Same Time Next Week

Chapter 8

‘Careful, careful, you watch.’ Edek Urbaniak dipped a gloved hand into the bowl and scooped up the bubbles from the soap. He then gently worked it into the fur of the teddy bear in his other hand.

‘Only on the surface,’ he explained to his daughter. ‘Inside this bear, is very old wood wool and we must not get it wet or it will be very bad for him.’

His fingers were huge but gentle and that was the quality that Sky most associated with him, his gentleness.

He’d let her make the bear’s new ears. He’d shown her how to make a pattern from the old ravaged ones and choose the fabric which best matched the much-beloved centenarian toy. Then, when she’d finished them, he’d fastened them on with the tiniest of stitches.

‘When you mend a bear, you often mend a person too so you take the best care to get it right,’ said Edek, smoothing the lather onto the teddy’s fur, then wiping it away along with the residue of dirt.

It had looked an impossible task when the man had brought ‘Wellington’ in with his tattered ears, split paws and belly, grubby fur and half the stuffing escaped and yet here he was, rejuvenated and having a final rubdown, before being returned to the grateful hands of his original owner’s grandson.

‘There, look at him, Sky.’ Edek held up the bear, who appeared to be smiling just a little bit more than he had when she first saw him, even though that was impossible because the stitching at his mouth was one of the few things they hadn’t needed to touch. ‘He’s perfect. His ears are the best bit of all.’

Sky smiled because she knew they weren’t really, but her dad wanted her to feel that they were, because he was like that, a person who always considered the feelings of others before his own, before he’d descended into the spiral that dragged him down to the point of no resurfacing.

It was funny to see a man cry over a toy when he came to pick up the restored Wellington. She had seen the same reaction many times since but that first time always stuck in her mind. Like her father said, when you mend a bear, you often mend a person. But no one could mend him, not even her with all the skills he had taught her. She had never managed to make him whole again.

‘Penny for them,’ Bon said to Sky, pulling her out of her reverie.

‘You looked in another world there.’ He smiled at her and it brought a warmth to her chest that always arose whenever he addressed her or looked in her direction or breathed near her.

‘I was just thinking about something,’ she said, making light of it. But it wasn’t light stuff at all. Angel Sutton had the ability to do that, make her thoughts return to the past where even the best of her recollections were stained at the edges. She couldn’t think of her dad without thinking of the knotweed that had wrapped itself around him with an unrelenting hold and eventually killed him.

Angel should have been nothing to her now they were grown up, but childhood memories ran like deep cuts that refused to heal.

Angel had been the rich kid at school who’d had extravagant parties and so other girls sucked up to her. Her wealthy, entitled family had brought her up to think she was something above everyone anyway, but the fact that Sky Urbaniak remained resistant to her was a thorn in her side. Angel and her group of cronies would make fun of her because her school skirts came from the market and not from the proper uniform shop. And they thought she had a stupid foreign name. And she had really stupid pale skin and ‘see-through’ hair. It all calmed down a little when Sky’s mum died and she was given a temporary break; then it revved up again when old rumours were poked awake about the possibility of there being a second Pennine Prowler who was never caught. When Sky left school at sixteen and went to a different sixth-form college from that lot, she’d hoped she would never see any of them again. Every time she saw Angel, it reopened old wounds enough to feel fresh pain again and unsettled her for days.

‘There’s a birthday cake in my office,’ said Bon. ‘Tony’s wife sneaked it in, so in about ten minutes, I’m going to gather us all together.’

‘Aw, that’s nice,’ said Sky.

She could have listened to him speaking all day; she adored his accent. He’d been brought up in South Africa: the slight rolls of his ‘r’s, the hard consonants, especially at the ends of words, the distorted vowels; hardly any of it had been ironed out by years of living in England. Everything about Bon van der Meer was perfect: his gull-grey eyes, his lovely mouth, his shoulders, his dress sense, his thick steel-coloured hair that had just started to wave at the cut point and that he pushed back from his face with his strong, clever hands. Not conventionally handsome by pretty-boy standards maybe, but undeniably masculine. She loved him, she loved everything about him and she knew it was love, not a crush, not a pash, because there was no mistaking it.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked, because whatever she’d been thinking about when he’d broken into her thoughts had downturned her mouth and made her eyebrows crunch.

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Bon, Bon. I’m just nipping out for five, don’t start without me.’ Peter came racing past them, whispering too loudly to be anything like discreet and tapping the side of his nose. Peter Cushing was their upholsterer, who traded under the name of Peter’s Cushions. He always said he had two choices with a name like that: to follow his dad into the upholstery trade, or become a vampire-slayer, but there wasn’t a college course for the latter.

