I tried Jake’s mobile a dozen times last night at the height of the kitchen-waterfall scenario, but it kept going straight to voicemail. Probably just as well. He might not have seen me as the helpless victim in this, but as a stark raving loony. When I’d eventually convinced my brain to shut off the bath taps, I nearly got in the car and drove round to Pip’s but that would have seemed too, too desperate even though I was. Instead, I just left the whole, dripping mess as it was and crawled into bed and sobbed.

I try Jake’s number again, but he is still determined to be unavailable. I feel like hurling the thing at the wall, but I’ve probably done enough damage for one day. Instead, I flick through the Yellow Pages, dialling a dozen different numbers until I find an electrician who is actually willing to come out on a Saturday morning. Then I go upstairs to the airing cupboard and dig out as many old towels as possible and start the ignoble business of mopping up. I can’t even make a cup of tea first to gird my loins—I’d have to paddle to the flaming kettle.

The electrician eventually turns up and tuts a lot. His overalls say SPARKY on the rather grubby breast-pocket, but he doesn’t seem very sparky to me. Nor is he the gorgeous, toned electrician with come-to-bed eyes of my dreams. He is a crusty old bugger with a bald head and wire-wool hair coming out of his ears. Monica had her wooden floor fitted by a man who could have been a reincarnation of Adonis, and Charlotte says the man who fixes her washing machine looks like Heath Ledger. All my domestic engineers fall woefully below the mark.

‘Where’s your fuse box?’

‘Er…’ Fuse-changing has always been Jake’s department. Isn’t that how it is in most households?

He rolls his eyes in despair and I refrain from asking him does his wife know where their fuse box is—but then I hope she had the sense to leave him years ago and isn’t still saddled with a husband as miserable as this.

Sparky wanders out of the kitchen and I trail behind him until he finds the elusive fuse box—which is in the cupboard under the stairs. Who’d have thought it. My surly saviour turns off the electricity. He tuts a lot more at the kitchen light fitting and then unscrews it, grunting and puffing as he does. ‘It’s wet,’ he says profoundly.

‘Really.’ I seem to remember giving him that expert diagnosis on the phone.

‘Needs to dry out.’

‘I expect so.’

‘Could take a few days.’

‘A few days?’

My electrician shrugs. ‘You could stand on a chair with a hairdryer at it.’