One night, I heard a dripping tap. I asked my husband to check all the taps – upstairs bathroom, downstairs toilet, the kitchen. He assured me there were no dripping taps. He refused to check again. We argued. I checked. I desperately wanted to find the source of the noise. Nothing. What was that sound? Where was it coming from? I tried to ignore it. Then I was told.
My husband, a GP, explained – calmly, with all the understanding he could muster – that I had tinnitus, like Lara Williams (A moment that changed me: on the day of my first book deal, a mysterious hum overcame me, 6 August). How did I get it? Where had it come from? He couldn’t tell me. “It just comes,” he said. I hated him. I didn’t sleep at all that night, nor the night after. The noise was unbearable.
