When she is out running on her own, she listens to her Walkman. If she is running with Arnold, she doesn’t, he gets annoyed if she does. Even though they don’t talk while they run, she can’t listen to it because it takes her to a place where he isn’t, where she can lose herself in something he can’t hear and she disappears to him. He will race ahead of her to demonstrate what he thinks of her Walkman, and she will turn it off and accelerate to catch up with him and she will shout:

‘I’m not listening to it anymore! Look, Arnold!’ she will call out, showing him her earphones hanging loose around her neck. She experiences a silent, undefined failure to thrive. Thoughts are stirring, thoughts are stirring inside Ida.