The Bulletinhad photographed me going into Crucifix on Friday night, and by Sunday it was all over the gossip pages. The mood at my parent’s house was funereal. Or would have been, if funerals involved my father shouting. The whole Topham clan was sitting around the living room—my awful parents, my odious brother, his odious wife, my all-right-on-her-day sister, her even-more-odious husband, and my gran. I was still so hungover, every time my tongue moved in my mouth it was like a cactus being dragged across another cactus. I wished for death to take me, if only for the peace and quiet.
“What were you thinking, Peter, visiting a place like that?” my father bellowed. “You’re marrying a member of the aristocracy.”
Everyone else had their faces buried in their phones, reading about my disgrace. Everyone except Gran, whose hand was on my knee.
“We’renotengaged. We were never engaged. How many times?”
My parents were struggling to process that fact.
“A minor detail. It’s obvious you care for each other. So why would you visit this… this… house of ill repute? What do you think Buckford is going to say when he sees this report?”
It was a good question. I had no idea, and it was churning my guts up. Yet I only had myself to blame. If I’d listened to Sunny’s advice, if I’d got an injunction as insurance againstThe Bulletin’s threats, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Frustrated with myself and my pride, I did what any sensible son would do and took my impotent rage out on my father.
“For a lawyer you’re very quick to convict,” I said, looking up at him. “Nothing happened. I went to a club and I danced with my friends. End of.”
“It’s a sex club!”
“It’s anightclub.”
“Where people have sex!” my mother wailed. “Animals. Disgusting.”
Now was not the time to admit I had usually been one of those animals and I had loved every disgusting minute of it.
“Nothing happened!” I shouted. The sound of it reverberated around my head like it was bouncing around a canyon, and I thought I would throw up. “Nothing was ever going to happen. All I did was dance with my friends.”
My father was stabbing a finger into his phone. “The paper says otherwise.”
“The paper is lying.”
“Then we sue for defamation, Pete,” my sister Kathy said.
“Yes,” Mother said, eyes brightening. “Let’s take them to the cleaners.”
I shook my head. “And make myself an even bigger target? No, thank you.”
My father had one arm resting authoritatively on the mantelpiece. “Peter, wrapping them up in years of expensive legal disputes is precisely how we make them go away.”
“I don’t want your help.” The words came out in a sneer, accurately capturing my contempt.
“You have to fight them, Peter,” Mother said. “Show some mettle. Or you’re going to lose your fiancé.”
“For fuck’s sake, he’s not my fiancé. He never was.”
“But he’s good for you,” she said.
“He’s put a stop to you talking like a barrow boy,” my father chimed in. “And he clearly cares for you?—”
“He’s not going to want to marry you now, anyway,” my brother said. “You’ve been ruined.”
Rage was bubbling up inside me. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Can any of you hear yourselves? You’re a bunch of judgemental pricks. Why do I have to fit into this tiny heteronormative box? Why aren’t I good enough for you as I am?”
They might have always been outwardly OK with me being gay, but it felt like they were demanding I be a certain kind of gay.
My mother threw her hands up. “Look where your lifestyle has got you, Peter.”
Father shook his head. “And now you need our help getting yourself out of the mess you’ve got yourself in.”
“I don’t want your help.”
