Am I a brave cult survivor, too?

When I was 21, I lived with a cult for a year. It was a commune really, a tight-knit group of Christians, but I’ll call it a cult because it was in Texas and for special occasions we all wore white. There were other cult markers, too: we had a charismatic leader; the younger kids were home-schooled; and, to my great excitement, one (now ex) member wrote a book after she left: I Can’t Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult.

That I ended up there is a testament to the dangers of showing off. All those endless questions after finals, all those inquiring adults: ‘And what are you going to do now? What’s your plan?’ Well, I had no plan. Every pathetic half-plan faded before it formed, lost against the black enormity of the future, so I took to telling everyone I was off to America. ‘To write a book,’ I said airily, ‘about religious cults.’ I thought it made me sound interesting, and that everyone would soon forget.

Lies create their own momentum; I didn’t know that then. No one forgot and so, come late summer 1996, I had no option but to go. I found myself on a plane bound for New York with a wad of travellers’ cheques and an electronic typewriter. I stayed with my kind, sad American godfather in upstate New York, and after the leaves turned yellow I bought a tinpot car and headed south.

To my great relief, a school friend, T, joined me for the journey and so together we buffeted down the interstate; together we shivered through the night in the tin pot’s semi-reclining front seats, and together we approached Dallas, Texas, one October afternoon, without any place to stay, but upbeat and trusting in fate.