Fierce Fragile Hearts by Sara Barnard

Author:Sara Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

20

‘Keep Breathing’

Ingrid Michaelson

The good thing is that I don’t spiral. I take the memory, exploded into my head, and deal with it, talking it through with Sarah and then Erin, my counsellor. This is progress, I decide. I can be blindsided by my own repressed memories and not fall apart. A small victory, but one that matters.

December arrives as the weather turns icy cold, and I learn how bad my flat is at retaining heat. Looking through my clothes for the best layering options, I find Matt’s hoodie, the one I’d stolen from his hotel in Hastings. It’s big enough that it fits me whatever I’m wearing underneath so I snuggle into it, happily, every evening I’m alone. Rosie and I finally pin down a time for me to come and visit her in Norwich, and her excitement when we talk about it on the phone is enough to chase away my nerves that it’ll go the same way as Warwick.

Everything is going pretty great, all things considered, and I’m washing up at the sink, thinking idly about how I need to book the coach to Norwich, when the water from the tap slows to a useless trickle.

‘Great,’ I mutter, turning the handle ineffectually, trying the hot and then the cold with no success. I stand there for a moment, chewing my lip, then drop to my knees and open the cupboard door under the sink. It’s the first time I’ve opened this particular cupboard since moving in, and I take in the collection of dusty cleaning products, presumably left behind by the previous tenant, before moving them aside.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I gamely run my hand over the length of the piping, trying to figure out what the problem could be. A blockage somewhere, right? My fingers are suddenly wet. Ah. I lean into the cupboard, trying to find the source. I can see water leaking out from the edge of some kind of gluey gunk, which is spread around what looks like a valve in a pipe. Someone has obviously tried fixing this problem before.

I’m wondering whether I should send a whiny email to my letting agency, fiddling with the site of the leak in a vague attempt to see if I can stop it, when it happens. Something gives under my fingers and a jet stream of water explodes out from under the sink, hitting me full force in the face.

Obviously, I scream. And then I panic.

The thing is, the water won’t stop. No matter how much I shriek and flail at the pipes with my hands, it just keeps gushing. I’m drenched. The floor is drenched. The bottles of cleaning products are swimming in the growing lake on the kitchen floor.

‘Stop – just – fucking—’ I manage to get a hold of two pipes and hold them together, which does next to nothing. There’s water everywhere. And it’s still coming.

Turn the water off. That’s what I should do. I wipe my wet hands on my soaking jeans and run to the boiler.

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