Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (7 page)

Rosie thought about Gerard as the bus lumbered on. He’d always been around, but she’d only really noticed him after Mum took off. He’d always had a friendly word for the nurses on his rounds, but they’d mostly just humoured him; his round cheery face and chubby cheeks made him more ‘aww’ material than the latest hunk in Radiology.

After Rosie had gone with her mum to Heathrow that dank, miserable November Monday morning with an insane amount of luggage and kissed her goodbye, and her mum had asked her one more time if she wouldn’t consider joining her and Pip in the sunshine, she had almost – almost – wavered and changed her mind. But she was halfway through her training and had settled in, and was making her own life now. It didn’t stop her feeling completely and utterly alone, though. She seldom saw her dad, and it tended not to be a great experience when she did. He tried his best but, as he explained when drunk, family life wasn’t for him. Why Rosie was meant to find this useful she had no idea.

When the cherubic-faced Gerard had popped up on Monday morning as she checked on Mrs Grandle’s fluid levels and asked her if she was all right, he wasn’t to know that he was the first person to ask. Her best friend Mike was on lates so she hadn’t dared phone him. And Gerard, a kindly soul, was genuinely concerned when pretty, bubbly Rosie burst into floods of unexpected tears.

‘Hey, hey,’ he had said as she explained. ‘It’s all right.
Come and have a coffee on break. Cor,’ he said with some force, ‘I don’t know how I could cope without my mother.’

This remark had proved to be somewhat prescient.

But his kindness and sense of fun had helped things along. He had introduced her to silliness and enabled her to rediscover her love of sweet things; he had the dietary habits of a let-loose five-year-old. They had fun eating pick-and-mix at the movies, and every Friday she would find a treat in her locker – a walnut whip, or a little bag of rock. It was cute, even if it hadn’t done much for her waistline.

‘Is that it?’ Mike had said, a bit snippily, frankly, when they were discussing Gerard in the pub. Hospitals were small places, without secrets, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. ‘I just thought he’d asked out everyone else and they’d all said no.’

‘That’s not true,’ Rosie had protested. ‘He’s really nice when you get to know him.’

He was funny, and kind, and seemed keen. The idea of someone she already knew, with a steady job, rather than someone she bounced off of on nights out, was beginning to appeal – after all, she wasn’t getting any younger. She explained this to Mike, who rolled his eyes and continued to talk about Giuseppe, who made his life a living hell, but it was worth it because of their unbelievable passion.

‘What about when that dies down though?’ protested Rosie. Passion wasn’t everything. The last time she’d felt unbelievable passion, it was for a drummer in a failed rock band who’d given her scabies.

‘I’ll just provoke a fight,’ said Mike, getting up to fetch another bottle of wine.

‘But don’t you yearn for the nice, quiet, simple things in life? Someone to come home to every night? Being settled?’

Mike shrugged. ‘Do you?’

‘Well, maybe a rest is as good as a change,’ said Rosie, pouring out the wine. ‘Maybe I’d like things just to be nice and calm for a while, no one yelling their head off about moving to Australia.’

And they had been nice and calm – perhaps a little too nice and calm, but Rosie put that to the back of her mind. Not earth-shattering. Not fast-moving. There were no massively romantic declarations; no ring. But then, Mike and Giuseppe got through a fortune in crockery. And nothing much had changed in eight years. Until now.

The first thing Rosie noticed about Lipton was that it was possibly the quietest place she had ever been. The main street of the village was completely deserted even though it wasn’t long after eight o’clock. There were only a few street lamps, old-fashioned lanterns that lit up a pub, a large square stone house that looked like it might be the doctor’s surgery, a post office and a couple of small businesses Rosie couldn’t identify. Over the tops of the opposite buildings, blocking out the stars, loomed the great dark shapes of the Pennines, over which she’d just pootled in the bus. A huge fat harvest moon sat low in the sky, silvering the landscape. Somewhere, far away, Rosie could just make out the hoot of an owl.

After Paddington, with its brash neon and sirens and fast-food joints and late-night trains and street-thronging hordes, Rosie felt as if she’d been picked up and set down again a
hundred years in the past. She turned round slowly and picked up her big suitcase, almost scared to make a sound. There seemed to be no lights on in the buildings at all. It was rather unnerving.

Rosie had printed out a map from Google that showed her aunt’s house, and it quickly became clear from the size of the place that she wouldn’t have far to go.

The cottage was absolutely tiny, like something out of a fairy tale. It really did have a thatched roof with a dormer window, and smoke coming out of the chimney; it looked like someone ought to be sculpting it on to a plate or lighting it up to use as a tacky Christmas decoration.

‘Hello?’ Rosie yelled nervously.

‘All right, all right,’ came a cross voice. ‘I’m not deaf.’

There was a pause, then a shuffling noise, and then, after some wrestling with the doorknob, Lilian opened the door.

The two women regarded each other. Rosie had been expecting a very old lady; Lilian had been old when she had been a child. Instead, in the murky light, she was greeted by a bowed but still slender figure, with a severely cut bob, wearing what seemed to be a maroon chiffon dress and full make-up.

