Everything I’m about to tell you is the truth. Or at least a version of very real lies I have told myself. All I remember is the rain. It’s grey. I’m hunched over in my car, illuminated by my iPhone screen, furiously googling. It’s only 4 pm but it feels like nighttime. Melbourne winters can do that.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ I mutter in Mandarin, repeating after my Google Translate. I had been practising for weeks. My Mandarin, the first language I learnt, is forever trapped at a grade two level. Fine for important tasks like ordering food at a restaurant but crippling if you want to have a half-serious conversation with your immigrant mother. I type in ‘gay’, ‘queer’, ‘homosexual’, ‘lesbian’ into Google Translate, and picked the one I could pronounce and remember the easiest.