Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (17 page)

‘Well, I couldn’t brake, could I? I’d just have gone arse over tit.’

‘Into our vegetable patch,’ said Mrs Isitt fiercely. ‘Oh no, you couldn’t, you’ve already ruined it.’

‘I am very sorry about that,’ said Rosie. ‘I really am. I’m new here.’

Mrs Isitt flared her nostrils with a harrumph that made Rosie wonder if a horse had wandered into the barn.

‘While I’m here,’ said Moray, ‘Peter, let me take a look at that hip.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Mrs Isitt.

‘Yes, well, I’d still like to take a look. In passing,’ said Moray. ‘Seeing as we have no further casualties.’

‘Apart from …’

‘Yes, yes, the vegetable patch.’

Rosie was still blushing from saying something so stupid to
Moray, but Jake came up beside her, kindly asking, ‘Would you like me to get you the cream?’

Rosie smiled gratefully. ‘I wouldn’t want to face Lilian without it.’

Jake steered her towards the barn door.

‘You’ve got that silage to move,’ said Mrs Isitt huffily as he left.

‘Yes, Mrs Isitt,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll just sort this out.’

Rosie followed him obediently.

‘You work for them?’

Jake shrugged. ‘Times are hard,’ he said, in a tone of voice that indicated he didn’t want to talk about it any more. Rosie followed him quietly out into the dairy, a large, bare concrete area.

‘It smells funny,’ she said.

‘So do you, to a cow,’ said Jake. ‘You get used to it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, where are you from?’

‘London.’

‘London! I’ve been to London!’

‘How did it smell?’

‘Terrible,’ said Jake. ‘Of frying grease, and noodles, and sweat and the exhaust from those great ruddy buses.’

‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. ‘And takeaway coffee and Mexican food, and strange hair products and outdoor cigarettes and incense sticks and hot pavement …’

‘Yes,’ said Jake sternly. ‘Ugh.’

Rosie smiled, as Jake picked up two plastic-capped water bottles, went to a large silver-metal vat and ladled them full of dense, freshly churned cream.

‘No charge today,’ he said. ‘But bring back those plastic bottles or else Mrs Isitt will have my guts for garters. And she will too.’

Rosie nodded. ‘But how do I get back up the hill?’ she asked. Jake laughed.

‘Get a pedal on, girl,’ he said.

‘That is simply not possible,’ said Rosie severely. ‘You are kidding.’

‘Fine,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll send the helicopter.’

‘
Jacob!
’ came a shrill voice from outside the barn. ‘Are you getting on with that silage?’

‘I have to go,’ said Jake. ‘Bye now!’

And he left Rosie standing there with her brimming bottles of cream, feeling more than a little dazed by the country life she’d expected to find so dull.

The bike was absolutely fine, and someone had picked it up and propped it on the side of the barn. There was no one to be seen. Rosie looked longingly at the Land Rover parked outside the austere-looking farmhouse, but there seemed to be nothing else for it. She deposited the milk and cream in the ancient wicker basket at the front and started to push the heavy machine up the steep muddy track.

It took for ever. At one point she was tempted to get up and try to ride again, but as soon as she did so she wobbled horribly and started to slip down the hill backwards, so she gave up and went back to trudging. The hill took a lot longer to get up than it had to get down, and while at some point she might have appreciated the view of the neat patchwork fields
of the Isitts’ dairy farm, the cows roaming the green fields, eating in preparation for their evening milking, she didn’t care how it looked. A couple of fields, one brown and one red, were being ploughed up by a tractor. It was beautiful, thought Rosie, but she stamped uphill, red-faced, embarrassed, hot and cross. All she wanted was an Oyster card; a tube station; a sitdown in a coffee shop. To run into someone who didn’t appear to already know all about her. She glanced up the hill. Miles. Dammit. She was boiling hot, and incredibly thirsty and seriously pissed off and sick of being a laughing stock, and …

She hardly heard the Land Rover pull up beside her, till it honked loudly.

‘OK, OK,’ she said, trying to pull the bike off the muddy ruts to the side of the road. ‘I’m moving! I’m moving! Bloody hell.’

Moray leaned out of the window. ‘Need a lift?’

Even though she would have liked nothing better than to tip the damn thing on to the path and leave it there, Rosie shook her head.

‘I have this gigantic bike,’ she said.

‘Yes, uhm, I can see that,’ said Moray. ‘Sling it in the back.’

Sure enough, the Land Rover was about the size of a truck. Rosie tried to fling it in casually, but the damn bike swung round and knocked her on the shin. Muttering darkly, she manhandled it in upside down, taking the milk out and putting it on the side.

‘Tell me,’ said Moray when she clambered into the front seat, ‘are you always either soaking wet or covered in straw?’

