Same Time Next Week

Chapter 2

‘Do you think you will be able to do anything with him?’ the woman asked Sky, her voice, her eyes, her whole expression full of hope. The teddy bear in Sky Urban’s hands had been savaged by a puppy who had found its way into an upstairs room and taken the teddy from the bed. It had been her son’s, she explained. A soldier, killed on active service in Afghanistan. Everything she had of his had multiplied in emotional value since that terrible day in 2010. She had kept his room as a shrine, because she couldn’t bear to move anything and she knew it was daft but sometimes when she went in there, she could – even for a blessed moment – believe that he was at college, studying for his A-levels and in a few hours he’d come bouncing in to raid the fridge before his tea.

‘I’m sure I can make him as good as new. I’ll use the torn pieces as stuffing so nothing will be thrown away. He’ll be intact,’ said Sky. She could match the fur, no problem and the eye, because it wasn’t one of the really old teddies. These ones had been widely available and in monetary terms were worth very little, but to Mrs Pettifer, the teddy was priceless.

‘If you could, it would mean everything. It was his favourite. It went everywhere with him once upon a time,’ said the woman, her throat constricted with emotion and her eyes shiny with gathering tears. Sky imagined there was a bottomless pit of them shed and waiting to be shed over her boy. The woman sniffed, embarrassed at getting all upset about a toy, but Sky understood. Her only child’s essence was pressed into it, his boyhood sleeps, his kisses and breath. She’d be giving her back so much more than a mended bear.

‘You trust him with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a ring when he’s done.’

‘Thank you.’ The woman’s hand stretched out, squeezed Sky’s, a gesture that was weighted with gratitude. She turned, walked towards the door, and as she went through it, another customer came in before it had shut. Sky recognised her, of course; not a customer after all. Assured and glamorous: Erin, the repair shop owner’s wife. Mrs van der Meer was always polite and nice to Sky, but there was something about her that put Sky on edge. Maybe it was the fact that Sky was secretly in love with her husband and as such, found it hard to look her in the eye.

‘Hello, Sky, is he about?’ Erin smiled at her, dark pink lipstick perfectly applied. Today she had a beautiful pea green coat on, obviously expensive. She always dressed so brightly, so confidently.

‘He’s in the office, shall I get—’

‘No, it’s okay, I’ll find him.’

Erin headed for the office. She didn’t wear a wedding ring; neither of them did. And whenever Erin came into the shop, which was rarely, Bon greeted her as if she were an old friend he hadn’t seen for ages, rather than the wife he’d be going home to later. It was most odd.

‘Only me,’ said Erin, pushing open the office door.

Hearing whose voice it was, Bon van der Meer turned around, stood up from his desk and embraced her. ‘Well hello there. Nice of you to drop by. Coffee?’

‘No thanks. I’m all coffee-ed out today. Oh, go on then.’

Bon smiled. ‘Your arm never did take much twisting. Caramel or vanilla? I’ve got a new machine I want to show off.’ He opened up a drawer where there was a stack of coffee pods and waited for her response.

‘Just give me an espresso if your fancy gadget can manage it,’ said Erin. She watched him choose a pod, open the machine then load it in carefully. Everything that Bon’s hands touched was treated with care: everything . The machine began to make a series of strange noises.

‘The downside is that it sounds as if it’s being strangled,’ said Bon, waiting for it to perform. It delivered and he handed the mug of dark liquid over. ‘There you go.’

‘Thank you. I gather you didn’t get your post before you came to work today.’

Bon shook his head. ‘Nothing arrived, why?’

Erin reached into her handbag and pulled out an envelope. ‘Decree Absolute. We are officially no longer married.’

Bon froze for so long that Erin hooted.

‘God, Bon, you actually looked disappointed for a moment there.’

‘I… I knew it was coming but… I’d put it to the back of my mind. Oh my days.’ Bon gave his head a shake as if to shoo away the shock. ‘I don’t know what to say. Come here.’

He cleared the distance between them in two strides and put his arms around her again. Erin let herself savour his hold. He was such a strong man, physically and mentally, a wonderful human being. Why couldn’t we choose who to love , she thought for the hundredth time at least.

‘You’ll be able to find yourself a good woman now,’ said Erin, when he had released her. ‘One who doesn’t leave you for another woman.’ She cocked her head towards the outside of the office in the general direction of young Sky’s station.

‘If you mean what I think you mean, don’t be silly.’

Erin did mean exactly that because she knew him, probably better than he knew himself. But then wasn’t that always the case, she thought, that others could see in us what we couldn’t see in ourselves? She hadn’t a clue who she was any more.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ said Erin in a low voice.

‘She’s also half my age.’

‘You don’t look fifty-two.’

‘I’m forty-nine – just. As you know, so don’t be cheeky.’

They both grinned at each other.

‘You must find yourself someone too,’ said Bon, perching on the edge of his desk.

Erin took a sip of coffee before replying to him.

‘I want a long rest from all that relationship stuff, Bon.’

