Chapter 2: The Promise-Mending Needle

The bell above the door rang.

Marguerite looked up from the shelf she had been examining. Each object had a tag. Each tag had handwriting she now recognized as her grandmother's, though she had never seen it before today.

Mr. Cog was already moving toward the door with the smooth efficiency of someone who had done this many times.

A woman stood in the doorway. She was perhaps sixty, with a kind face and a navy cardigan that had been mended at the elbows. She carried a handbag the color of conkers and clutched it with both hands as though it might escape.

"Mrs. Firth," said Mr. Cog. "Come in."

"Is she—" Mrs. Firth stopped. She looked at Marguerite. "Oh. You must be Eudora's granddaughter."

Marguerite nodded. She did not know what else to do.

"I'm Bellamy Firth. I live three doors down." Mrs. Firth's voice was warm and slightly breathless, as though she had been walking quickly. "I brought you biscuits yesterday, but your father said you weren't ready for visitors. Hobnobs. I wasn't certain if you liked Hobnobs, but everyone likes Hobnobs, don't they? Except my sister, but she has opinions about oats."

"Thank you," said Marguerite, because it seemed like the sort of thing one said.

Mrs. Firth smiled, but the smile did not quite reach her eyes.

Mr. Cog waited.

"I came," said Mrs. Firth slowly, "because I need a repair."

She opened her handbag and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded and refolded until the creases had gone soft. She unfolded it carefully and placed it on the counter.

It was a Christmas card. Three years old, judging by the date printed beneath a robin wearing a scarf. Inside, in blue ballpoint, someone had written: Mum — Sorry I can't make it this year. Work's mad. I promise I'll come for Christmas next year. Love, Daniel.

Mrs. Firth looked at the card the way people look at things that hurt them.

"He didn't come last year either," she said. "Or this year. It's February now. He called on Christmas Day. Thirty-two seconds. I counted. He said work was busy. He said he'd visit soon."

Mr. Cog nodded once. He did not ask if she had tried calling Daniel. He did not ask if she had told him how she felt.

He reached beneath the counter and placed a wooden box on the surface.

The box was plain and smooth and the color of old honey. Mr. Cog opened it. Inside, nestled in green felt, was a needle.

It was silver. The length of a pencil. Already threaded with something that was not quite thread. The thread—if it was thread—seemed to shift when Marguerite looked at it, like light on water or smoke in still air.

"Promise-Mending Needle," said Mr. Cog. "Rebinds spoken promises to their original intent. One promise per threading."

Mrs. Firth stared at the needle.

Marguerite stared at the needle.

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Firth.

"You thread it," said Mr. Cog. "You think of the promise. You sew. The promise mends."

"But he's in Birmingham."

"Distance," said Mr. Cog, "is not the problem."

He lifted the needle from the box and held it out to Marguerite.

She blinked. "Me?"

"You're the Tinker," said Mr. Cog, in a tone that suggested this was obvious.

Marguerite took the needle. It was warm. That surprised her. She had expected cold metal, but it sat in her palm like something alive.

"What do I do?"

"Think of the promise," said Mr. Cog. "Not the person. The promise itself. What was said. What was meant. Hold that in your mind."

Marguerite looked at Mrs. Firth.

Mrs. Firth's hands were shaking. "Will it hurt him?"

"No," said Mr. Cog.

"Will he remember?"

Mr. Cog paused. "He will do what he promised."

Mrs. Firth nodded. She folded the card again and held it against her chest.

Marguerite concentrated. She tried to imagine the promise the way Mr. Cog had said. Not Daniel. Not Birmingham. Not the thirty-two second phone call or the three Christmases of silence. Just the words: I promise I'll come for Christmas next year.

She raised the needle.

She had never been good at sewing. In Year Five they had made felt pouches and hers had been lumpy and the stitches had wandered. But this felt different. The needle moved smoothly, as though it knew where it wanted to go.

She sewed the air.

That was what it looked like, though she could not have explained it to anyone. She moved the needle in small, careful stitches, and the thread that was not quite thread pulled tight and vanished and reappeared. She stitched the shape of a promise. She stitched the words Daniel had written three years ago in blue ballpoint on a Christmas card with a robin wearing a scarf.

