That evening, after she tucked Emma in, she opened her laptop at the kitchen table and booked an online appointment with a therapist she’d found through a local recommendation group. It felt like a practical step, the kind a responsible adult took when sleep slipped away and days blurred at the edges.
In their first session, Lucy described the move, the old house, and the noises that came and went. She mentioned being on her own with Emma, the constant awareness of being the only adult in the building. The therapist listened, then spoke about adjustment, hypervigilance, the way tired minds stitched patterns into harmless sounds.