Experiences of sexual violence while on GHB are common. More than 1 in 5 gay men who responded to a survey that BuzzFeed News and Dispatches conducted for the documentary — the largest of its kind — said they had been subjected to rape or sexual assault while on G, which frequently renders users unconscious.

But it was not until January 2018 that Chaplin knew about the rape allegation, or anything about the drugs. Venter came home “extremely agitated, pupils dilated, and he was just ripping everything up…breaking everything. He was looking for microphones”.

Venter had become paranoid, prompted partly by the meth, but also, Chaplin now thinks, by the assault and the breakdown in the friendships.

Later that January, Venter went downstairs one night to their little home gym.

“I just heard this loud bang,” says Chaplin, his face frozen suddenly, eyes staring. “Our little dachshund rushed up the stairs and was screaming and dancing around the place. I went to see what was going on.” He stops and breathes in.

“Venter had hung himself. There is a pull-up bar, so he had hung himself on that, but the machine had fallen over and hit the other side of the wall.” Chaplin arrived just in time. “He was convulsing. I rushed in and lifted him off the ground to take the pressure off his neck.” With this, Venter became conscious, so Chaplin helped him up and guided him to bed.

They agreed the next morning that Venter would take a week off work. It was during this week that he finally opened up to his husband about his fears surrounding the rape, and the wider behaviour of his friendship group from the chemsex scene.

“These people had started bullying him and started effectively playing with his mind,” says Chaplin. “What he was saying was that the people he had fallen out with were encouraging him to kill himself.” Venter also confided to Chaplin that on one occasion he had been admitted to hospital after losing consciousness — overdosing — again common with GHB.

And it is here that three possible explanations for his later death form, each leading up parallel paths:

Path one is the scenario Venter was trying to convey to Chaplin, that these men had the worst intentions and that ultimately they (or perhaps just one man) enacted them: murder, perhaps to shut him up.

Path two: Venter was growing increasingly paranoid, perhaps psychotic, and that spiralled, fear swelling unbearably until he could no longer tolerate it, and he deliberately overdosed himself.

Path three: These men did bully him, one of whom did rape him, but either did not directly kill him, perhaps goading him to do it, or had nothing to do with it.

Chaplin keeps an open mind. “I can only go on what Venter told me and I’ve got to balance his interpretation of things,” he says — balance it with the fact that Venter was not well. He repeats that he hopes it was suicide. “It would be a far better alternative,” he says. “But there are too many other things that need to be explained.”