Chapter 15: What Gripe Lost

The address Mr. Cog had given her was in Camberwell, on a street that smelled of wet pavement and fried fish. Marguerite found the building between a launderette and a shop that sold mobile phone cases. The buzzer for Flat 3 didn't work. She knocked.

Gripe answered the door in slippers.

That was the first thing Marguerite noticed. The second was that he looked smaller. Not physically — he was still tall and thin, all joints and angles — but softer somehow, as though someone had taken an eraser to the sharpest lines of him and left only the suggestion of what he'd been.

"Yes?" he said. Polite. Uncertain.

He didn't recognize her.

"Mr. Gripe," Marguerite said. "I'm Marguerite Tinker. From the shop. The Department of Impossible Repairs."

He blinked. His eyes were pale grey, the colour of London sky in winter. They held no particular expression.

"I don't think I know a shop," he said. "But do come in. I was just making tea."

The flat was small. One room with a kitchenette along one wall and a bed in the corner that hadn't been made. A window looked out onto the backs of other buildings. The walls were bare. No pictures. No shelves. A single chair sat by the window, the sort of chair that comes with furnished flats and has no history.

"I've only just moved in," Gripe said, though he didn't sound certain. "Or perhaps it's been a few weeks. Time's a bit funny, isn't it?"

He filled the kettle from the tap. The sound was loud in the quiet room.

Marguerite sat in the chair by the window. There was nowhere else to sit except the bed, and sitting on someone's bed felt wrong. The window had condensation on the inside. Outside, it was raining. Not hard. The particular kind of London rain that isn't quite drizzle but isn't quite anything else either.

"Do you take milk?" Gripe asked.

"Yes, please."

"Sugar?"

"No, thank you."

He brought her tea in a mug that said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. The mug was the sort of thing you buy at tourist shops near the Tower of London. He'd forgotten to bring himself a cup. He stood in the middle of the room holding the kettle, looking at it as though trying to remember what it was for, and then set it down on the counter.

"I had a shop once, I think," he said. "Or I visited one. Something about repairs."

Marguerite held the mug with both hands. It was too hot but she didn't set it down.

"You came to my shop," she said. "The Department of Impossible Repairs. You wanted something repaired. Something that couldn't be fixed."

Gripe frowned. Not the sharp, angry frown Marguerite remembered from when he'd first arrived demanding the Time-Wound Eraser. This was gentler. Confused. The frown of someone trying to remember where they'd left their keys.

"I don't think I remember that," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good at remembering things lately. The doctor says it's stress." He paused. "I think I had a doctor. Or perhaps I need one."

He sat on the edge of the bed. His slippers were brown corduroy, the sort old men wear. One of them had a hole near the toe.

"You had a wife," Marguerite said quietly.

Gripe looked up. For a moment something flickered across his face. Recognition, perhaps, or the shadow of it.

"Yes," he said. "I think I did. I had a wife."

He said it the way you might say I think it's going to rain or I had toast for breakfast. A fact without weight.

"What was her name?" Marguerite asked.

Gripe sat very still. The rain tapped against the window. Somewhere in the building, someone's television was on. The sound came through the walls like a conversation in another language.

"I don't remember," he said finally. "Isn't that strange? I know I had a wife. I remember the idea of her. But I can't picture her face."

He stood and walked to the window. He looked out at the rain for a long time.

"There was something I was supposed to do," he said. "Something important. I spent a very long time trying to remember what it was, and then one day I couldn't remember why I was trying. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Marguerite said, though it made terrible sense.

Gripe turned back to her. His expression was open and mild and heartbreakingly ordinary. There was no pain in it. That was what was wrong. There should have been pain. The absence of it was worse than if he'd been weeping.

"I brought you something," Marguerite said.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small photograph in a silver frame. Mr. Cog had found it in the records. The photograph showed a woman with dark hair and a serious expression standing in a garden. She wore a blue dress and was holding a cat that looked deeply unimpressed about being photographed.

"This is your wife," Marguerite said. "Her name was Eleanor."

Gripe took the photograph. He looked at it for a long time. His hands were steady.

"She's very pretty," he said. "I don't remember her."

He set the photograph on the windowsill, carefully, as though it were fragile.

"But thank you," he added. "It's kind of you to bring it."

He offered Marguerite a biscuit from a tin on the counter. The biscuits were digestives, the plain kind with no chocolate. He took one himself and ate it standing by the window, looking out at the rain.

They sat in silence for a while. Marguerite's tea had gone lukewarm. She drank it anyway.

"I think I used to be angry," Gripe said suddenly. "I don't remember what about. But I remember the feeling of it. Like carrying something heavy for a very long time, and then one day putting it down and forgetting where you left it."

He brushed biscuit crumbs from his cardigan. The cardigan was grey wool, buttoned wrong. The fourth button was in the third buttonhole.

"Do you feel better now?" Marguerite asked.

Gripe considered this.

"I don't feel much of anything," he said. "Which I suppose is better than feeling badly. Though it's hard to say, isn't it? How do you compare nothing to something?"

He sat down on the bed again. The bedsprings creaked.

"I'm sorry I can't help you with whatever you came for," he said. "I don't think I'm very useful anymore."

Marguerite stood. She set her mug on the counter beside the kettle.

"There was a repair you wanted," she said. "Something that would bring your wife back. You spent fourteen years looking for someone who could do it."

Gripe listened politely, the way you listen to a story about someone else.

"You found the shop," Marguerite continued. "You found me. You broke in and stole something that you thought would help."

"That doesn't sound like me," Gripe said. "Breaking in. I don't think I'd do that."

"It was you," Marguerite said.

"Well," Gripe said, "I suppose people do strange things when they're upset. Was I upset?"

"Yes."

"About my wife?"

"Yes."

