On a chilly November evening in the sleepy town of Rivermere, where the air smelled of damp earth and fallen leaves, Edward lingered outside the dusty window of an old antiques shop. The clocks inside—small, delicate things with worn faces and slender hands—seemed to whisper of times long past. They reminded him of his grandfather, of days when he’d been just a boy, hunched over a workbench, mesmerised by the dance of gears under his magnifying glass. As he watched the hands creep forward, it struck him: he didn’t want to hurry. Not now. Not toward the end of eighteen years. Inside, the decision was already made. Outside, there was only grey rain, murky puddles, and a cold that ached right through his chest.
Edward walked into the courtroom fifteen minutes late. His nearly ex-wife, Eleanor, sat by the window, her hands folded over a folder of documents. Her face was calm, but her fingers, fiddling with the edge of a paper, betrayed her tension. She didn’t look at him, didn’t seem angry—just waited, as if this were a business meeting, not the full stop to their marriage. He remembered the two of them assembling furniture in their first flat, bickering, laughing, sipping tea on the bare floor. The memory pricked like a shard of glass. He swallowed it down, wordless.
The judge was brisk as the wind outside. Questions, signatures, stamps—it was over in under ten minutes. As if eighteen years of holidays, arguments, and nights curled under an old blanket fit neatly into a handful of paperwork.
On the steps outside, Eleanor said, “Don’t forget to get the papers notarised. Today.”
Edward nodded. He wanted to say “sorry,” but didn’t know what for. Wanted to say “thank you,” but couldn’t find the reason. Instead, he muttered, “You… look lovely.”
She stared at him like he was a stranger, then walked away. Her footsteps dissolved into the rain, but the faint trace of her perfume lingered—like a ghost of what they’d once had.
Edward stood frozen in the empty courthouse corridor. Somewhere, a door slammed. Someone coughed. A phone rang. He wondered: *Is this the end? Or the beginning?*
Instead of going home, he drove to his grandfather’s old workshop, tucked away in a quiet corner of Rivermere, where time itself seemed to stand still. The little room, its ceiling low, smelled of oil and dust. Shelves were cluttered with jars of screws, boxes of springs, and an old poster about horology. The key had stayed buried in his battered wallet all these years. He unlocked the door, flicked the switch. The bulb flickered, then bloomed into warm, familiar light—the same gold that had strained his eyes as a boy.
The clock on the wall ticked, as if keeping the rhythm of his life. Edward sat at the old workbench, fingers tracing its rough surface—every chip, every scratch. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from the sudden certainty that they had purpose again. He pulled a broken watch from the drawer, one he’d never finished repairing years ago. Took it apart. Laid the gears on a cloth, steadying his breath. Reassembled it. Wound it. Tick. Another tick. And then—time itself seemed to whisper, *I’m still here.*
The next day, he came back. Then again. Three weeks later, he slapped a new sign on the door: *Workshop Open.* The paper hung crooked on peeling tape, but it held firm, as if it belonged.
People began to drift in. Elderly ladies brought antique watches, hope flickering in their eyes. Men with expensive timepieces looked lost, as if the broken gears had upended their world. Teenagers asked for wild things: “Can you make the dial glow?” Edward nodded, took their treasures, and fixed them. He listened. Sometimes, people talked—not about clocks, but about divorce, grief, the things that had broken inside *them*. And as he fitted a tiny screw, 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 carried her father’s old watch—scratched, hands frozen. She watched Edward with doubt, as if afraid it was beyond saving.
“Can you fix it?” she asked softly.
He nodded. Worked slowly, pausing now and then, as if listening not just to the gears, but to the ache behind her silence.
A month later, Charlotte returned—not for the watch, but with a bag of hot tea and a homemade pie. She came again after that, for no reason at all. One afternoon, as they sorted a box of screws, she suddenly said, “You don’t just fix clocks. You put people back together. Bit by bit. Without them even noticing.”
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 watch he’d repaired for Charlotte ticked on the shelf of their shared flat. Beside it sat books, a vase of dried daisies, and a photo of them by the river. Edward still ran late—for the market, for trains, for evening get-togethers, for this new life that now felt warm and alive.
When Charlotte asked, “Where’ve you been?” he’d say,
“Where time comes alive. Where you don’t lose it—you find it.”
And that was enough. Because time didn’t just tick inside clocks anymore. It moved with them—in their steps, their laughter, their shared path.
