‘What do you mean?’

She stroked my hair, touched my scarred cheek. ‘You don’t sound like a boy any more. Well, you do. But you’re beginning to sound like a man. It just means that your voice is changing, getting deeper. It sounds lovely.’ She smiled her crazy smile.

But my mother wasn’t newly deaf: she didn’t know how important aural memories were. What could I hear? Nothing. But I could remember sound; or, rather, beyond that, I could remember noise. If I closed my eyes, held my hands still, my tongue flat against the roof of my mouth, I could recall the song that played in my head; I always had the sound of the sea lapping or roaring when I went to sleep. I lived in a world of hisses and thumps, all of them lodged for ever in my mind. I heard no sounds generated by the world outside my head. I also had a memory of my mother’s voice and a fading memory of my own. Now that memory was redundant. The only person who’d ever hear my unbroken voice again was me if I replayed it in my head. I knew, even then, that I’d forget the sound of my voice over time, that the memory would shrink and disappear. It would never be replaced by another sound for me. Others listen to me speak and hear something I can never hear: myself.

* * *

Ian drives me back to Cotham Grove from the York café to collect my jeep and there’s Psychobitch, sliding on to the leather seat of her BMW. We sit and wait until she’s gone and then Ian asks, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t want to see Sonja. I don’t trust myself.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m leaving.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘My mother’s house, I guess. She’s not there so I can have some time alone. That’s something I never seem to have.’

‘Good — go, then.’

‘What about you? Can you manage OK?’

Ian nods. ‘We start the Christmas break in two days. I can manage.’

I look at the dried blood on his face. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right — I shouldn’t have done that. Christ.’

Ian shrugs. ‘Look after yourself. E-mail me sometime.’

‘You remember when I said that you had it easy? That you didn’t know what it was like to be with someone, so you didn’t understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘I feel the same way. I don’t feel like I’m with anyone.’

I get into my jeep and drive home wondering what I shall do if Sonja is there. The house is empty. I go upstairs and begin to pack my stuff but I can’t work out what I need. Clothes, boots, razor, the pairs of bright-red plastic ear plugs, jacket. I can’t think. Twenty years. Is this what I should be doing? This thing that I’m doing - can it be undone? I think I’ll want to come back, but will I be able to? My hands are trembling, jumping among my clothes. I carry the hold-all to the front door and set it down on the tiled floor. I unplug the mobile text-phone and cram it into the bag. I look around, at the paintings and mirrors, statues and majestic deck, as if at objects unfamiliar, as if saying goodbye, then grab the hold-all and leave, double-locking the door behind me. Twenty years I’ve lived with Sonja - half a lifetime. Ten years I’ve lived in this house. I throw the bag into the Jeep and drive off without looking back.