the family I had the misfortune to live among, was that I did not thrash about or bleed or shrink or wail or sulk or stagger.

I've always disliked extremes: extreme heat, extreme cold, and especially wild displays of emotion. My preference for evenness extends to my environment. I like my land undulating, my ocean calm, my surroundings neat and smooth. Even at nine years old, I made my bed every morning and kept my room tidy. I arranged my books in order of size on a single bookshelf. On the shelf above, arranged in neat clusters, my vintage cars were displayed. My father had gifted them to me, but I never played with them. My chess set, dominoes, draughts and Monopoly were stacked neatly on the bottom shelf next to my piggy bank.

I preferred to visit my friends' houses, rather than have them enter mine, for fear they would encounter my mother or Aunty Iris or my sister in a state, or they would turn my bedroom into one through boisterous play. Aunty Iris was fond of telling me I was too much of a loner and should invite boys over. To appease her, I would invite my best friend, Vince, round from time to time, but mostly I went to his.

A wily and perspicacious child, Vince lived in the next street, and I had known him since my first day at school. Vince was my confidant, and he summed up my domestic circumstances beautifully one time when we were about thirteen, by saying that I was the scapegoat. I think we were learning about the world wars in History, and he applied the term to me. I considered his remark at some length, carrying it home with me and cogitating as I observed the attitudes of the women in the house, how they chose to ignore me, or jibe me, or pick holes in me, and by the end of that day, I had decided that Vince was correct in his assessment. I was indeed the scapegoat.

From that point on, his home became my home. I found his parents warm and inviting. I would spend as much of my waking life in Vince's bedroom as my own.

When boyhood gave way to hormones and our hair grew in our armpits and our groins, that other part of my anatomy grew of its own volition at the slightest spark and demanded release of its own unique kind. Once, while we were shut in Vince's bedroom, he unfurled a sexy magazine, and we lay on our bellies on his bed and leafed through the pages. After some time ogling, Vince pushed me over onto my back and when he looked down at me, his gaze fixed on the growth in my trousers. Without another word, he unzipped my fly and, before I could stop him, he reached in and tugged. I was delirious in an instant, and in the very next, my newly realised manhood exploded in a sudden gush.

After that Vince's explorations grew bolder. He would unfurl his member – his was much larger than mine – and encourage me to unfurl mine and we would have wanking contests, shooting our loads into the waste paper bin.

It was all just boyish fun. Neither of us questioned what we did. On the contrary, we sniggered and joked and drew lewd pictures and shared our fantasies.

A year later, our voices broke, and Vince fell in love with a girl called Amy, and our wanking days were over. I completed school with high grades in English and History and went on to study at the University of Sussex in Brighton. I lived at home throughout the three years of my degree, but I was never there. Vince had by then married Amy, and I was dating her best friend, who would become my wife, Jackie.