Silence, however, has its own language.

Ellen found me a place to stay when I finally went to King’s College, London, to study for a philosophy degree. She had an American friend, Caroline Speekes, who lived in a flat in one of the red-brick mansions behind Harrods, between Brompton Road and Sloane Street. Caroline said that I didn’t have to pay rent but my mother insisted. It was a huge flat and I had it to myself, apart from the few nights when Caroline stayed in town. She was a tall, gaunt woman of few words, which suited me. When she was there I'd go out and walk the streets until late, pretending social engagements.

London frankly terrified me — after all my years in Devon it seemed a mad place, fractured by movement. Buses jammed the streets, cars sat in metal ribbons, gridlocked, as black cabs shuddered and lights glared, neon flickered. There were people everywhere, strangers packing the tube, blocking the pavements, spewing out of shops and train stations. Always pushing, always shouldering. Courier bikes and cycles mounted pavements, swerving between pedestrians, always assuming everyone could hear their approach. Litter — foam cups, newspapers, bottles, plastic bags — swirled in the winds and the draughts from speeding trucks. There was always an excess, a true riot of colour — flower stalls spilling out of subways, shopfront displays of statues and spinning wheels, posters and billboards, graffiti sprayed in tags on walls. London moved too much for me -I couldn’t read it, I couldn’t read people and their lips.

Each morning I’d sit at the kitchen table in the flat, drinking coffee, reading the set texts, dreading the moment when I’d have to leave and walk through the lobby and out into the streets. For the first week I was at King’s I used the tube but the smell and motion, the crush of other people, made me nauseous. I could only stand in the middle of the carriages and clusters of Japanese tourists would gather round me, giggling, taking photographs of each other standing next to the English giant. So I began to walk to college. Each morning I stopped to look at the Houses of Parliament as I passed them and sometimes I wondered in which room the decision was made to send the troops into Northern Ireland, in which room the cheque was written to compensate me for my hearing. I knew why there was so much rubbish — all the litter-bins had been removed because bombs might be left in them. I also knew that there were plenty of other places for bombs to hide.

I went to all the lectures and seminars and, as ever, I was a conscientious student, a quiet student. I said nothing and I heard nothing. I’d sit in the cavernous lecture rooms, trying to follow the lecturers’ faces, follow their lips, but they’d turn away, write on the board and I’d lose the thread. I couldn’t make notes as they spoke so I tried to jot down words and look them up in the library afterwards. I asked the lecturers if they could give me notes to follow; some did, some didn’t.