‘I meant in time; you don’t need to rush anything. Don’t risk making a mistake because you’re mixed up or lonely,’ he said.

She didn’t say that she was a walking mistake and that’s why she intended to keep her distance from anyone who might knock on the door of her heart. It hadn’t been a mistake to leave Bon, because she’d married him for the wrong reasons. She liked everything about him; he ticked every box on her sheet apart from the one that weighed more than all the others. She loved him – as a friend, a brother even, but she had never been in love with him and she had really tried to be. She’d known from the off that there was no one better to have your back than Bon van der Meer and she had hoped that in time, she would have felt what she should have felt for him, but she couldn’t. But she regretted the way she had left him – and for whom. She’d hurt him and she would do anything to heal the damage she had done him.

‘Seriously, are you doing all right?’ asked Bon.

She wished she could tell him the truth, but she shouldn’t. She’d promised herself that she’d lie in the bed she’d made and not burden anyone else with the fallout. Bon, above anyone, didn’t need to know.

‘Honestly’— ha — ‘I’m fine.’

‘Should we go out and… celebrate? Is that what people in our position do?’ asked Bon.

‘No, we absolutely shouldn’t celebrate the end of the mess I caused.’

‘Oh, shush now,’ said Bon, spotting the faint tremor in her voice, not so expertly disguised.

‘I’m only glad we managed to do it without arguing over the air-fryer and the toilet brush,’ Erin joked.

Bon affected an affronted look. ‘Oh I don’t know, I’m still bitter that you took the toilet brush.’ He was kidding, of course. They’d both taken nothing from their marriage that they hadn’t brought to it.

‘It feels like the end of something, doesn’t it?’ said Erin. Even though we ended a long time ago.

‘Or maybe it feels like the beginning of something else, something better. Change is always scary,’ said Bon. ‘And you know I will be the first to wish that you find the happiness you should have. You’ve been through the mill a bit, haven’t you, bokkie ?’

Erin smiled at the name he’d always called her, a South African endearment, but it brought a rush of tears to her eyes as well because she didn’t deserve his sympathy, his kindness. She took another drink of coffee to stop her letting everything out because Bon hadn’t a clue how much she’d been through and she didn’t ever want him to. Bon, he was well-named; a good person. She wished that he would meet someone who fitted him like his missing other half, before she would wish herself the same. Sometimes Bon’s innate goodness was so painful to be around, it burned her like light from a pure sun.

‘Have you told Sky about us?’

‘No. Why should I?’ said Bon.

‘Does she still think we’re married married?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t discussed it. Why would I?’

‘Oh, Bon. Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

She didn’t ask why, she knew what he was like. He wouldn’t have wanted to tell anyone his marriage was over until it was signed and stamped absolute. He was a man of order, of straight lines, unlike her: she was chaos personified. But she did wonder if there was a little part of him that suspected Sky had a crush on him, and clinging to his married status was an added layer of protection against her because he would see her as young and fragile and he wasn’t a man to put his own needs before anyone else’s. Yes, there were twenty-two and a bit years between them, but there had been six years more of an age difference between her own mother and father and they’d been very happy all their long married life.

‘Well now you can tell whoever you like,’ Erin said to him.

‘In my own time. I’m not one for spreading my business to people who have no need of it,’ he answered her.

Erin knew that Sky tensed whenever she visited; it wasn’t her imagination and she knew why that was: her intuition was strong and to be trusted. It had been screaming at her for over two years and she’d chosen to ignore it and look where that had got her.

‘You work quite closely together with the people here. I thought it might have cropped up in a conversation.’

Bon replied to that with nothing more than a shrug, just as the clock on the wall chimed the three-quarters of the hour.

‘Okay, gotta go. I’ll see you soon… ex-husband.’

She said it as a joke, but the words hung in the air as discordant bells. ‘Ex-husband’ sounded as if they were now put further at a distance. She felt a rise of tears within her and she and turned and left before they fell.

In the shop, Sky was talking to a woman with long, salon-perfect ash-blonde hair; or rather, she was being talked at. There was a brunette with her who was less glossy; a grateful sidekick, Erin guessed. Her spidey senses kicked in, so she didn’t leave immediately. She could hang around another five minutes to find out why the blonde woman was smiling and squawking like a seagull who had just found a discarded portion of still-warm chips, but Sky wasn’t reciprocating any joy. She browsed one of the shelves full of the teddy bears that Sky had made. She picked one up and pressed it; it really was lovely, just the right amount of squash factor and its face was so adorable.

‘I was just passing and I thought I’d bring in my friend Helen to see this place,’ the blonde was saying. ‘We’ve just had a lovely afternoon tea in the teashop over there and I said, you must go in and see the repair shop and Sky and her bears.’

‘I didn’t know this Spring Square… thing existed till Angel said. So it’s a repair shop then, is it? Like on the TV?’ Brunette Helen looked around, taking it all in: the work benches down both sides busy with projects in progress, the grand hand-carved counter by the door and Sky’s unit with the sign she’d painted bearing her company name: ‘Sky Bears’.

‘What do they mend?’

