Free The Furies: A Novel by Natalie Haynes Page B

it. Can’t I hear them, she said, banging on the walls. I told her of course I can’t, I’m fucking deaf. And if the bass isn’t turned right up, I can’t hear that either. Jesus. I told her I’d turn it off, if it was upsetting everyone so much. She said, you don’t have to do that, just turn it down a bit. I swear to God, sometimes, there is literally no point talking to her at all.
    So, here are two things I have noticed. One is that we all talk a lot more now Alex is our whatever she is. Teacher? Therapist? Responsible adult? Especially me. I don’t think I have ever said as much since I got to Rankeillor as I did today. Which is OK. The second thing is that Alex doesn’t come in on Fridays. I thought she just didn’t have our group that day, but she isn’t there at all. Does she just not feel like working five days a week? Or does she have another job to go to? Miss Allen used to be there on Fridays, though, so something’s changed.
    And before I sign off for today, I said I’d come up with a tenth fact about being deaf. So here it is: I have to watch TV with the subtitles on, because the sound mix of pretty much every programme and film is so fucking bad. If I turned my aids up high enough to hear people talking, I’d be almost bleeding from the ears when something blows up, or a plane takes off, or the music kicks in. It’s the same at the cinema. I have to go to screenings with subtitles, because the sound at the top end is way too loud. And the surround sound they have at some cinemas is even worse. My hearing aids don’t work very well when noise comes from lots of different directions at once. It’s like they’re not expecting it. I don’t ever watch the news. If you want to know why, turn the sound off, and put the subtitles on. It’s literally gibberish half the time.
    The next time I saw that group I wasn’t feeling well at all. I’d made my first trip back to London the previous Friday. Wait a minute, the lawyers will say. You said before that you didn’t want to be in London. That you were hoping never to go back there again. It’s in our notes. That’s what you said. So, Miss Morris, why did you return to London only a couple of weeks after you’d left the city, of your own volition? I don’t know if they’ll use words like volition, obviously. But my guess is that they will. I’d almost be disappointed if they didn’t. There’s really no point going into Law if you aren’t going to say ‘volition’ from time to time.
    And as with everything else, I’ll have to tell them the truth. Though it will be hard to explain in a way that makes sense to anyone else. Once a fortnight, or sometimes once a week, depending on how much money I had going spare and how much I needed to do it, I would sit on a train for four and a half hours to go somewhere I didn’t want to be. I never contacted any of my friends in the city, nor my mother in the suburbs. I never spent the night; I always caught the five-thirty train back. Why that one? Because the six o’clock is the last train, and it’s always too busy. So the five thirty is better.
    And what did I do when I got to London? Went for a walk. Always the same route, always the same time, then back onto the train and back to Edinburgh. I realise that at no point in this process do I think of, or describe, either London or Edinburgh as home. I spent three hours in London each time, and then left. And if they ask me why I did this every week, or every fortnight, I will have no better answer than this: because I had to.

 
    5
    ‘Hello there.’ Three of them came in and sat in their usual seats. Ricky had barely sat down before he restarted his campaign to colour in the cover of every book he owned. This time, Annika and Carly were missing. ‘Where are the others?’
    ‘I don’t know about Annika, but Carly has the flu. She’ll be off for a couple of days,’ said Mel, quickly.
    ‘You look tired, miss,’ said Jono. ‘No