We have entered a new phase. Last night, for the first time since my noise war with Justin Clay started, my husband was away overnight. Which Mr Clay knew, because when Stuart’s at home his car is parked in one of the residents’ bays on the street rather than in Stansted airport’s short-stay or long-stay car park. I couldn’t sleep. Not that I’ve been sleeping particularly well since all this unpleasantness began, and since the house has been full of builders’ dust. Predictably, I have turned out to be far more sensitive to the dust than Stuart, who it seems is not very sensitive to anything. Most nights I find myself waking four or five times, either needing to cough or jerking to attention in a panic after dreaming that Mr Clay is playing choral music. Which, recently, he hasn’t been. Having told Pat Jervis he’d never done it in the first place, I knew he would stop completely for a while to make me wonder if he might have been telling the truth – if Pat could be right and I’d imagined the boys’ voices coming through my bedroom wall.
