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Times

I was an Orthodox Jewish wife and mother — and secret lesbian

As a little girl, I was the perfect picture of Orthodox Jewish childhood. I wore polyester dresses with opaque tights. I had awkward, big middle teeth, my hair fell in coarse Semitic curls, chestnut brown with a heavy, unruly fringe that my mother cut herself with a piece of Sellotape above my eyebrows as a spirit level. I shared my home, a three-bed terrace in South Lanarkshire, with my parents, six siblings and a constant flow of my father's parishioners. They gave me the name Yehudis, the Hebrew for Judith, followed by the middle name Gittel, meaning 'good' in Yiddish. My faith was never in question. But at school I'd get sent home for arguing against my teachers' interpretations of the Bible. My parents would