Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (23 page)

‘Da,’ she said again, in a blur, and, not sure her legs would hold, found herself suddenly on the floor, hugging his legs, like she had done as a tiny child. And just as he had done then, without words, he put his hand on her hair, stroking it as her tears soaked through his trouser leg; stroking it over and over again, his confused brain moving in circles, trying to comprehend; trying to manage this piece of new information: that he had lost his darling, darling boy and he was never coming home
.

Lilian and her father never spoke of her moving to the city again. By contrast, neither Terence, who took advantage of soldier’s tickets after the war and went back to college and became a successful accountant, nor Gordon, who moved to London and wheeled and dealed and eventually fathered four children, including his beloved youngest daughter Angela, could ever face living in Lipton again, with the constant echo of the boy who did not come home
.

Lilian seemed to come back to herself.

‘Oh this,’ she said. ‘It’s Farmer Blowan’s daughter. Taking up with a Romany man. He wasn’t happy about that to start with, but he seems to have got over it now.’

Rosie watched, fascinated, as one of the children ran up to the coach with a huge knotted wreath of corn. The horses were stopped as the bride took it with grateful thanks, queen for a day, and handed it to her mother, who put it down with
care. The little girl practically curtseyed and ran back to the side of the road, to be congratulated by her own mother.

‘A summer wedding,’ smiled Lilian.

‘She hardly looks old enough to be getting married,’ said Rosie, striving to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Watching the scene under blue skies … She would like something like this. Lilian shot her a look.

‘What about you?’ she asked her. ‘Are you and your chap going to tie the knot?’

‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘We like things just how they are, I think.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘When I’m not here looking after invalids …’

‘Oi!’

‘We have a lovely time. Not tied down … we’ve got our freedom.’

‘Oh yes? What do you do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘With all your lovely freedom. What do you do?’

‘Well, we go to the pub,’ said Rosie, feeling a bit uncomfortable. ‘And, you know. Out. To the cinema.’

Actually they hardly ever went to the cinema. Gerard thought most modern movies were rubbish, which was true, and Rosie didn’t like teenagers talking and texting and chucking stuff about, which seemed to be allowed these days, and made her feel really old.

‘But mostly we just like being at home and being together,’ she said, conscious again that staying in did not, on current form, seem to be the kind of thing Gerard liked to do at all,
seeing as he’d hared off to his mother’s and was out on the lash every night.

‘You’ll meet him soon,’ said Rosie. ‘You’ll like him.’

She hoped this was true. Lilian didn’t seem to like a lot of people.

‘Hmm,’ said Lilian. ‘Well. Anyway. She’s twenty-two.’

‘
What!
’ said Rosie. ‘Wow.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Th … uhm, why does that matter?’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Lilian serenely. ‘Not at all.’

‘Twenty-two is ridiculously young to be getting married,’ said Rosie, thinking there wasn’t much point in explaining it to Lilian. It wasn’t as if she were likely to know anything about it.

‘Good luck!’ she called to the bride as she passed. Many of the children gazed at her with frank curiosity. Obviously there weren’t that many strangers in Lipton, especially not strangers fiddling about in a sweetshop.

Impetuously, Rosie turned back into the shop and grabbed a box of cherry lips that weren’t past their sell-by date, but certainly looked a bit bashed. Running back out, she threw handfuls of the sweets into the crowd, and watched the people laugh as the children dived and pounced on them, happy shrieks rending the air.

‘Thank you,’ mouthed the bride, and Rosie couldn’t help but smile back, as the coach moved on. Lilian was giving her an old-fashioned look but she steadfastly ignored it. ‘It’s marketing,’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. ‘That’s right, opening up again soon!’ she said bouncily out loud.

The party continued on, and Rosie watched them go, her
thoughts far away, until she became aware of a presence at about waist height. She looked down, into a very serious face with an old-fashioned haircut and steel-rimmed spectacles.

‘I think you should know,’ said the small boy, ‘I didn’t get any sweets.’

‘Well, you weren’t fast enough then, were you?’ said Lilian. ‘You’ll know better next time.’

The boy and Rosie regarded each other.

‘I can’t bend down in case I lose my glasses,’ explained the boy carefully. ‘Well, Mummy thinks I lose them. Actually sometimes they are knocked off. On purpose. By bad boys.’

‘That sounds terrible,’ said Rosie, meaning it.

‘Yes,’ said the boy, accepting the fact of the world having bad people in it. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Well,’ said Rosie, ‘here is a sweetie for you. And do you have any brothers or sisters?’

The boy shook his head.

‘Oh. That’s a shame. Well, would you like a spare one to give a friend?’

