COLD STARS AND BURST PIPES

I wanted to shout at the night sky. I don’t think it would have done any good, but I wanted the stars to hear it.

We had been close over the weekend. The solicitors had moved quickly, paperwork finally sorted; we’d drawn the funds and we were ready. We’d even got our friends ready to help us collect our stuff from the lockup on Wednesday. It looked like it was all coming perfectly together, just in time for Christmas. The miracle was on.

And then it wasn’t.

“Matt,” garbled the estate agent, “Basically there’s been a disaster at the top of the chain…”

My heart. My heart can’t take much more of this, I thought, staring at the road outside Malcolm’s front window. The cars were rushing by, the sky was December grey, and the Christmas lights twinkled with some sort of misplaced joy.

A burst pipe has flooded the house our vendors are buying. That means they’re stuck where they are, and so are we - if we are anywhere at all - for Christmas, perhaps for good. The delay might push beyond the end of our mortgage offer, meaning, well, meaning we might have to find somewhere else, rent, and almost certainly lose a lot of money. We went from twinkly Christmas joy to bleak midwinter in the blink and fizz of a tree bulb.

Worse, I had to tell Sammy, right away. I didn’t know how to do that; I knew how upset she would be, I knew the voices that would whisper in my head when she burst into tears. I knew how awful it would all sound when it came out of my mouth.

We’re so tired. My cheeks are lined with tears and I have no clue how to turn this back to thanks and rejoicing, despite everyone we know urging us to do that. I wish I were a better Christian, more resilient, more focused on heaven than home somehow, less strainable. But I’m not. I’m hotheaded and angry, and emotional and stressed. I stand outside my father-in-law’s house and I shout at the sky.

The stars looked back, cold and silent.