‘Have you always lived in a world of rain and mud, even when everyone else followed the industrial revolution and moved?’ said Rosie. ‘Look, it’s clouding over again.’

This was true. Ominous black clouds had appeared out of nowhere.

‘How do they even do that?’ Rosie complained.

Moray glanced at her as they continued bumping up the pitted track.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked finally. ‘Is this some kind of alternative to prison?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, I think so. It’s not easy coming to stay somewhere new.’

‘No,’ said Moray. ‘No. It isn’t.’

‘Everyone thinks I’m some kind of city type that knows nothing about country ways.’

‘Is that mud on your nose?

‘I don’t care,’ said Rosie crossly, looking to change the subject. ‘I’m going home soon.’ Then she thought back to the farm. ‘How’s that old man’s hip? He didn’t look too happy.’

‘Week five,’ said Moray.

Rosie squinted. ‘He should be moving better than that. He’s mobile, but he’s obviously wincing.’

Moray glanced at her again. ‘I agree. I think that old witch … ahem, I mean, his wife … is forcing him back into stuff he’s not ready for. Jake helps out, but I think she’s pushing it too far. A little exercise is good …’

‘Like digging a vegetable garden,’ said Rosie, regretfully.

‘Hmm,’ said Moray. ‘But I think she’s got him on full-time hoofing, and it’s not doing him any favours.’

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe if you drew up a plan? One of those ones on official-looking paper, that mentions the word “insurance”? Those are always handy. And have a word with
Jake, see if there’s some way Mr Isitt could
look
like he was working without actually having to move the wrong way?’

Moray raised his eyebrows. ‘That might work.’ He was pulling up in front of Lilian’s house.

‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

She got out of the car. Moray jumped out and helped her with the bicycle.

‘Thank you,’ said Rosie. ‘Now I shall take it into the garden and ceremoniously burn it.’

Moray smiled. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘if you like … it’s always useful to have a nurse’s eye around the place. We have a district nurse, but she’s quite frightening and marches about looking for things to vaccinate … Well, anyway, if you like, I could take you out on my rounds tomorrow. Show you around a little bit. To say thanks for your help yesterday. And for, well, inadvertently getting me to check in on Peter Isitt. He wouldn’t come to the surgery in a million years.’

Rosie thought about it. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Will I get absolutely soaking and mucky?’

‘Not normally,’ said Moray. ‘But seeing as it’s you, I expect so.’

‘What’s this?’ Lilian said, pushing at her soup with her spoon.

‘It’s more vegetable soup,’ said Rosie firmly. ‘With plenty of cream. And eat lots of bread. Good bread.’

‘I would rather,’ said Lilian, in a dignified fashion, ‘have a tutti frutti.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Rosie. ‘You have to build up your
strength. I think we need to get back to work on the shop. Formulate your way ahead for when I go back to London.’

‘Hmm,’ said Lilian. ‘And when are we starting? Tomorrow?’

‘You’re not starting at all. You’re getting your strength back.’

‘And you? Tomorrow?’

‘Uh, no, not exactly,’ said Rosie. ‘Actually, uhm, the local doctor asked me out tomorrow. To, er, show me around. Show me how nice it is here.’

Lilian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That young whippersnapper. Hmm.’

‘What?’ said Rosie. ‘It’s nothing. He’s just being friendly. He’s not after me. He’s only ever seen me covered in muck. It’s just friendliness, that’s all. And I have a boyfriend.’

‘So you say,’ said Lilian. Rosie chose to ignore her.

‘You’ll get yourself a reputation in the village,’ said Lilian, thickly smearing butter on her bread.

‘I think I’m doing that already,’ said Rosie.

‘I think you are too,’ said Lilian primly. Then they lapsed into silence once more.

Chapter Seven

You would have to be very ill indeed to consider a lozenge any kind of a treat.

‘Come home if you don’t like it.’

Rosie couldn’t believe Gerard had another hangover. He sounded a bit surly, not at all like himself. She’d really wanted to touch base with him just to reassure herself. She had been startled by how daft and girlish she’d been yesterday when Moray and Jake had been helping her up, and wanted to get back in touch with the man she really wanted, and her real life, which wasn’t all mucky and covered in cow. But she’d woken Gerard up on his day off, and it didn’t sound like he was best pleased to hear from her.

‘You’ve only been there a few days.’

It sounded like he thought she was whingeing at him continuously, rather than the truth: Rosie had never lived anywhere
other than the city and neither had Gerard. She might as well have moved to Timbuktu. She wished he could be just a little bit more supportive.

‘So … so you can’t come up this weekend then?’ she said, hating herself for sounding like she was begging.

Gerard sighed. ‘Let me see,’ he grunted, desperate to get off the phone and back to sleep.