He nodded slowly, as though this made sense in an academic way.

"I'm not upset now," he said. "So I suppose whatever I stole must have worked."

Marguerite looked at him. At his slippers and his wrongly-buttoned cardigan and his mild, empty face. At the flat with its bare walls and unmade bed. At the photograph of Eleanor on the windowsill, propped carefully against the glass, unclaimed.

"No," she said. "It didn't work at all."

---

Mr. Cog was tidying the front counter when Marguerite returned to the shop. He had a particular way of tidying that involved moving objects three inches to the left and then back again, as though their original positions had been correct all along and the motion was simply for the satisfaction of confirming it.

"How is Mr. Gripe?" he asked without looking up.

"Empty," Marguerite said.

Mr. Cog nodded. He picked up a small brass clock, examined it, and set it down exactly where it had been.

"That is what happens," he said, "when you remove the thing that was holding a person together."

Marguerite sat on the stool behind the counter. The shop was quiet. Outside, the rain had started in earnest. The kind that London does best, steady and grey and infinite.

"His grief was the last proof he had that he loved her," Marguerite said.

Mr. Cog looked at her then. His eyes were dark and very old.

"Yes," he said.

"And now the grief is gone, and so is the love."

"Yes."

Marguerite thought about Gripe's empty flat. The photograph he didn't recognize. The way he'd said I had a wife the way you might say I had a dentist appointment.

"He's not in pain anymore," she said.

"No."

"But he's not anything anymore."

Mr. Cog was quiet for a moment. Then he said, very gently:

"Your grandmother understood this. It is why she never used the Regret Eraser on herself."

Marguerite looked at him sharply.

"She could have?"

"She could have erased the regret of losing herself," Mr. Cog said. "The regret of not knowing you. Of spending twelve years unable to find her way back to the granddaughter she'd saved. The regret was enormous. It could have been removed."

"Why didn't she?"

"Because the regret was the only proof she had left," Mr. Cog said, "that she had made a choice that mattered."

He picked up the brass clock again. This time he wound it. The ticking filled the silence.

"Without the regret," he continued, "she would not have known what she'd lost. She would not have known what she'd given away. She would have been uncertain of everything, including whether the sacrifice had been worth making. The regret was painful. But it was also the last thing she was certain of."

Marguerite sat very still.

She thought about Grandmother in the care home, unable to remember her own name. Unable to find her way through a simple conversation. Uncertain of everything except one thing.

The regret.

The knowledge that she had given everything for something that mattered.

And now she understood why Grandmother's final ledger entry had said Worth it.

Not because the sacrifice had been easy.

Not because she hadn't suffered.

But because the regret—the terrible, aching, twelve-year regret—proved that the love had been real.

"The pain is the proof," Marguerite said quietly.

"Yes."

"If you take away the pain, you take away the meaning."

"Yes."

Mr. Cog set the clock down. It ticked on, steady and certain, counting seconds that would never be anything other than what they were.

"Can it be undone?" Marguerite asked.

"The Regret Eraser?"

"Yes. Can Mr. Gripe get his regret back?"

Mr. Cog was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was very soft.

"Yes," he said. "The Eraser can be reversed. It is the only repair in the shop that can be undone completely."

Marguerite felt something tight in her chest loosen slightly.

"How?"

"Someone else performs the reversal," Mr. Cog said. "Using the same Eraser. They erase their own regret about the original erasure, and in doing so, restore what was taken."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It rarely does," Mr. Cog agreed. "Magic has its own logic. But the principle is sound. A regret erased can be returned, if someone regrets the erasure enough to give up a regret of their own in exchange."

Marguerite thought about Gripe's empty face. The photograph he couldn't claim. The wife he'd forgotten.

"What would it cost?" she asked.

Mr. Cog looked at her. His expression was very sad.

"The reversal is a repair," he said. "All repairs have a cost."

"I know. I'd lose a certainty."

"Not a small one."

Marguerite's hands were shaking. She folded them in her lap.

"How large?"

Mr. Cog hesitated. Then he reached under the counter and pulled out the ledger. He opened it to a blank page. He wrote something in his precise, careful script. Then he turned the ledger so Marguerite could read it.

REGRET ERASER REVERSAL
Recipient: Aldous Gripe
Cost to repairer: Certainty regarding whether they are loved.

Marguerite stared at the words.

Whether they are loved.

Not whether she preferred butter or jam.

Not whether her favorite colour was blue or green.

Not even whether she was brave or kind or good at maths.

Whether she was loved.

By her father. By Pip. By anyone.

She would perform the repair, and afterwards she would not be certain if anyone had ever loved her at all.

"That's—" She stopped. Her throat had closed.

"Large," Mr. Cog finished quietly. "Yes."

He closed the ledger.

"You don't have to decide now," he said. "Mr. Gripe is not suffering. He is simply empty. Emptiness can wait."

But Marguerite was thinking about the photograph on the windowsill. About Eleanor in her blue dress, holding the unimpressed cat, looking seriously at the camera. About fourteen years of searching. About grief that was also love, and love that had nowhere to go, and the terrible mercy of forgetting.

About Grandmother, who had chosen to keep her regret because the regret was all she had left to prove the sacrifice had been real.

"I need to think," Marguerite said.

"Of course."

Mr. Cog made tea. He brought it to her in the blue cup. Or possibly teal. Marguerite still couldn't tell.

She sat behind the counter and watched the rain run down the window in patterns she could not predict.

Outside, London continued. Buses ran. People queued at the chip shop. The rain fell on Monument and Bank and Aldgate and Puddling Lane, on all the impossible repairs and all the things that could not be fixed and all the ordinary grief that held the world together.

Marguerite drank her tea.

It was too hot and she burned her tongue, and she was grateful for it because at least she was certain it hurt.