ROTTEN MATERIAL

Should we care what other people think of us? And if we’re disliked, can we change?

The truth lived in a dark space above my wardrobe, in a padlocked rucksack, in the form of nine black hardbound diaries. Written between 2002 and 2003, they were the worst year of my life scrawled in biro. I’d sometimes feel their malign presence radiating out into the rooms of my small south London flat. It was as if I had a body, stashed up there. In …