Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (19 page)

‘Oh good, you’re up,’ she announced, looking around expectantly and taking off her gloves.

‘How cold was it last night?’ asked Lilian.

‘A three-dogger,’ said Hetty, incomprehensibly to Rosie’s ears. ‘Stick the kettle on, will you, toots?’

Rosie belatedly realised this meant her and jumped next door.

‘Rosie has been getting up Roy’s nose,’ said Lilian by way of conversation.

‘Oh good,’ said Hetty. ‘I don’t hold with dentists anyway. Ridiculous bourgeois convention.’

Rosie peeked her head round the door. Sure enough, Hetty had long, strong-looking yellow teeth, exactly like a horse.

‘Nothing wrong with the teeth God gave you. When are you opening up?’

‘Well, our Rosie has got herself a date today, so she can’t work,’ said Lilian mischievously.

‘I have
not
,’ said Rosie, feeling her face go hot as she waited for the kettle to boil. ‘And you’re not having tea, by the way, you’re having Bovril. And a peanut butter and banana sandwich.’

‘I don’t eat American things,’ said Lilian. ‘They were too late entering the war.’

Rosie rolled her eyes and ignored her.

‘It’s that young Dr Moray,’ said Lilian to Hetty. ‘Taking her out in his car.’

‘And you accepted?’ said Hetty, looking amused.

‘Yes!’ said Rosie, suddenly cross. ‘Because it’s not 1895, and because I’m not fourteen. So you can mind your own business!’

Hetty and Lilian exchanged another look.

‘No,’ said Hetty. ‘Obviously you are not even vaguely like a fourteen-year-old.’

Rosie stomped back into the kitchen to finish making the tea.

‘Of course,’ said Lilian, her voice carrying effortlessly through the cottage’s thick stone walls, ‘you know why he’s asking her?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Hetty cryptically. She harrumphed. ‘Well, I wish them luck with that. But – and I know she’s your niece – but. Really. I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Rosie, furiously pink, as she set down the tray. The women looked at her.

‘Talking to us again, are you?’ said Lilian.

‘Oh, you’ll find out,’ said Hetty, just as they heard a car horn honk outside.

‘Tell me!’ said Rosie, cutting Lilian’s sandwich into small pieces. Although she always protested about the food, Rosie had noticed, she did tend to scoff the lot when Rosie wasn’t around.

‘Well, I shall just wish you good luck,’ said Hetty. ‘I wonder if you can succeed where so many others have failed.’

‘Are you going out like that?’ demanded Lilian. ‘You can’t.’

Rosie was wearing a large cardigan.

‘Oh darling, you’ll catch your death.’

‘It’s lovely outside! It’s summer!’

Hetty sighed. ‘You are never going to get the hang of this, are you?’

‘And I look nice.’

Hetty shook her head, then picked up her huge waterproof
mackintosh with the flaps that came off the shoulders and made her look like a particularly hefty ruddy-cheeked velociraptor.

‘Here, take this. I’ve got the stockman’s in the car.’

Rosie stared at it. ‘I can’t take that.’

‘Course you can,’ said Lilian. ‘It’ll be pouring by eleven. You’ll be drenched through.’

‘I need a new coat,’ muttered Rosie to herself.

‘Yes, you do,’ said Hetty. ‘But until then, this will be perfectly adequate.’

‘
No!
’ said Rosie, struggling, but resistance was useless. Hetty forced her into the enormous overcoat, which smelled of hay and dog. Rosie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. She looked like a murderous fisher man.

‘I’m sure I’m …’

‘Not a word,’ said Hetty in a regal voice that brooked no argument. Was she, Rosie found herself wondering, actually in charge? Were you legally obliged to do what the lady of the manor said? She’d have to check up on it.

‘Off you go now!’

‘And tell us everything when you get back!’ pealed Lilian, who was obviously finding all of this hilarious, and the arrival of Rosie clearly some huge entertainment package on a par with Sky Plus.

Moray stared at the figure emerging from the cottage with that same twitch of amusement around his mouth. Rosie wasn’t sure whether to find it charming or irritating.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, leaning against his Land Rover with his arms folded. He was wearing a well-worn tweed jacket that
looked slightly too big for him, a checked shirt and a green tie. ‘I was looking for a new girl. You, it is clear, have been here for generations.’

‘Shut up,’ said Rosie. ‘It was Lady Lipton’s fault.’

‘That’s her coat?’ said Moray. ‘She
is
grateful we saved Bran.’

‘It’s a loan. Can I take it off and put it in the back?’

‘If you like,’ said Moray. ‘But it’s going to hose it down in about forty minutes. You may want to keep it close by.’

‘But it smells absolutely horrible.’

‘Does it?’

‘You are such a country lubber! Of course it does! Look!’

Rosie picked out a piece of hay from the pocket. Moray glanced at it.

‘Oh look,’ he said. ‘A tube ticket.’

‘We don’t have tube tickets any more,’ said Rosie loftily.

‘Oh yes? Have they stopped charging you for ramming you in like slaughterhouse cattle and making you stick your nose in a stranger’s armpit for two hours a day?’

Rosie didn’t consider this worthy of a response.

‘So, what’s this in aid of?’ she said.

‘Well, I thought you might like to ride along,’ said Moray carefully. ‘Show you a bit of the town and so on.’

‘So you won’t be needing my professional opinion?’ said Rosie, smiling. ‘What happens round here anyway? Goat bites?’

Moray raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, let’s get the morning calls out of the way first.’

They popped in on a heavily pregnant young woman without a car, who demanded to know if Rosie had children. When Rosie said she didn’t, she ignored her.