Lilian in return had been expecting a young girl, not this curly-haired, rather weighed-down-looking fully grown woman with bags under her pale grey eyes. She remembered little Rosie as a pretty, sparky thing, always putting her dollies to bed and tucking them in and staring at her bag, shyly, too polite and nervous to ask if she had any goodies within.

‘Hello,’ said Rosie.

Lilian eyed up Rosie’s shoes. They were flat and clumpy and covered in mud. She wondered if she could ask her to take them off. But that really would be getting off on the wrong foot.

‘You’d better come in then,’ she said.

Rosie followed her over the threshold, noticing as she did so the pained stiffness in her aunt’s movements. Inside, the room smelled beautiful, of a warm, flowery beeswax. Through another beamed doorway was a little sitting room, toasty warm with a wood-burning stove flickering away merrily in the grate. The mantelpiece was entirely covered in framed photos, many old, but without a fleck of dust. Rosie surmised they were of Lilian herself, and she had clearly been something of a glamour puss in her younger years. Rosie admired a beautiful fifties shot of her, framed in black and white.

‘Is this you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Lilian. ‘I’m creepily obsessed with someone who looks a bit like me.’ Rosie glanced at her to figure out if this was a joke. Lilian’s face gave nothing away.

‘So,’ said Rosie, looking around. The living room was tiny. Her enormous, mucky bag seemed to be cluttering the whole place up. Lilian sat herself down carefully in her armchair, as if her bones were made of glass.

‘Thanks for having me to stay!’ said Rosie cheerfully, as if she was a house guest and not someone with her heart set on getting in, completing an unpleasant job and getting out as quickly as possible.

Lilian sniffed loudly. ‘I dare say you don’t want to be here any more than I want you here.’

Lilian spoke in a posh accent with a touch of the local flattened vowels. She sounded very different from Rosie and her mother. Angie’s dad, Lilian’s big brother, had left Derbyshire long ago to make his fortune in the smoke. It hadn’t quite worked out like that in the end. It occurred to Rosie, sitting herself down on an immaculate floral sofa, that maybe they were the downwardly mobile end of the family.

‘No, I’m thrilled,’ Rosie lied, squirming at her aunt’s rudeness. ‘It’s like a holiday in the country.’

‘What, forcing me out of my home?’

There was an awkward pause.

‘Mum just said maybe you needed a bit of help,’ said Rosie, gently.

Lilian sniffed. Rosie took this, correctly, to mean that Lilian did indeed need help but couldn’t bear to admit it.

‘Well, the local doctors are no sodding use.’

‘How did you break your hip?’

‘Practising for the ice-dancing finals.’

Suddenly Rosie felt tired. It had been a long day, and she and Gerard had been up late the night before. When Gerard had said he was going to be busy in the coming weeks, a tiny worm in Rosie’s head questioned once again why he didn’t just come up for the weekends. She wasn’t in Swaziland. Why did she always have to make all the moves?

She looked around again at the cosy room. Lilian had been born in this cottage. Never married, just focused on the business and stayed in the same village all her life. It seemed so strange.

‘Do you get to London much?’ she asked, knowing it was a stupid question as soon as it came out of her mouth.

‘Well, obviously David Niven telephones me when he’s in town, but apart from that …’ Lilian stopped herself. It wasn’t this girl’s fault she was getting older and everything was packing up, and it was the most irritating, frustrating thing she could possibly imagine to have no bloody hope of getting any better, and seeing this frumpy thing bounce in to look after her. This young woman didn’t have the slightest clue what an incredible luxury it was to hop on a London train whenever it took her fancy, darting hither and thither without a care in the world, and thought Lilian was just a broken toy that must be packed somewhere neatly out of the way.

‘Hmm,’ said Lilian. ‘Are you hungry?’

Rosie wasn’t, really. She’d eaten three enormous and vastly overpriced sandwiches on the train to give herself something to do, apart from staring out of the window and worrying about Gerard. When she came back to London, would he meet her at the railway station and suddenly drop down on one knee and she’d have to pretend to be surprised and make her face look all wide-eyed and appealing? She’d have to remember to put on extra make-up, and everyone around them in the station would smile and maybe even clap, like in a movie or something … Yes. That was definitely what would happen. Then she’d opened her eyes. Gerard didn’t even like getting down on his knees to tie his shoelaces he made old groany noises.

Lilian glanced back towards a door that obviously led to the kitchen. It occurred to Rosie that Lilian might be very hungry; if she wasn’t mobile, it was a bit of a mystery as to how she was feeding herself. The house was very tidy; how did she manage that?

‘You could make tea …’ Lilian said. ‘Only if you want some. It’s easy to find everything.’

Rosie turned to her. There was a lot less hostility in her aunt’s tone.

‘OK,’ said Rosie carefully. ‘Yes, actually, I’m really hungry. While I’m in there, can I rustle you up something?’

‘Oh, hardly anything for me … I eat like a bird,’ said Lilian defensively, willing the girl to hurry up. She was desperate for a cup of tea; her arthritis meant she could no longer lift the kettle.