‘They restore anything if they can: furniture, toys—’

‘Oooh, sorry, restore ,’ brunette Helen cut in, duly corrected and gave her own hand a small slap.

Bitch , thought Erin. She knew her type.

‘And aren’t these amazing,’ blonde Angel was saying. She had the sort of voice that made Erin want to cover her ears to save them from being perforated. Sky’s bears were amazing but the blonde still managed to inject a syringe full of something derisory into the compliment.

‘Sky and I were friends at school,’ the blonde was explaining to her counterpart and Erin noticed the odd weight she laid on the word ‘friends’. She also noticed there was no affirmation of that from Sky, who was standing stock still, tolerating what looked like major discomfort. There was a flush blooming on her cheeks, showing easily on her pale skin.

‘Yes, I remember you telling me all about her,’ said Helen, turning her attention fully to Sky.

‘We grew up in a very odd time, didn’t we, Sky? Under the shadow of the Pennine Prowler. Some more under it than others.’ Angel smiled sweetly.

‘Your dad made toy bears as well, I heard. How lovely that you’re following in his footsteps.’ Helen smiled sweetly.

There was something off about this conversation, Erin was sure of it. Something sly and secretive floating under the words like a multi-toothed predator hiding just below the surface of the water. She’d seen and heard enough now, because she had no idea what was going on here but she would bet the blonde had never been a ‘friend’ of Sky’s. More than likely one of those awful class bitches you hoped you’d never bump into again. Every schoolgirl had one of those. She stepped briskly forwards with the teddy bear still in her hand and put it on the counter, forcing sidekick Helen to step back.

‘Excuse me, but I’m in rather a hurry. I wonder if I could buy this,’ Erin said, her tone deliberately clipped as if annoyed at being kept waiting. They got the message.

‘Oh, we’ll… er… go. Nice to see you again, Sky. You take good care.’

‘And you,’ returned Sky, the words forcibly pushed out of her by an automated politeness reflex.

Erin waited until the women had gone before she spoke again. She saw the tension drop out of Sky’s shoulders when the door shut behind them.

‘I’m gathering that was the sort of friend you could live without,’ Erin said, hunting in her bag for her purse.

‘You could say that.’ Sky gave a little smile, wary and wobbly. ‘Thank you for butting in.’ She picked up the teddy to put back on the shelf.

‘No, no, I really want it,’ said Erin.

‘Really? You sure?’

‘You look shocked to have made a sale.’ Or did she just look shocked to have made a sale to me, Erin thought.

‘I’m always shocked, to be honest. There’s so much work in them, I can’t charge any less than I do.’

‘Nor should you. You don’t have to explain that to me; I can tell.’ It wasn’t a line.

‘This is one of my favourites.’ Sky held up the bear, smiling at it as if saying a silent goodbye. Then she took some tissue paper out of the drawer. ‘He’s called Peter.’

‘Yes, I saw the embroidered name tag. He’s lovely.’

Peter had lining in his waistcoat and a tiny pencil sitting inside a top pocket with a red silk handkerchief. The amount of detail was nuts.

Sky folded the tissue carefully around the bear.

Erin produced her bank card.

‘Has that woman been in before?’

‘Yup. I try and swerve her if I can. I just wasn’t quick enough today.’

‘If you have a problem with anyone, you just go and find Bon and he’ll see them off for you,’ said Erin, in earnest. She couldn’t imagine Sky being the sort of person to tell someone to do one. Erin had always been able to do that, at least in this kind of scenario. She was a human Dalek: dalekanium outer shell; a jellified, blobby, pathetic mess within.

‘Thank you, Mrs van der Meer.’

Erin didn’t know whether to tell her or not, that she wasn’t really Mrs van de Meer, despite that still being her official name, but something stopped her. It had been Bon’s decision not to say, for his own reasons, and she should respect that. Maybe that’s what she had done to him, made him more guarded about what he gave away of himself.

It had been a big bone of contention with Carona that Erin still used her married name. It was one of many bones of contention, actually. She had insisted that when they were married, Erin had to take her name, even though Erin had decided when she was finally divorced, she would go back to her maiden name of Flaxton and stay a Flaxton. She had never told Carona, but she’d felt more protected being Mrs van der Meer, as if some of Bon’s strength was embedded in the name, like a shield to hide behind.

Erin forced Carona out of her head and her attention back to Sky.

‘Well, thank you for Peter. He will be treasured. I have the ideal person in mind to give him to.’ Erin hoped the sale and her rescue mission had helped at least a little to break down whatever wall stood between them. There had never been a reason for it to exist.

‘I hope they like it.’ Sky said.

‘I know they will.’ Because it’s for me.

Erin walked out of the shop with her purchase. What a strange, unsettling day, she thought. Too many changes to get used to in too short a time. She should be feeling some peace now, some solid ground beneath her feet, but today’s news had set her back. She knew what she needed to do to start regrouping, but it wasn’t so easy to turn over and expose your soft underbelly, when all your self-protective instincts were screaming at you to do quite the opposite.