Of course, homophobia wasn’t encouraged by the airline per se, but learning that being a lesbian wasn’t seen as acceptable among my fellow cabin crew made me feel immense amounts of shame. That moment acted like a base note beneath everything, rumbling on as my career progressed. It made me think twice every time I went to say “I’m gay”. It was always there, the idea of shame and awkwardness, the inability to feel free, the worrying about what other people were saying about me.

So I did what my fellow stewardess told me to do – I kept my sexuality secret a lot of the time because it just never felt like it’d be well received if I didn’t. If I did tell people I was gay, I’d have to come out every week because I’d be with a different crew and never knew who it was going to be. Plus, the environment wasn’t friendly towards lesbians. The few straight men in the crew I did come out to would ask what lesbians do in bed. The female cabin crew would nastily refer to the flat shoes we were allowed to wear instead of heels as ‘lesbian loafers’. Back in the 90s and 00s, society at large was homophobic – we were still living with all the unspoken silences of Section 28. All of this, combined with the fact that I still had a yearning to be creative and that my drinking and partying was out of control, created a perfect storm that meant I was bound to take a nosedive.

“I had to go back into the closet when I got a cabin crew job – I became a stranger in my own life”