Fernandes worked in a boutique not far from her home in Ladbroke Grove. "I remember being in hospital and getting Mum to call in sick because I thought I was going to be there later on," she recalled. Instead, she spent her entire summer in hospital, which for her "felt like years". The incident would leave her permanently scarred and change her relationship with her body. The "traumatic and difficult" operations after the fire included a skin graft, which saw skin from her leg taken to rejuvenate the damaged skin on her arm. This was more emotionally taxing for her than the scars from the fire itself due to it being purposely inflicted rather than an accident. "It just didn't look how my legs looked and my legs had been one of my favourite parts of my body," she explained.