Chapter 7: The Man Who Collected Debts

The bell above the shop door rang just as Mr. Cog was setting down the tea tray, and the sound of it — brassy and insistent, nothing like the apologetic chime it usually made — caused him to go very still.

Marguerite looked up from the ledger she'd been staring at without reading. The bell rang again, though the door hadn't moved. It was ringing at someone, not because of someone, and she had the distinct impression that the shop itself was issuing a warning.

"Mr. Cog?" she said.

He set the tray down with a care that suggested fragile things were about to become more fragile, and turned towards the door. His face, usually as neutral as a clean plate, had arranged itself into something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite resignation. It was the expression of someone who'd been expecting bad news for a very long time and had just heard the postman's knock.

The door opened.

The man who entered was tall in the way that lampposts are tall — all vertical lines and sharp angles, as though he'd been designed by someone who disapproved of curves. He wore a long coat the colour of old newspapers, and it had more pockets than seemed structurally possible, each one bulging slightly, as if he'd been collecting things and had long since run out of proper places to put them. His face was pale and fine-boned, with the sort of handsomeness that had gone sour through long disuse, like milk left out on a counter. But it was his expression that made Marguerite's stomach tighten — the look of someone to whom something was owed and who fully intended to collect.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, his eyes moving across the shelves with the focused attention of a man taking inventory. Then his gaze settled on Marguerite, and he smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was the smile of someone who has found exactly what they were looking for and is not happy about it.

"You must be the granddaughter," he said.

His voice was precise and bloodless, each word measured out like an expensive ingredient in a recipe that was already going wrong.

"I am," Marguerite said, though she had not meant to say it quite so quickly.

"Aldous Gripe," he said, and did not offer his hand. "I believe your grandmother and I had an arrangement."

"My grandmother's dead," Marguerite said. It came out more bluntly than she'd intended, but she was eleven and had recently discovered that her grandmother had sacrificed her entire sense of self to save Marguerite's life, and she was not, at present, in the mood for arrangements.

"I am aware," said Mr. Gripe. "I read the obituary. Very brief. She was not, I think, a woman who courted attention."

He moved further into the shop, his coat rustling with the sound of many full pockets. Marguerite noticed that his shoes were very clean, the sort of clean that suggested a man who spent a great deal of time walking through other people's lives and did not wish to leave tracks.

"Mr. Gripe," said Mr. Cog, and there was something in his tone — not quite a warning, but close.

Mr. Gripe's smile widened by a fraction that made it somehow less pleasant.

"Cog," he said, in the tone of someone greeting an old opponent across a chessboard. "Still here, I see. Still keeping the books. Still pretending you don't keep more than you should."

Mr. Cog said nothing, which Marguerite was beginning to understand was his way of saying a great deal.

Mr. Gripe turned back to Marguerite. "I came to see your grandmother fourteen years ago," he said. "I came with a request. A repair. The most important repair of my life." He paused, and for a moment something flickered across his face — not grief, exactly, but the shape grief makes after it has been worn down by years of carrying. "She refused me."

"Then I expect she had good reason," Marguerite said.

"Oh, she had a reason," said Mr. Gripe. "She said the cost was too high." His voice was perfectly level, but there was a tremor beneath it, like a crack in ice. "I told her no cost was too high. She said—" He stopped, and the memory seemed to hurt him in a way that showed around his mouth. "She said that was exactly the problem."

Marguerite felt the words land with the weight of something important, though she didn't yet understand why. She glanced at Mr. Cog, who was watching Mr. Gripe with the stillness of a cat watching a bird it has no intention of catching but every intention of monitoring.

"What did you ask her to repair?" Marguerite said.

Mr. Gripe reached into one of his many pockets and withdrew a photograph. It was creased and faded, the sort of photograph that has been carried for so long it has begun to wear thin at the edges. He held it out to Marguerite without looking at it himself, as though he'd looked at it so many times there was nothing left to see.

The photograph showed a woman. She was laughing, her head thrown back, one hand raised as if to ward off the camera. She looked happy in the unselfconscious way people look when they don't know they're being photographed. She looked alive.

