Fear
Hazel's thinking about fear. Someone asked her today what she was
afraid of, and she couldn't think of anything to say. But she's worked
it out.
Hazel Harman is scared of silence.
Take right now, for example. Noone's talking, but there's still sound.
The filter on the fishtank that Abigail should be cleaning, Richard
eating crisps, her parent's are reading books and the noise of page
turning is louder than you'd think. And in the garden - birds, and
Abigail playing something involving running around like a lunatic with
some of her friends.
Living in a house with two parents and four siblings makes silence very
unlikely. It just doesn't happen - and so the unfamiliar heavy
oppressive lack of sound that is silence almost chokes her, until she
thinks she'll go mad.
On the very rare occasions that she is the only one in the house, she does anything possible to create sound.
Think about it.
Every time you're at home on your own when someone else walks in,
what's the first thing they ask you, Hazel? They ask you why you have
the radio and the television on, even though you obviously aren't
hearing either of them. And whenn you get up, if the house is deserted,
you put the kettle on.
What noise does that make, Hazel?
Remember your end-of-year exams, do you? "Silence" - breathing,
coughing, pens scratching, people searching their pencil cases - when
there's thirty of you to a room, it all adds up. Quite a stupid thing
to fear. Damn it, she thinks, and turns on the radio.