Mr Teddington

Out of Briggs, Bannerman, Hammersly and Lang she ran, clacking down the wet stone steps of their office building in her expensive high heeled shoes, a murderous scowl upon her beautiful young face and Mr. Teddington swinging by its stuffed paw from her tightly clenched right fist.

How could he have done this to her? After all she’d done for him; all the years of her young life she had thrown away upon him. He’d left all his money to his grinning old witch of a wife and her snotty brats and left her with nothing except bloody Mr Teddington, a stuffed mohair teddybear with one eye missing and an ear half chewed off by an old family pet. Not even an antique, just a piece of bloody crap that bloody Oxfam would have turned its nose up at.

She dumped it, roughly, into a public litter bin on the way to her car, feeling the rain start to come down and herself about to cry. She didn’t really notice the homeless man in the dirty, old pac-a-mac until she was putting on her seatbelt and he banged on her window.

She looked up, startled. What did he want? He had a horrible toothless mouth,a hang-dog look,his face was dirty and his beard was yellow and wild.

“What do you want?!”, she snapped, glowering, as she partially lowered the car window, “I’ve got no money to give you”.

Then she saw the bear, Mr Teddington, gripped in his left hand and heard him slur, “Your bear”.

“Yes”, she said, turning her key in the ignition and hearing the engine start, whilst waving him away with her left hand, “Take it! I don’t want it! Have it!”.

Then, half-laughing, she gave him the little folded up note that had come with it but which she hadn’t even bothered reading, pressing the edge of it into his dirty hand, “Have this too”, she said, before starting to pull out of her parking space.

The man in the pac-a-mac opened up the note and looked at it as the strangely irate woman in the red Audi drove away.

“Dear Charlotte”, it said, “Please don’t feel bad that I left the house and the money to my family. I had to leave them something after all but I’ve had what’s inside Mr Teddington evaluated and its worth three times what all my other assets put together are worth. I left them to you because I know you really loved me and not just for my money and Mr Teddington is just a way of saying that you’ll always be my teddy bear”.

Suddenly, something clattered on the pavement
at the man’s feet. He thought it was a hailstone
to begin with but then more fell and he realized that the bear’s side was slightly ripped open and leaking diamonds.