Sky was fond of all the people she worked alongside in Bon’s repair shop. The last place she’d worked in wasn’t half as nice or friendly, run by an old curmudgeon who hated kids, which wasn’t a great personality to have when you ran a toy emporium. Bon Repair was split into units and each paid him a weekly rent for their space. He was more than fair with what he charged and they all had a generous portion of working area. There was Peter, and Ricky ‘Tick Tock’, who restored old clocks and watches; Mildred ‘Picture Perfect’, who cleaned and touched up old paintings and photographs; Chippy ‘Chips Away,’ who mended ceramics; ‘Jock of All Trades’ who cut keys, mended shoes and sharpened tools; ‘Adam Amp’ who was a wonder with anything electrical that needed refurbishment; Willy Woodentop, who restored wooden furniture; and today’s birthday boy himself, Tony ‘Toy’ Cropper who repaired old toys, except for teddy bears – he and Sky had an understanding about that. Sometimes, when Tony was overrun with work, he’d ask Sky to help him mend any dolls because it wasn’t his favourite job and it was extra revenue for her.

They were a cache of kind people, it was a good mix. Bon had his own space across the bottom of the unit, where he built bespoke desks. He was a master of his trade; his creations were amazing, each one his own design. He liked to bury secret compartments in the belly of the structure that only he and his buyer would know about. Sometimes Sky would watch him working on his latest piece, lost in everything but the task in hand, and she could see the devotion and care he poured into what he made and she wished he could pour the same into her, touch her as tenderly as he smoothed his hand over wood. She was jealous of that wood.

‘You’re making a good job of that repair,’ said Bon to her, looking at the soldier’s teddy bear on her work bench.

‘It isn’t a hard job, but it’s an important one,’ she replied.

‘I’ve paid for an advert in Up North about us,’ said Bon, adding when he read on her face that the name didn’t mean much, ‘you know, the monthly magazine.’

It dawned on her then. ‘Oh yes, the thick expensive one.’

‘That’s right. So you might get a flurry of orders, with any luck.’

‘Hope so,’ said Sky. She’d have to dip into her meagre savings if she didn’t sell some more bears soon.

‘So don’t forget, cake in ten minutes. Synchronise your watch,’ said Bon with a wink, stepping away to chat to one of the others. Though he could have stayed chatting to Sky for much longer, and that’s why he didn’t.

It was a good job that Steve didn’t have any work on that day because he still wasn’t up at ten o’clock, and that was unheard of for him since he was usually awake with the cockerels. Mel had been asleep when he got in from his school reunion. She’d waited up until eleven and then she’d lain in bed reading for a while, so he couldn’t have got home before midnight.

She’d been up early because she’d taken the week off to declutter the house. Steve never threw anything away and the garage, the loft and cupboards were too full of junk, so she’d put her foot down and ordered a skip. She was enjoying herself, too; it was very cathartic. Don’t be throwing anything valuable away, he’d warned her. A 1980s game of Cluedo with half the pieces missing is not going to be valuable, Steve, she’d thrown back at him. There were no Ming vases in the skip, just rubbish that had no place in their house any more.

She cocked her ear because she could hear shufflings upstairs, and so she abandoned the task of emptying the drawer full of a big stack of his trade magazines, going back years, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When Steve came down there was a builder’s mug of milky tea waiting for him; he walked over to the kitchen table, squinting as if the light streaming through the big window was an assault on his eyes.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mel and reached into the medicine cabinet for a couple of ibuprofen. She dropped them beside the mug and sat down on the chair next to him.

‘So I’m figuring it was a good night, then.’

‘Better than expected,’ he said, having a slurp of tea. ‘It was nice to see everybody.’

‘And was Saran there?’

‘Aye, she was. We had a little chat.’

‘And was she forty stone with a moustache?’

‘Nope.’

Mel tilted her head at him and that small action seemed to ignite his impatience.

‘What are you looking at me like that for?’

‘I’m just waiting for the details.’

‘What details? I had a good time and I’ll probably meet up with a couple of the lads again. I was wrong to think I wouldn’t fit back in with them, but what’s the point in me giving you a list of who’s doing what when you don’t know any of them?’

‘Well, no, but—’

‘I’m glad I went. There’s not really much else to say.’

‘So I did the right thing pushing you to go, then?’ Mel tried not to look too smug. ‘I do get some things right, don’t I?’

‘Some things,’ he relented, which was as much of an admission as she’d ever get from him because Steve wasn’t really one for gushing.

He tossed the tablets down his neck and took another drink of tea, then put the mug back down on the table, pushing it away from him.

‘Sorry, I can’t drink that. I might have to go back to bed for a bit.’

‘Get yourself upstairs, then,’ said Mel. ‘I could come up with you if you like.’ She winked playfully.

‘I can’t think of anything worse at this moment in time,’ said Steve, getting up. And Mel laughed, because she knew what he meant really, but still it stung a bit.