A moment of quiet. Taking a seat in my new bedroom, I pick up the book I am currently devouring. It’s the end of August and, in my county, all the ‘schools’ chuck out at sixteen into the clutches of the ‘colleges’ (similar, in that both are there to get you through exams; different, in that schools mollycoddle whereas colleges don’t care) so I’m enjoying one of the longest summer holidays I will ever get.

I’ve thought a lot about my future, this summer. Church is my life and having time to devote to church work and reading all about God has given me a taste for how I could be living my life in future.

First, there’s an ‘outreach week’ in a nearby town. I’ve been doing these intensive, public events in my summer holidays since I was 13: each morning the team of 25 listen to some preaching, sing, pray, then we hit the streets to tell people about Jesus. Sometimes we do questionnaires and knock on people’s doors; other times we do demonstrations in the street. I miss out on one of the days, to go to the taster day for my new college; I can’t wait to get stuck into music again in September, but I’m annoyed this day had to happen during such an important week for me. When I get back, the guy in charge practically makes me a job offer for when I finish college in two years time. I can’t wait to go and live there for a year and work for his church. Who knows, I might even get to be a Pastor when I’m older!

Don’t you find that during hot summer days, when rays of light seem to deposit tiny beads of liquid on your skin, you just can’t fight those erections? Is it the heat that does it to me, or is it the fact that everyone strips off in the sun? Does it matter? The point is, it’s two weeks later and it’s getting out of hand.

Since we arrived in France, I’ve made my excuses and ‘gone for a wander’ during every single trip to the supermarket. I just can’t get these images out of my head and I need more. Resuming a routine from the past few years (look, memorise, masturbate; rinse and repeat), I head straight to the magazines and instantly appreciate how easy it is to reach up for an image of a naked man here, compared to the UK. On the second trip, I manage to tremblingly pick the magazine up off the shelf and leaf through it, ready to drop it the instant anyone walks around the corner. It’s fine, I’m only curious, after all I’m completely straight (I’m going to be a church leader, for heaven’s sake!).

It’s been a good twenty minutes and my Dad comes to find me: they need help choosing the breakfast cereal. Immediately, I become absorbed in a French caravan magazine, in my rehearsed ‘mission abort’ routine. Still shaking, but now flushed too, I begin to talk enthusiastically about how good the range of caravan magazines is and has my Dad had a chance to look at them yet. He points out that they are all in French and we move on, at least one of us deeply embarrassed and wishing never to be in such a situation again.

A fortnight later and I’m camping in a field somewhere in the English countryside with tens of thousands of other Christians, for an enormous Bible camp. I know my friends think me odd for it, but I really don’t mind because this is how I’ve been brought up: it makes sense to me, somehow, to be doing things like this. It’s an intense week: one by the end of which, my plans for the future change completely. God has shown me that I have let my biggest talent, music, become my biggest passion, that it’s more important to me than he is. Moving music off my college timetable means some other choices have to change too, but I know this is what God wants, even if I’m not exactly excited about what I’m studying. After all, I’ve got my year out with the church to look forward to.

It’s a Sunday in late August and, finally, a moment of quiet, reading alone in my room on the last weekend before college starts. I’m reading an autobiography by a leading pastor when, suddenly, I am hit by a wall of blind panic as I realise: I’m gay.

I’ve always known I fancied men and, yes, I’ve known what a gay person was for years. But that means I am one? That surely cannot be right. I’m a Christian and I’ve chosen to be straight; I want to marry a woman and have kids. Granted, I don’t actually fancy women yet, but that time will come, I know it will. It’s just that I started loving men before a love for women could grow. This is what I’m telling myself, even as I’m imagining the church meeting, one of the special members-only meetings, where they declare that such and such a person has been ‘put out’ of the church (even conversations with such people are discouraged; cross the road to avoid them if you must). At the imaginary members’ meeting in my head, everyone I’ve ever known and loved is being told to ignore me, so before I can let my imagination carry on any further, I make a pact with myself. Since I am the only person that knows I’m gay, I will keep it to myself.

To my surprise, I am now part of a minority: one that will shape the rest of my life. No one must know.