(Isobel's point of view)
Fixing a tap, she thinks, is a small theology of return: you tighten a screw, you coax a stubborn washer back into place, and the world—momentarily—flows again as it ought. The idea sounds almost childish after the last week: a domestic rite against an apparatus that had nothing to do with headlines or watchers. It is exactly why she asks for it.
Etienne takes the toolbox with a theatrical seriousness that would have been comical if the moment were any grander. He sets it on the bathroom counter like a surgeon arranging instruments. Marcus and Sophie hover at the doorway—practical witnesses to an act that is part penance and part refusal. Isobel rolls up her sleeves. The metal of the sink is cool under her palms.