"My wife," said Mr. Gripe. "Eleanor. She died fourteen years ago. A car accident. She was crossing the road. The driver didn't see her. She died on the pavement before the ambulance arrived."

He said it all in the same flat, measured tone, as though he'd said it so many times the words had been emptied of feeling, but Marguerite could hear what the flatness was covering. Grief didn't go away just because you stopped letting it show. It went underground. It calcified. It turned into something else — something that looked, from the outside, very much like the expression Mr. Gripe was wearing now.

"I'm sorry," Marguerite said, and meant it.

"I don't want your sympathy," said Mr. Gripe. "I want your grandmother's repair."

Marguerite blinked. "She's dead. She can't—"

"I'm aware," Mr. Gripe said again, with a patience that was beginning to fray at the seams. "But the shop is still here. The gadgets are still here. And debts, Miss Tinker, do not die with the debtor. They pass to the inheritor. Your grandmother owed me a repair. I am here to collect."

"She didn't owe you anything," Marguerite said, her voice sharper than she'd intended. "She refused. That's not the same as owing."

Mr. Gripe's smile returned, and this time it was thin as a paper cut. "I paid her," he said. "She took my money. She promised to consider my request. She said she would give me an answer within the month. She never did. And then—" He gestured around the shop. "—she closed. Disappeared. I spent years searching for her. When I finally found her, she was in a care home, unable to remember her own name, let alone any debts she might have accrued." He paused. "But you're not in a care home, Miss Tinker. You're here. And the shop is open. And I am calling in what I am owed."

Marguerite looked at Mr. Cog, who had gone very pale. "Is that true?" she said. "Did Grandmother take his money?"

Mr. Cog nodded slowly. "She did," he said. "And she did promise to consider the repair. But she never agreed to perform it."

"Because the cost was too high," Mr. Gripe said. "Which brings us, I think, to the relevant question." He leaned forward slightly, and Marguerite could smell something on him — not cologne, not sweat, but something older and sadder. Dust. Old paper. The scent of rooms where people have stopped opening the curtains. "Do you know what the Time-Wound Eraser is, Miss Tinker?"

The name dropped into the shop like a stone into still water.

Marguerite felt something cold slide down her spine. She glanced at Mr. Cog, whose face had gone from pale to ashen. "No," she said.

"Liar," said Mr. Gripe, but gently, as though he were merely stating a fact. "Or perhaps you genuinely don't know. Let me explain. The Time-Wound Eraser is a gadget your grandmother built — perhaps her greatest work. It has the power to undo one wound that time has created. One death. One loss. One departure. A single moment when everything went wrong, erased as though it had never happened." His voice dropped to something that was almost reverence. "Eleanor could come back. I could have her back. Fourteen years could be undone."

"And what would it cost?" Marguerite said, though she thought she already knew.

Mr. Gripe's expression flickered — just for a moment — into something that might have been pain, or might have been hope. They looked, Marguerite thought, remarkably similar on certain faces.

"Everything," he said quietly. "It would cost everything. Your grandmother understood that. She understood that the Time-Wound Eraser is not a repair — it is an amputation. You cut away the wound, but you also cut away everything that grew in the wound's absence. Every person you met because you were grieving. Every choice you made because you were alone. Every version of yourself that you became because you survived something terrible." He stopped, and his voice when he continued was barely a whisper. "I don't care. I would give it all. I would give every year I've lived since she died. I would give every choice, every friendship, every small piece of joy I've managed to scrape together. I would burn it all to have her back."

The shop was very quiet. Outside, somewhere far away, Marguerite could hear the sound of traffic — lorries rumbling, a car horn, the distant wail of a siren. Ordinary London sounds. The world continuing as though terrible things were not being said in small repair shops on forgotten lanes.

"I can't help you," Marguerite said.

Mr. Gripe straightened. "Can't," he said, "or won't?"

"Both," said Marguerite. "I don't even know if the thing you're talking about exists."

"Oh, it exists," said Mr. Gripe. "I've spent fourteen years searching for it. I've spoken to everyone your grandmother ever knew. I've tracked down every object she ever repaired. I know it's here. And I know—" He gestured towards the ledger on the counter. "—that you've been reading the records. You know what this shop costs. You know what your grandmother paid. You know that debts in this place are real."

