A Bitter November evening in the sleepy town of Riverford, thick with the scent of damp and fallen leaves, found Edward lingering outside an old antique shop’s window. The clocks inside, small and delicate, their faces worn and hands slender, seemed to whisper of days long past. They reminded him of his grandfather, of the hours he’d spent as a boy, hunched over with a magnifying glass, mesmerized by the whir of gears. Edward watched the hands crawl forward and suddenly knew—he didn’t want to rush. Not now. Not toward the end of eighteen years of his life. Inside, the decision had already been made, but outside there was only grey rain, muddy puddles, and a chill that gnawed at his heart.
He entered the courtroom a quarter of an hour late. His almost-ex-wife, Eleanor, sat by the window, her hands folded over a folder of documents. Her face was calm, but the way her fingers fidgeted with the edge of a page betrayed her tension. She didn’t look at him, didn’t scowl—she simply waited, as if this were a business meeting rather than the final stroke in their shared story. Edward remembered the time they’d assembled furniture in their first flat together: arguing, laughing, sipping tea on the bare floor. The memory pricked like a shard of glass, and he swallowed it down, finding no words.
The judge was brisk as the wind outside. Questions, signatures, the stamp—all over in under ten minutes. As if their years together—holidays, quarrels, nights wrapped in an old blanket—could be neatly tucked into a handful of formalities.
On the way out, Eleanor said, “Don’t forget to get the papers notarized. Today.”
Edward nodded. He wanted to say *sorry*, but didn’t know for what. He wanted to say *thank you*, but couldn’t find the reason. Instead, he forced out, “You… look lovely.”
She stared at him as if he were a stranger, then walked away. Her footsteps melted into the rain’s patter, and the faint scent of her perfume lingered in the air like a ghost of what had been.
Edward stood motionless in the empty courtroom corridor. A door slammed somewhere, someone coughed, another murmured into a phone. And he wondered: *Is this the end? Or the beginning?*
Instead of going home, he drove to his grandfather’s old workshop in the forgotten corner of Riverford, where time seemed to stand still. The low-ceilinged room reeked of oil and dust. Shelves were cluttered with jars of screws, boxes of springs, and an ageing poster on clockmaking. The key to the workshop still sat in his battered wallet, tucked in the worn pocket. He unlocked the door, flicked the switch. The light flickered, then steadied, casting the same yellow glow that had strained his eyes as a boy.
The clock on the wall ticked steadily, as if keeping time with his own pulse. Edward sat at the old workbench, tracing his fingers over the rough wood, feeling every nick, every scratch. His hands shook—not from fear, but from the sudden certainty that they held purpose again. He pulled out a broken watch he’d abandoned years ago, dismantled it, laid the gears on a cloth, working with slow, measured breaths. Reassembled it. Wound it. *Tick.* Then again. And suddenly, time whispered back: *I’m still here.*
The next day, he returned. Then again. Three weeks later, he swapped the faded old sign for a new one: *Workshop Open.* It hung crooked, taped unevenly, but it stayed firm, as if it had always belonged.
People came. Elderly ladies carried in antique clocks, their eyes brimming with cautious hope. Men with expensive wristwatches shuffled in, disoriented, as if the broken timepieces had disrupted their world. Teenagers pitched wild ideas: “Can you make the face glow?” Edward nodded, took their treasures into his hands, and fixed them. He listened. Sometimes, they spoke not of clocks, but of shattered things—divorces, losses, broken hearts. And he’d slot in a gear, and the mechanism would whir back to life.
One day, a girl walked in—slight, with chestnut hair and a quiet smile. Her name was Charlotte. She brought her father’s old watch, its case scratched, its hands frozen. She watched him with doubt, as if fearing the thing was beyond repair.
“Can you fix it?” she asked softly.
He nodded. Worked slowly, pausing now and then, as if listening not just to the watch, but to the ache in her silence.
A month later, Charlotte returned. Not for the watch, but with a flask of tea and a slice of homemade cake. She came again, just to talk. Once, while sorting through a box of loose screws, she said, “You don’t just fix clocks. You piece people back together. Quietly.”
Edward smiled—not out of politeness, but because he couldn’t help it. His heart, frozen solid on that grey day in court, had begun to thaw.
A year later, the very same watch he’d repaired for Charlotte ticked in their shared flat. Beside it stood books, a vase of dried daisies, and a photo of them by the river. Edward was still late—for the vegetable market, the train, evening get-togethers, for the new life that now felt warm and alive.
When Charlotte asked, “Where’ve you been?” he’d say, “Where time wakes up. Where you find it, instead of losing it.”
And it was enough. Because time no longer just ticked inside clocks. It lived in their steps, their laughter, in the road they walked together.
