I pressed close to her in the doorway to peer over her shoulder. 'Shit,' I echoed, holding on to her shoulders to steady myself.

On the sill outside of her kitchen window, Aly had kept three painted pots, of basil, thyme, and parsley. All three lay smashed on the concrete floor of the yard. We looked down the garden. About halfway down, one of the planks which made up the six-foot fence was dislodged. I remembered the sound of something striking wood. It was the sound it would make if someone tried to climb over the fence and kicked it or had fallen against it. The electric bulb above us made only a small halo of bright light near the back door, half of the garden was in semi-shadow. Beyond was blackness. I imagined someone lurking in the dark, watching us. 'Aly,' I said hoarsely, 'let's go back inside.' I practically pulled her back into the kitchen and locked the door for her.

'It could have been a cat,' she suggested, as we pulled down the kitchen blind. 'They've knocked one of my pots off before, bloody things. We're probably over-reacting.' I was glad she had included herself in the statement too. I sensed that fear was beginning to creep into Aly's emotions, where previously she had only been angry. Knowing that it was not only me that was so affected by what had happened was some small comfort. At least we were facing this together.

It was one of the most horrible nights of my life, only made bearable by the fact that I spent it with Aly. Uncomfortable with the idea of retiring upstairs and leaving the downstairs unprotected, we attempted to sleep on the sofa, having made sure the door was double locked and the curtains completely closed. We both dozed, and I maybe even got a couple of hours' sleep, but it was broken and uncomfortable.

'We could call the police?' I suggested, sometime in the early hours.

'Yeah, right. They'll ask a few details and give us a crime number,' she said. She looked tired, dark circles deepening under her eyes. 'For a start, they're too busy to care. And they're only just getting a grip on the fact that there's a law against homophobic hate crime now. They won't give a shit really. They'll just treat it as vandalism.'

I looked at her and blinked, too tired to think of a reply.

'What is it with people?' she demanded of the room in general, after a moment of silent reflection. The strain of the sleepless night was evident in her face. Her eyes were slightly red, with dark shadows beneath them, her cheeks paler than usual. I watched as her features contorted in anger. 'Why should there even need to be a fucking law?' Her words were bitter and fierce.

I was taken aback by her sudden fury. T suppose they struggle to cope with anything different,' I ventured at last, since she seemed to require an answer. I wasn't sure I was best qualified to give her one, and I felt useless, wanting to comfort her, but not knowing how to.

‘I know that,' she replied vehemently, 'but what is it that gets in people's heads and makes them hate things so much? I can live with them not understanding, but why hating?'

‘I don't know,' I said, aware that I'd not spent a lot of time considering it before. It hadn't been as important as it seemed now. I'd never really done anything likely to make anyone hate me. Suddenly a keen understanding of her resentment filtered into my consciousness. I was still intrinsically the same person I had been a few days before. If I'd not been subject to hate and prejudice then, why should I be now? The injustice of it struck me forcefully and I struggled to keep my own calm, to search for words to soothe her and myself. 'But you said you've not had anything like this before, so it's not everyone,' I said in the end, knowing it was small comfort really.

'No,' she acknowledged. 'But even reasonable people say the stupidest things.' Bitterness still dominated her tone. I knew she wanted to get it off her chest, and I watched her patiently, doing my best to keep hold of my own emotions for her sake, as she struggled to control the anger through her tiredness. 'Do you know, the other day, I heard a guy on the radio talking about it not being natural to be gay? He thought he was being quite reasonable, and obviously they thought it was acceptable to let him say it on air. He claimed he wasn't homophobic, but that people had to admit that it wasn't natural.'