Chapter 6
‘I swear there wasnae this many Santas this morning. I think they’re multiplying.
’ McIntyre was only half-joking as he tried to help Roz process her shock.
His wife had only just called in to the repair shop on her way home from school, now that it was half past three.
She’d probably been expecting an early dinner and a glass of wine, not a shed populated with countless sad, peeling, fibreglass lumps reminiscent of enormous Lewis chessmen, and a very red-cheeked husband wielding an electric sander amongst them all.
‘And you told Councillor Borthwick you’d have them all repaired, repainted and ready to string up by the sixth for a big switch-on celebration the day after?’ she said in a monotone all the more alarming for how controlled it was.
McIntyre swallowed hard, knowing Roz must be thinking about stringing him up for inveigling them in another mending scheme. ‘I’ve sanded the auld paint off nine of them already,’ he tried in a jovial voice, reassuring no one.
Roz surveyed the lumpen figures, so faded it was hard to tell what most of them were supposed to be.
‘But, McIntyre,’ she appealed, wearily. ‘We’ve the repair volunteers’ Christmas party to host, and there’s still two Saturday repair days before we close for the season, and you did insist on your merry Fixmas repair drive on top of all this.
Oh my goodness!’ A sudden thought had pulled her up.
‘What will Senga say when she sees this?’
‘Already has, and she took it in good spirit, actually.’
‘I’d sooner believe in Santa Claus than I believe that, Mac.’
He tried to laugh, but she cut him short.
‘I’ve that much to do at the school without all this, Mac.
The PTA have organised a million fundraising things and I have to help staff them all.
There’s a pyjama party, a Christmas sweetie raffle, ugly jumper day, a charity race where we dress as elves, the kids’ Christmas party, a Christmas lunch, and that’s before we even get to the Christmas traditions around the globe pageant on the last day of term.
I’ve still got to make a traditional Czech golden pig out of papier maché for the second half!
I cannot cope with one single other thing! ’
McIntyre was too afraid to enquire about the festive significance of the pig, instead nodding in solemn agreement that his wife was indeed overburdened this Advent.
‘Excuse me,’ came a small voice from behind them. Roz startled, whipping a hand to her chest over her coat.
‘Sorry, the sign says you’re open,’ said a young woman, not much older than their own daughter, Ally, by the look of her.
She gestured to the shed’s neon logo, a steaming coffee cup and threaded needle passing through its handle.
Beneath it, the word OPEN sang out in acid pink.
‘I’m interrupting?’ she said, as though intuiting Roz’s mood.
‘Should I wait outside, or…’ The woman seemed to be running out of strength to find more words.
‘I already tried the house next door.’ She pointed through the wall. ‘It was all locked up.’
‘Are you looking for a repair?’ McIntyre asked.
‘A repair? No. Are you…’ she checked her phone screen. ‘Mr and Mrs McIntyre from the Mill House FlyBnB listing? I’ve made a reservation… I think? Florrie Norheim?’
She was peering into the dark reaches of the shed with a glazed, unseeing look.
Whatever impressions she was gathering of the place it was making the sides of her nose crinkle.
All the while her finger kept pointing through the shed wall towards the couple’s beautiful old Mill House across the driveway, as though the image of it was fixed in her mind.
Roz moved towards her, wanting to see this reservation for herself. ‘But the listing shouldn’t be live until January!’
The visitor looked like something was building within her, either tears or a scream, McIntyre couldn’t guess which. ‘Lass, you’re drookit,’ he told her, noticing the puddle around her feet.
‘Drook-it?’ repeated the stranger.
‘Soaked through,’ he offered in translation.
Roz wasn’t hearing any of this. She was talking to herself, inspecting the booking confirmation on the phone. ‘But this shouldn’t be… I didn’t mean for people to see the listing so soon. Oh dear!’
‘Oh dear?’ Florrie’s shoulders fell. ‘I’ve travelled a really, really long way for “oh dears” and “no room at the inn, hehehe”.’ She mugged villainous stage laughter into her hand but her eyes stayed watery and round. ‘And some redneck in a red tractor splashed water all over me in the street!’
McIntyre threw a glance at his wife. The girl must be talking about Pigeon Fergus and the vintage tractor he himself had repaired here at the shed so that Fergus could continue to ride around town and be nothing but a menace.
