It’s three in the morning and Hackney is having another one of its nights. The siren starts low, then climbs until it feels like it’s coming through the wall. I know the pattern now. Ambulance first, then police, then the fire engine that always seems to take the long way round. They overlap sometimes, this messy chorus that never quite finishes. I used to sit up in bed and listen like it was a soundtrack. Now I just lie there with my eyes shut and wait for it to pass.
The foxes start up next. They sound like they’re being murdered in the alley behind the flats. High, broken screams that bounce off the brick. I used to think it was exciting, proof I had made it out of Basildon and into the proper city. Proper chaos. Proper life. These days it just makes my jaw clench. I reach for the vape on the bedside table without opening my eyes. Cherry tonight. The first pull is too harsh and I cough into the pillow.
Down the street two voices are going at it. Proper drunk, proper loud. One of them is shouting about Palestine again. I catch fragments through the thin glass. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, mate.” Then the other one laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. I used to throw the window open and join in. Not even joking. There was a night last winter when I leaned out in my hoodie and told them both to shut up because some of us had deadlines. They told me to fuck off and I told them the same back and we all ended up laughing. That version of me feels like a different person now.
I moved here six years ago with two suitcases and a head full of plans. Hackney was meant to be the place where everything happened. The protests, the late-night pitches, the group chats that never slept. I wanted the noise. I thought it matched the way my brain worked. Permanently switched on, permanently a bit furious, permanently ready with a take. The first few months I barely slept and I loved it. I would walk home from the Overground at one in the morning and feel like the whole borough was keeping me company. Sirens, foxes, arguments, the distant bass from a flat three streets over. It felt like proof I was alive.
Something shifted around the time I turned twenty-seven. I can’t pinpoint the exact week. One night I just noticed I was tired in a way that sleep didn’t fix. The same sounds that used to spark something now just sat on my chest. I started keeping the window closed even in summer. I bought cheap earplugs that made my ears ache. I tried those white noise apps that promise ocean waves or rain and ended up hating the fake calm more than the real racket.
The Coven chat still lights up at stupid hours. Someone will drop a voice note about a leak or a new culture-war row and my phone will buzz against the wood of the bedside table. I used to answer immediately. Now I let it sit. Sometimes I pick it up anyway because the silence inside my own head is worse. That’s the part nobody talks about. The city noise is one thing. The noise you carry around with you is another. Pitches I haven’t sent. Threads I started and abandoned. The little voice that says I should be writing something important instead of lying here listening to drunk men shout about geopolitics they read on Instagram.
I get up sometimes. Bare feet on the laminate, blue nails catching the streetlight that leaks through the blinds. I make another oat-milk flat white even though I know it will keep me up. The machine gurgles like it’s judging me. I stand at the kitchen window and watch the street. A fox trots past like it owns the place. Two lads in puffer jackets are still going, voices hoarse now. A bus hisses to a stop even though it’s the middle of the night. Hackney doesn’t believe in last orders.
When I go home to Basildon the difference hits me like a slap. Mum’s street after ten is dead. Proper dead. You can hear the telly from next door if they have it up loud, or the occasional car, but that’s it. No sirens. No foxes screaming. No strangers having political rows at volume eleven. The first night I stay over I lie in my old room and feel almost panicked by the quiet. My brain keeps waiting for the next sound that never comes. I end up opening the window just to let some air in, then closing it again because the silence feels too big.
Mum still does the roast every other Sunday. I drive down on the Saturday night now more often than I used to. She doesn’t ask why. She just puts an extra Yorkshire pudding on my plate and tells me I look tired. I am tired. The kind of tired that sits in your bones. I used to think I could outrun it by staying busy. More threads, more pitches, more nights with the laptop glowing at 3 a.m. It turns out you can’t outrun a city that refuses to shut up, especially when your own head is just as loud.
There was a night last month when it all piled on at once. Siren, foxes, the argument downstairs that turned into someone kicking a bin. I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and felt my pulse in my throat. I thought about packing a bag and getting on the first train in the morning. Not forever. Just for a few days of that Basildon quiet that used to bore me. I didn’t go. I made another coffee instead and opened the document I was meant to be writing. The words wouldn’t come. They rarely do when the city is this awake.
I used to tell people I thrived on the chaos. It was part of the brand. Loud Essex girl in the big city, always on, always ready. The truth is I don’t know how to switch off anymore. Even when I visit home the quiet only lasts until I pick up my phone. The Coven will have something. Twitter will have something. My own brain will have a dozen unfinished thoughts queued up like trains that never leave the station.
Sometimes I try to remember what actual quiet feels like. Not the absence of sirens, but the absence of that constant low-level alert. The last time I think I felt it was years ago, before I moved. Sitting in the garden at Mum’s after the roast, everyone gone inside, just the sound of the neighbour’s washing machine and a blackbird. I didn’t appreciate it then. I was too busy planning my escape.
Hackney has given me everything I thought I wanted. The work, the friends, the feeling that I’m in the middle of something. It has also taken the part of me that knew how to be still. I don’t blame the city. Cities aren’t built for stillness. They’re built for people like the version of me who arrived here with two suitcases and a point to prove. That version is still in here somewhere. She just doesn’t come out as often after dark.
I finish the vape and lie back down. The argument outside has moved on. One of the voices is singing now, badly. The foxes have gone quiet for a minute. Even the sirens have given it a rest. For about ninety seconds it is almost peaceful. Then a motorbike tears down the road and the whole thing starts again.
I don’t know what I would do with real quiet if I ever got it. I suspect I would fill it with something else. Another pitch. Another late-night scroll. Another conversation in the Coven about how the world is burning. That’s the joke, innit. I moved here because I didn’t want to switch off. Now I lie awake wanting the one thing the city cannot give me.
Dawn starts creeping in around half four. The light is grey and thin. A different set of birds takes over from the foxes. They sound almost polite compared to everything that came before. I watch the ceiling and think about the train times to Basildon. I could be there by lunchtime if I left now. Mum would have the kettle on before I even knocked. The house would smell of last night’s roast and Fairy liquid. It would be quiet in that specific way that only exists when the rest of the world is still asleep.
I don’t go. I stay where I am, phone face down, vape still warm in my hand. The city keeps doing what it does. I keep doing what I do. Neither of us knows how to stop. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe some of us aren’t built for the off switch. We just get better at pretending the noise is company.
The first bus of the morning rumbles past. I close my eyes and let it carry on without me.