The Secrets We Keep by Horne David

Author:Horne, David [Horne, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Something like that always happened. That was what reality was like, on the face of it. Curtis had always known this, or at least he had for as far back as he cared to remember. In fact, this was what humans were like. When there was no one left to victimize them, they started victimizing themselves. With things like racism, and homophobia. Curtis was pleased to be able to say that he wasn’t exposed to much of either, racism or homophobia. But then again, one shouldn’t feel too sorry for them, because there may not have been much racism or hatred for gay people in that particular region of South London in the eighties, but there was plenty of knife crime to around.

When one door closes, another must open, as the good book says. To be honest, having lived through it, Curtis would rather have taken the “knife crime” door, as opposed to the “racism and homophobia” door. Because at least knives wouldn’t scar you forever. Unless, of course, they did, in which case you were kind of in the same boat.

Again, with the “potato, potah-to” thing.

Curtis remembered hearing a wise person once say that “people hate what they don’t understand”, and it always had struck a chord with him because he’d never really felt truly understood before. That had only ever happened once, where he’d met Hartley. And it to that very day, Curtis had never experienced it ever again. But that saying had always provided solace for him in times where he’d felt misunderstood or hated. It wasn’t his job to hate people back when they hated him, it was his job to help them understand him, and through that understanding, they may form a much more well-founded opinion of him.

Or, at least, that’s what he tried to do. It didn’t always work, but you got points for trying apparently.

The rest of that evening was a pretty quiet one, thanks to Charlie Ross and all his many charms. Neither Curtis nor Hartley could quite tell why the other one was so quiet. Was Curtis still angry for getting slammed with homophobia and xenophobia? Was he ashamed for lashing out? Was Hartley ashamed for not backing Curtis up? Who could tell? All they knew was, neither of them felt much like talking. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem like such a blessing that their beds were right next to each other, something that they had been originally ecstatic about.

And they weren’t the only ones who had been affected by their little spat in the blocks; not by a long shot. Pretty much every single person in the block, all 20 of them, had a silent and awkward evening thanks to that little showdown. Curtis was secretly worried that they’d seen him nearly break a Ranger’s hand “unprovoked”, and was judging him, when, in reality, they were all just scared he’d crunch their hands too.

After an entire evening of thinking, overthinking and a lot of worrying, Curtis had

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