‘And,’ Florrie went on. ‘I’ve been bumped into, and made to wait, and walk, and it’s been thirty-two hours since I left Dad’s and I’m… I’m…’
McIntyre did what he always did whenever anyone was upset. He stood stock-still, and hoped to blend in with the Christmas figures crowded round his knees. Thankfully, Roz knew what to do.
‘You’re quite right, uh… Florrie, did you say? You’ve booked the Mezzanine Bunk room.’ Roz was flustered but doing her best to hide it. ‘McIntyre…’ She snapped into gear. ‘Take the lassie’s coat, and get the heating turned up. I’ll show you to your bunk.’
‘You weren’t expecting guests, were you?’ Florrie followed her path through the sea of weird figures.
‘Well, no, but Christmas is a time for surprises, and for welcoming strangers, so… come away in.’
The woman, who’d said not to call her Mrs McIntyre, but Roz, had swept a hand dramatically towards the furthest reaches of the barn and told her husband to, ‘take the lassie’s bags for her’.
Florrie followed her past workbenches set out in rows all the way to the foot of a wide wooden ladder secured to the ground where Roz had stopped, a smile fixed on her kindly face.
She was about as old as Florrie’s mother, she reckoned, and had a similar vibe that suggested she also carried crystals in her pockets and was never more than a chakra stone’s throw from a yoga mat or some homemade granola.
‘Is this a factory?’ Florrie quizzed. ‘A co-op of some kind?’ Her brain couldn’t quite land upon the right words to describe what she was seeing.
There were tools and machines everywhere, including sewing machines, and there was sawdust scattered across the floor, and a corner cluttered with all kinds of clocks, all ticking loudly, and next to the ladder, a Perspex display counter with a shiny chrome coffee machine, a cash register and a buzzing refrigerator.
‘Of sorts. It’s a fixing factory,’ Roz said, still standing oddly stiff.
‘Community repair hub!’ the man drawing up behind them with her bags was saying. Roz had called him Mac.
‘You’ll be our very first guest. Call it a… trial run,’ Roz said, still a little winded from Florrie turning up like this.
‘Okay.’ Florrie didn’t want to sound rude but she glanced around in confusion. ‘So… where’s the apartment?’
That’s when Roz raised a finger and pointed straight up. Florrie followed her gaze to the top of the ladder and knew for sure today was absolutely the worst day of her life.
Mr McIntyre had done his best hauling her suitcase up the ladder, even if some of the things he muttered had been, she suspected, Scottish curse words. She’d waited for him at the top of the climb, not sure if she should apologise, or complain, or just lie down and weep.
Up on the mezzanine platform, over the repair shop, was a bed beneath sloping eaves with a skylight showing nothing but blackness.
Next to the bed stood a low wooden cabinet that looked olde-worldy and handmade, but brand new at the same time.
Roz, who’d climbed the ladder first, presumably to prove it was safe, flipped a little lamp on, and the floating ledge washed with warm orangey light.
A rug covered all but the edges of the wooden floorboards, and on the wall hung a poster.
In bold type it read, ‘REPAIR MANIFESTO’.
Florrie didn’t even try to make out the smaller type words with her tired eyes.
McIntyre fled as soon as he’d delivered her bags, and his departure brought on a kind of dreadful desperation in his wife.
‘Will it do?’ Roz asked awkwardly.
Florrie really didn’t know what to say. She glanced over the waist-high mezzanine barrier wall to look down upon the café counter and its glass cake domes directly below.
‘There’s a wee gate here, see?’ said Roz.
‘To stop you falling out. You can lock yourself in too. For privacy?’ She demonstrated the bolt, nodding madly like it was herself she was trying to convince.
‘It was me that dreamt up the Mezzanine Bunk,’ she said, having dropped into a dark teal velvet vanity chair in the corner, knocking the cushion off onto the rug.
‘We’re launching heritage repair skills holidays. ’
Uncomprehending, Florrie nodded out of politeness.
‘Crafters will come here to stay, and in return for their bed and board they’ll be taught a dying heritage or repair craft. You see?’
‘That’s what you do here? You repair things?’ Florrie looked out again at the workbenches.
‘Clocks, furniture, toys, clothes, textiles, electricals, whatever the community needs. All for free, or a donation to keep the place running. But we realised that free repairs are only half the fight against overconsumption.’
Florrie looked back at the white bed, small and soft. It seemed to call her name like she was Goldilocks. Roz was nice and all, but she couldn’t help wishing herself all alone and fast asleep.