Lindsey Kelk - I Heart Forever

Making it to the bathroom without breaking my neck was almost as impressive as making it through my day without self-medicating. For the first two weeks of Alex’s trip, I’d done such a good job of taking care of the apartment. I put dirty clothes in the wash bin and I put clean clothes back in the wardrobe. I put dirty dishes in the dishwasher and I put clean ones back in the cupboard. I ate proper meals at proper meal times, slept in my bed, and limited myself to two episodes of This Is Us per evening. But that was a long time ago. Now the place looked like a crime scene. Empty cups and takeaway cartons gathered in tiny huddles at either end of the settee and empty crisp packets had been carefully smoothed out and stacked up on the coffee table next to all of Alex’s letters and postcards. And, if you looked very carefully, you could actually follow the trails of socks, shoes, jeans, several bras and the odd pair of pants all the way around the apartment and see where I’d been. David Attenborough would have had a field day.

I leaned back against the toilet cistern and stared wistfully at the beautiful roll-top bath that had won my heart when we first moved in. If only the day could be saved by a soak in the tub.

‘Couldn’t hurt to try,’ I reasoned, waddling across the room with my jeans still around my ankles and turning on the taps. I missed Alex, but part of me loved living alone, even if I was reverting to some kind of wild, pantsless animal.

Leaving the rest of my clothes in a puddle by the side of the bath, I grabbed Alex’s robe from the back of the door and toddled into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Food was not love and it could not solve my problems, but it was delicious, and we hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner so snacks felt justified. I’d emailed Mason on the way home, asking if we could meet tomorrow after work to discuss DumpGate, or rather so I could convince him to bring Operation Proposal forward and head any dumpings off at the gate. There was no need to tell him exactly what Jenny had said; all I needed to do was encourage him to put a ring on her fourth finger before she flipped him off with the middle one. Naturally, I’d suggested we conduct this conversation at Tiffany.

And then I remembered.

When Louisa and Grace had come to visit for my birthday, they’d brought one of those massive slabs of Galaxy you can only get at the airport and, after eating half of it the second they left, then throwing it right back up two hours later, I’d made Alex break it up into little bars, wrap them in freezer bags, and hide them from me. I was almost certain there was still one left, wedged in between the ceiling and the top of the kitchen cabinets. For the first time in my life, my lack of restraint was about to pay off.

‘I should take up parkour,’ I muttered, hurling myself onto the kitchen top and wobbling upright. The belt of Alex’s dressing gown swung around my knees as I felt along the top of the cabinets, hoping against hope that the chocolate would still be there. And only the chocolate. The last thing I needed was another nasty surprise, especially something cockroach-shaped.

Or washing-machine shaped.

Just as my fingertips hit Galaxy pay dirt, a deafening crash thundered through my ceiling, blowing up a world of dust and dirt. Coughing, blinking, and clinging to my kitchen cupboards – and the chocolate bar – for dear life, I waited for the literal dust to settle, my heart pounding in my chest. There, not six feet away from me, was a washing machine, sat right in the middle of my kitchen. And while we did need a new washing machine, I really would have preferred it if one hadn’t just crashed through my ceiling from the apartment above.

‘Angela?’

I looked up through the smoky hole to see Lorraine and Vi, the couple who lived upstairs, staring down at me with their hands covering their faces.

‘Are you standing on the kitchen counter?’ Vi asked, peeking through her fingers.

‘Did your washing machine just come through my kitchen ceiling?’ I replied, gripping the Galaxy more tightly than ever before.

‘Um, sorry about that,’ Lorraine pushed her clear acrylic glasses frames back up her nose as she spoke. ‘Are you OK?’

I rubbed a layer of dirt and dust from my face and looked at the hand holding on to the chocolate bar. I was shaking.

‘Absolutely fine,’ I assured them. Stiff upper lip and all that. ‘Are you both all right?’

‘That was really intense,’ Vi gripped Lorraine’s arm tightly. ‘I came in to see what the noise was and there it was in the middle of the kitchen and I’m thinking, what is the washing machine doing in the middle of the kitchen? And then boom! Jesus, what if it had exploded? What if I’d fallen through the ceiling too?’

‘Yeah, I was quite surprised as well,’ I replied. ‘And, you know, right underneath it.’

‘Should we call someone? Do you need to go to the hospital? Is it going to blow up?’ Lorraine suggested, looking at Vi for confirmation. Vi looked at me and I looked back. Lawyers, both of them. Degrees from Harvard. And as much good in a crisis as a pair of chocolate teapots.

‘I think I’m all right and it’s pretty late.’ And I’ve had four cocktails, I added silently. ‘No one died. Maybe we can sort it out in the morning?’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed with a sigh of relief. ‘That sounds good. We’re like, sorry?’

I was still stood there, frozen on the kitchen counter and not entirely sure if I was going to be able to get down. I wasn’t quite sure what the proper etiquette was for when someone’s washing machine fell through your kitchen ceiling but I was fairly certain it should include at least one cup of tea.

‘Angela?’ Vi said.

Ahh, here’s the offer of tea. I smiled graciously at the redhead above.

‘Your robe is kind of open.’ She waved her hand awkwardly up and down her body. ‘Just, so you know.’

‘OK, thanks,’ I said, yanking it shut and tying the belt in a tight knot under my boobs.

Both women slowly backed away from the gaping hole, leaving me perched on my dusty kitchen top, chocolate bar in one hand, cupboard handle in the other. I stared at the washing machine embedded in the floor, surrounded by broken tiles, rubble and shards of shiny wet floorboards with soapy water slowly leaking out around the somehow still intact glass door. Even though my kitchen had been destroyed, and even though I clearly could have been killed, all I could think about was what was in the washing machine and did the girls need it for the morning?

Very, very, very slowly, I clambered down from the kitchen top, careful not to stand on anything stabby, and tiptoed back into the bathroom, checking my heart rate on my Fitbit as I went.

‘Would you look at that, it’s up,’ I noted as I turned off the taps. Instead of fighting with my hastily tied belt knot, I yanked Alex’s robe over my head and tossed it on top of my day clothes before stepping into the hot water, opening the freezer bag and pulling out the bar of milk chocolate. I sank into the bath and let my hair soak around my shoulders before chomping down on the Galaxy. There was no time to break off individual squares, this was an emergency.

‘Still,’ I said to absolutely no one. ‘At least tomorrow has to be better than today.’

The Tuesday morning team meeting was usually a pretty pleasant affair. After the madness of Monday when we sent the magazine to print, most people were either too exhausted or too hungover to kick up much of a fuss. And most importantly, I always brought donuts. Even as the editor, I was not above bribery.

Megan, my senior beauty editor, took the seat beside me and grabbed a delicious-looking, pink-frosted donut. I reached out to nab one before they were all gone, but before I could reach the box, my stomach turned. I hesitated. Too many cocktails and an entire bar of Galaxy was not a balanced meal but I was so hungry. Why hadn’t I got bagels? Or pizza? Or pizza bagels?