Marguerite said nothing. Her throat had gone very tight.

Mr. Gripe reached into another pocket and withdrew an envelope — cream-coloured, expensive-looking, sealed with red wax. He set it on the counter between them.

"That," he said, "is a letter from my solicitor. It outlines my legal claim to the repair your grandmother promised. It also outlines the consequences should you refuse to honour that claim." He smiled again, that terrible, patient smile. "I am not an unreasonable man, Miss Tinker. I understand that you are young. I understand that you have recently inherited a great deal that you did not ask for. So I am going to give you one month."

"One month for what?" Marguerite said.

"To find the Time-Wound Eraser," said Mr. Gripe. "To prepare it for use. And to perform the repair your grandmother owed me fourteen years ago." He tapped the envelope with one long finger. "If you do not, I will acquire this shop and its contents through means available to me. Your grandmother may have refused me, but you are not your grandmother. You are eleven years old and you have no legal standing to operate a business, particularly not one that—" He glanced around the shop with an expression of distaste. "—traffics in objects of ambiguous origin and uncertain safety."

"You can't do that," Marguerite said, but her voice sounded smaller than she'd intended.

"I can," said Mr. Gripe. "And I will. Unless you give me what I am owed."

He turned towards the door, his coat settling around him like the wings of a large, disappointed bird.

"Mr. Gripe," said Mr. Cog, and there was something in his voice that made the tall man pause. "If you take the shop, you will not find what you're looking for."

Mr. Gripe glanced back over his shoulder. "Won't I?"

"No," said Mr. Cog. "Because the gadgets in this shop only work for those who understand their cost. If you take them by force, they will give you nothing but grief."

"I already have grief, Cog," said Mr. Gripe. "I've carried it for fourteen years. A little more will hardly make a difference."

He opened the door. The bell rang again — a different sound this time, softer, sadder, like the chime of a clock in an empty house.

"One month, Miss Tinker," he said, without turning around. "I suggest you use it wisely."

And then he was gone.

The silence he left behind was thick and heavy, like the air after a thunderstorm. Marguerite stared at the envelope on the counter. She did not want to open it. She suspected very strongly that opening it would make things real in a way that she could not undo.

"Mr. Cog," she said. "Does the Time-Wound Eraser exist?"

Mr. Cog was quiet for a long time. Then he walked to the tea tray, poured two cups with hands that trembled very slightly, and set one in front of Marguerite.

"Yes," he said.

"And can it do what he says it can do?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't Grandmother use it on him?"

Mr. Cog picked up his own cup, though he did not drink from it. He simply held it, as though the warmth was something he needed.

"Because," he said quietly, "she understood something Mr. Gripe does not. You cannot bring someone back from the dead without killing everyone you became whilst they were gone."

Marguerite looked down at her tea. It was very hot, and steam rose from it in thin, fragile curls. She thought about the ledger upstairs. She thought about the entry in her grandmother's handwriting: Marguerite Tinker, age 0. Repair requested: future. Cost: all remaining certainty.

"He's right, isn't he," she said. "I don't have any legal standing. He could take the shop."

"He could try," said Mr. Cog.

"But would he succeed?"

Mr. Cog was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I don't know."

It was the first time Marguerite had ever heard him admit to not knowing something, and somehow that frightened her more than anything Mr. Gripe had said.

She picked up her tea and took a sip. It was too hot and it burned her tongue, but she didn't say anything. She just sat there, in the shop her grandmother had left her, drinking tea that was too hot and trying not to think about the envelope on the counter.

Outside, London continued. Lorries rumbled. People walked to the Tube station. Somewhere, a clock was striking four.

Inside The Department of Impossible Repairs, Marguerite Tinker sat very still and wondered how you were supposed to refuse a man whose grief was so enormous it had turned him into someone who collected debts from dead women and threatened children.

She didn't know.

But she suspected — with the cold, clear certainty of someone who had recently learned what certainty cost — that she was going to have to find out.