The Tin Bear

The Tin Bear (complete)

Kate adjusted her sunglasses and ran a shaky hand through her light brown bob. She watched the steady stream of people disappearing through the wide, welcoming door of the auction house.

She took one last glance at the newspaper advertisement in her hand before shoving it back into her white leather handbag. Not that she needed to look, she knew the image by heart and had looked at the advertisement so often that when she closed her eyes, she could see it printed on the inside of her eyelids.

This was it — the holy grail, the pinnacle, the object she had been scouring the world for more than fifteen years.

The tin bear.

Not just any tin bear, but the tin bear.

Kate had never actually seen one in the flesh, so to speak, but the colour of its transfer-printed pelt, the shade of its tawny glass eyes, every joint and every clockwork movement seemed welded to her DNA thanks to her grandmother's description.

Of all the toys Oma Ilse had to leave behind in Amsterdam when her family fled the invading Nazis, Fovo the Dancing Bear had been her favourite. He was a birthday gift from her father who was a travelling salesman for a famous German toymaker before the war.

Every year on her birthday, her grandmother would tell the story of her tear-filled farewell to Fovo.

And now, nearly eighty years later and all the way around the world in Australia, there was Fovo in an auction in her own city. It was a sign. She had to have it, a gift for her Oma's 90th birthday.

Although dressed for the summer weather in a white T-shirt and mint green capri pants, Kate hurried across the bitumen to escape the stifling heat in the sun-drenched car park and was greeted with a blast of cool air as she entered the warehouse.

The light green scarf at her neck fluttered with the movement of a large fan supplementing the overworked air conditioner as she was drawn to the counter where an older couple, in their sixties she guessed, were busy selling auction catalogues.

Kate handed over the change and immediately started flicking through the pages until she found Fovo.

"They say there's a bit of magic in this auction room," the older lady remarked, handing Kate a complimentary pen. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"If you had asked me before today, I would have said no, but when there is one thing you have your heart set on..." Kate smiled and resolutely circled the catalogue picture of the tin bear.

She turned, looking for her quarry. The auction was another hour away, leaving plenty of time to view the lots scattered around the edges of the warehouse. Kate spied the tin bear on a counter between a pair of small Royal Doulton figurines and a small jewellery box.

She resisted the urge to dash straight up to it and instead, standing casually beside a glass-topped display case, surveyed the other auction-goers to see who else might be showing interest in her bear. No one appeared to be paying it any special interest. They drifted around the auction room, examining a Shelley trio here, a Worcester bowl there.

One nattily dressed older man, wearing a tie and with a fedora jauntily perched on his head, held a loupe to his eye, examining the hallmark on a lovely set of silver salt cellars. He was clearly a dealer, Kate mused.

She mentally warned him off as she watched the man approach the tin bear.

He's not yours, go away. You can't see him. You don't want him...

She grinned as he paused, turned back, and gave his rapt attention to a Moorcroft vase.

"They're a perfect match for your scarf, if you don't mind me saying."