When she finished, the thread was gone.

The needle was cool in her hand now. Ordinary silver. Nothing special.

Mrs. Firth's phone rang.

The sound was loud in the quiet shop. Mrs. Firth fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a mobile phone with a pink case covered in tiny daisies.

She looked at the screen. Her face went pale.

"It's Daniel," she whispered.

She answered. "Hello?"

Marguerite watched Mrs. Firth's face change. The woman smiled. She nodded. She said "yes" and "of course" and "I'll make treacle tart, you always loved treacle tart."

When she hung up, her hands were still shaking.

"He's coming," she said. "Tonight. For dinner. He said—" She stopped. "He said he'd been meaning to call. He said he just—he just decided he ought to come down, didn't know why he hadn't already." She looked at the needle in Marguerite's hand. "Did you do that?"

"The promise mended," said Mr. Cog.

Mrs. Firth pressed both hands to her mouth. For a moment Marguerite thought she might cry. Instead she laughed, a small gasping sound like a sob backwards.

"Thank you," Mrs. Firth said. She said it again, more firmly. "Thank you."

She took the card from the counter and tucked it back into her handbag. She turned toward the door. Then she stopped.

Her smile had faded slightly.

"He sounded confused," she said. "When I asked if he'd been meaning to come for a while, he said he didn't know. He said he just felt like he ought to." She looked back at Mr. Cog. "He doesn't remember, does he? That he broke the promise?"

Mr. Cog said nothing.

"He'll come tonight and I'll make treacle tart and we'll have a nice dinner and then he'll go back to Birmingham." Mrs. Firth's voice was very quiet. "And he won't remember that he promised three years ago. He won't remember staying away."

She stood in the doorway for a long moment.

"He hasn't changed," she said.

"No," said Mr. Cog.

Mrs. Firth nodded slowly. "Well. Thank you anyway."

She left. The bell rang again as the door closed.

Marguerite stood holding the needle.

"She's not happy," she said.

"No," said Mr. Cog.

"But the promise mended."

"Yes."

"So why isn't she happy?"

Mr. Cog took the needle from her hand and placed it carefully back in its box. The green felt folded around it like water around a stone.

"The needle mends the promise," he said. "Not the person who broke it."

Marguerite thought about that.

Daniel would come tonight. He would eat treacle tart. He would sit at his mother's table and be a good son for one evening because a promise made three years ago had been stitched back together. But he would not know why he came. He would not feel sorry for the three Christmases he had missed. He would not understand that his mother counted the seconds of his phone calls.

The repair had worked perfectly.

That was the problem.

Mr. Cog closed the wooden box and placed it back beneath the counter. He took out a large leather ledger and opened it to a page near the back. He wrote something in careful script.

Marguerite tried to see what he was writing, but he angled the book away gently.

"What's that?"

"The record," said Mr. Cog.

"Of the repairs?"

"Of the costs."

He closed the ledger before she could ask what that meant.

"Your father will be back soon," said Mr. Cog. "He said something about the WiFi situation."

Marguerite nodded. She felt strange. Tired in a way that did not quite make sense, because she had only been standing and holding a needle and thinking about a promise.

She looked at the shelves. All those objects. All those tags in her grandmother's handwriting.

How many promises had been mended? How many repairs had worked perfectly?

She thought about Mrs. Firth's face. The smile that had faded. The quiet recognition that her son would come but would not remember.

Outside, through the shop's small window, Marguerite could see Puddling Lane. It was drizzling now, the particular London drizzle that is too stubborn to be called rain but too persistent to be ignored. A woman walked past with a shopping bag. A man in a suit hurried toward Monument station.

Ordinary life, continuing.

Marguerite's stomach rumbled. It was nearly lunchtime. She tried to remember whether she preferred her toast with butter or jam.

She could not remember.

That was odd. She had eaten toast every morning for years. She must have a preference.

Butter, probably. Or was it jam?

She frowned.

"Are you all right?" asked Mr. Cog.

"Yes," said Marguerite. "I'm fine."

She was fine. Just a little uncertain.

About the toast, anyway. Only the toast.

It was such a small thing. Barely worth noticing.

She put it out of her mind and went to sit on the stool behind the counter, and did not think about it again.

Not for hours.