The Southbank discussion of Elleke Boehmer’s The Shouting in the Dark on 11 October 2015 formed part of the ‘Tell Me Something I Don’t Know’ festival, and explored the topic of toxic secrets and forbidden love within families – here, the teenage character Ella’s infatuation with her parents’ African gardener, Phineas. The lively conversation with the audience shed light on some of the unspoken and now nearly forgotten aspects of apartheid, such as the ban on relations ‘across the colour bar’. We also celebrated how stories, and not history, take us inside the skin of another.