It’s all so quiet. Just the way I like it: my husband is out; it’s pouring, so no one is mowing (the only thing that ever breaches the peace around here) and even the birds are taking a rain check. I can hear my own breathing; hear myself think. But what I’m thinking is: is it too quiet?

I craved quiet for so long. For 30 years, actually, since my first year at university. I was living with three others who did an entirely normal amount of partying, dancing and shagging. But I was quietly falling apart and hearing all that ordinary, raucous life made me feel desperately sad and out of control. Since then, I’ve passed through shared accommodation where I was the weird 21-year-old knocking on doors in my pyjamas to ask neighbours to turn their music down; city blocks where you knew exactly what everyone was watching on TV; a street frequented by 5am glass-recycling lorries; and, for a particularly challenging time, a house next to a family of brass instrumentalists.

It all spawned an obsession with avoiding noise that eventually........

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