A WOMAN who broke her back jumping from a window to escape an inferno which ripped through her flat has left hospital and moved into a new home.

Charlene Sutton, 28, and her boyfriend Kevin Parry, 41, jumped from their first-floor flat on Monk Street after fire ripped through their home, and the Sundarbon Bengal Cuisine restaurant below, and the Divalution salon on January 3.

Their flat was above the salon and they had only lived there for a few weeks.

Ms Sutton and Mr Parry now live in Monmouth, on Granville Street, where they have managed to secure a two-bedroom flat.

Any further work on Ms Sutton’s back must wait until blood clots found by doctors have dissolved. They delayed a planned operation last month.

She told the Argus her back is still troubling her and she is wearing a back brace indefinitely after a stay at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny.

“I’m in agony. I will get to see whether they decide to say if I need an operation either next week or the week after at the Royal Gwent Hospital [in Newport],” she said.

“I’m still having to see someone at Nevill Hall in a fortnight and have blood tests. Until these blood clots go they can’t operate.

“I have got to see if my back is in a brace but they will do X-rays. I will now have more when I go back to the Royal Gwent.”

But she said she is making progress walking again after six weeks in hospital and is taking several painkillers up to four times a day.

She said: “I have been doing it step by step in hospital and my flat is the ground floor flat.

“I found [the move] very stressful but I will get there.”

Although she said she found being in hospital for that stretch “really strange”, she praised “lovely, really good” staff at Nevill Hall Hospital.

Items have been donated to the couple by people on the Help the victims of the Monk Street fire Facebook page, These include a single bed, cutlery and crockery, and they are all being put to good use, Ms Sutton said.

A Monmouthshire council spokesman said traffic lights on Monk Street are expected to remain there for the foreseeable future and that a tin hat cover has been installed to cover the building.