NIKKI GEMMELL ON FAMILY

We must love one another or die,” urged the poet W. H. Auden. Yet growing up, my riven family seemed quite beyond any of that. Snippets of unwelcome memory. Thuds in a room. Anguished sobs. The flash of a police siren in the suburban dark. Having to face school in a neighbourhood where everyone knew everyone’s business and the hot shame of having to talk about something I had no understanding of.

I was seven. It felt like some fairytale of vicious darkness that had seeped slowly into my family and cursed us all, yet no one would tell me anything.