‘My friend isn’t allowed sweets,’ said the boy. Rosie had an idea of what the boy and his friend might be like.

‘OK,’ she said. Then she crouched down and whispered, ‘Would you like to eat his?’

The boy’s already magnified eyes widened.

‘But I don’t want the dentist to come and get me,’ he said.

‘OK,’ said Rosie. ‘Just the one then.’

‘Yes,’ said the boy hesitantly. ‘I think that would be best. Thank you very much for having me. Goodbye.’

He scampered off down the road.

‘What a peculiar chap,’ said Rosie.

‘Some academic and his hippy wife,’ said Lilian scornfully. ‘They’ve pampered the bloody life out of him, poor booby. He has a terrible time of it.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Rosie, genuinely sympathetic. ‘Well, I like him. What’s his name?’

‘Edison,’ said Lilian, ‘short for Edison, have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?’

‘Ooh, I rather like it,’ said Rosie.

Lilian peered over her niece’s shoulder through the shop door. ‘Scrubbing up, are you?’

Her tone was less peevish and sarcastic than usual.

‘Yup,’ said Rosie proudly. She’d covered a lot of ground today. ‘And I’m doing a stocktake.’

‘What’s that?’ said Lilian, absent-mindedly picking up the box of flying saucers and turning to go back indoors.

‘It’s … never mind,’ said Rosie. ‘And I’m going to need to see your accounts!’ she yelled after the elegantly departing figure, who did nothing apart from wave a bony hand in response.

Several hours later, with Lilian napping again and the shop clean as a whistle, the sun streaming in through the immaculate mullioned windows, Rosie looked around her with some satisfaction. Then she glanced at her watch: only three o’clock. She wondered what to do. Sighing, she thought she’d better go out and explore.

There was no way it was going to rain, she decided. The coat was frankly doomed, and Hetty’s mud duster was going to stay right there on the peg until Hetty came to get it or it
crawled home under its own steam. Or, better, Rosie thought, as soon as she learned to ride that bicycle, she’d ride up to the big house and deliver it personally.

Her mobile rang. She squinted at the unfamiliar number. ‘Hello?’

‘Nurse Rosie?’ came the amused-sounding tones.

‘Moray!’ she said, pleased. ‘What are you doing? If it’s catheterisation, I’m really incredibly busy.’

‘Nothing
quite
that exciting,’ said Moray. ‘Actually I was going to ask you another one of those special favours.’

The little road to Peak House looked more fairytale than ever, with the first leaves littering the pathway leading up to the grey stone building. Moray didn’t park out the front of course, but drove round the side, honking the horn loudly.

‘That’ll sort him out if he’s got headphones on,’ he said, then, getting out of the car, shouted loudly, ‘Medical! Medical!’ and to Rosie, ‘Now, use the kitchen door.’

‘Why is everyone so frightened of this guy?’ Rosie took the pills Moray had prescribed, as well as the page of written instructions.

‘I’m not
frightened
of him,’ said Moray. ‘Apart from the fact that he shouts a lot and has a gun.’

Rosie raised an eyebrow at him.

‘I’m not, honestly,’ said Moray, laughing. ‘Trust me. I did my training in Glasgow. Very little scares me.’ His face turned serious for an instant. ‘He’s one of my patients and I’d like him to get well. And it seemed the other day that you might have been getting through to him. That is, he spoke to you.’

‘Rudely,’ added Rosie.

‘Yes, but that’s more than anyone else has had in a long time. I just wanted to borrow your skills.’

‘You’re a flatterer.’

‘Plus, I think it was a good move with the sweets.’

Rosie smiled. She had a box of little fruit salads with her and she’d only chewed four so far, Moray two.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘if you swing by later and see Lilian. I know she won’t make appointments, but she really does need checking out.’

Moray shook his head. ‘It’s amazing, you know. I become a doctor to help people and not one solitary bugger wants me anywhere near them.’

A sudden silence fell, in which Rosie felt an overwhelming urge to giggle.

‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘I’m going in. And I’m armed.’ She held up the fruit salads.

Moray smiled. ‘You’re a brick.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘Just what girls love to hear. Keep the engine running.’

Rosie went straight up to the kitchen door and hammered loudly.

‘SWAT strike!’ she yelled, then realised that shouting something like that was at best tasteless and at worst dangerous for someone who probably used to be in the services and wasn’t any more, so she simply tried the handle.

‘Stephen? We’re here to check up on you.’

She needn’t have worried about the noise. At first she got
a shock. A man was lying with his head on the table, thick hair flopping over his forearm. Rosie started forward.

‘
Stephen?
’ she repeated, and with a jerk the figure moved, the head lifted from the table.