Then they went to see Anton Swinley, who had hurt his back in a lorry-driving accident six years before and since then had made it his life’s ambition to become Britain’s fattest man. He had fallen well short of that, but he still had various medical conditions, not least a skin fungus that was a lot easier to cope with when two people were attending to it.

Moray looked at Rosie, a tad guiltily.

‘I’ve brought you lunch for later,’ he said.

Rosie looked back at him. ‘I hope it’s not pork scratchings,’ she said quietly, but readily put the rubber gloves on.

‘Ooh,’ Anton was saying, in a wheezy voice. Next to his bed was a large respirator that helped him sleep. ‘You’re going to reopen that sweetshop! I really love Lilian’s sweetshop. Chocolate caramels … fudge squares.’

‘Hmm,’ said Rosie, scrubbing away. She didn’t at all mind the unpleasant jobs – they were part of life. Bodies were bodies, and someone had to do it. She did, though, slightly mind the hunky doctor, who’d started at the bottom end, having to see her in such unromantic circumstances. She wasn’t looking for a man. Obviously not, she had a perfectly lovely man waiting at home. A perfectly lovely man, she tried to ignore a voice in her head saying, who seemed to have been out on the piss till all hours ever since she left and who’d started crashing at his mum’s. A perfectly lovely man who’d been very happy to move in with her so they could share an otherwise ungettable mortgage, while seemingly using it as a base from which to go out with his mates and … The man she loved, she told herself. The man she loved, in the flat she loved, in the city she loved, where her future lay, firmly laid out ahead of her.

On the other hand, it would be nice to know, whatever Lilian and Hetty appeared to think, that a man might perceive her as an attractive woman, as someone you might want to take out on a date. When she’d seen Moray, tall, handsome, humorous, leaning on his car that morning, her heart, however much she tried to deny it, had skipped. Just a tiny bit. Just a tiny bit to show there was a flicker of life in her yet. Just because she was taken, she told herself, didn’t mean she was dead.

Plus, also, it hardly mattered. It seemed more than likely that if you fancied someone, you wouldn’t take them on a first date to scrub down a morbidly obese man’s fungal skin folds. Yes. Pretty improbable. She’d been out of the game for a while now, but it was unlikely to have changed that much. So. Nothing to worry about at all. She should try to stop sneaking peeks at his eyes, to see if they really were that amazing mix of blue and green.

‘Doesn’t your health visitor have a word with you about how many sweets you can eat?’ Rosie asked.

Anton and Anton’s wife, a surprisingly petite woman, both shook their heads. The fact that she was petite was slightly less surprising than that he had a wife at all, thought Rosie. Maybe the man shortage was even worse than she’d realised.

‘A health what?’ said Anton.

‘Someone who could maybe discuss the effects of your, ahem, lifestyle choices on your health,’ said Rosie.

Anton and his wife looked at one another for a second.

‘Well,’ said the wife tentatively, ‘we watch those fat TV shows, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Anton, nodding his head, which was oddly
elongated by all the bulbous chins underneath it. ‘Yeah, we do. All of them.’

‘But you don’t think to do any of the things they say?’ said Rosie.

‘Oh yes,’ said Anton.

‘Yes,’ said his wife. ‘We’re going to fill in the forms. They come and give you a haircut and all sorts of things.’

‘Well,’ said Rosie, ‘even if you don’t actually appear on the shows, I’m sure there’s plenty of useful tips you could take from them.’

‘Oh, I’ll get on the show,’ said Anton proudly. ‘I had four bacon butties this morning. Four! That should do it.’

Rosie shot a look at Moray, whose face betrayed nothing.

‘But if you followed what they say about fruit and vegetables and exercise, you wouldn’t need to go on the show! You could move around much more easily instead!’

Anton looked confused, then glanced at his wife and back at Rosie again.

‘Are you going to have those violet creams when you reopen your shop?’

Rosie looked surprised. ‘I hadn’t thought of it. Do you think there’s much call? Violet creams are a bit out of fashion these days.’

‘Not with me,’ said Anton. ‘I love my creams, don’t I, love?’

His wife beamed proudly.

‘Violet are the best, but I’m not that fussy really. Coffee. Raspberry.’

‘I bet you do well at Christmas,’ said Rosie. ‘Loads of people hate them.’

‘I know,’ said Anton. ‘It’s my party trick.’

‘What is?’

‘I can tell you which Revel is which … without even touching them!’

‘Wow,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe we could get you down to the shop to do that!’

‘Hmm,’ said Anton.

‘No, I’m serious … if you manage to get yourself together and walk down, we’ll have a display event and people can bet against you. It’ll be great.’

Anton’s eyes lit up.

‘That
would
be great. I could hustle them a bit, just to get them started. Mix up a peanut and a raisin.’

‘Which is a rube’s error,’ said Rosie seriously.

‘Right …’

Moray harrumphed and, as they finished up, handed over large bottles of emollients with instructions to Anton’s wife on how to apply them.

‘This is the only cream I want you anywhere near,’ he said, pointedly. ‘Is it worth giving you this for the bath?’ He was looking critically at a big white bottle of bath salts. The woman shook her head.

‘Me in a bath?’ said Anton. ‘They’d never get me out again! We’d need to call the fire brigade!’

He and his wife started to chuckle. They were still giggling as Moray and Rosie left the house, which did indeed smell of bacon.

Moray took the hilltop road. ‘So we see one patient who’s eating himself to death and you suggest he eats more?’

‘I did not, in fact, suggest anything of the sort,’ said Rosie. ‘I dangled a carrot … OK, a carrot made of icing, but none theless.
I have tempted him with something that involves getting out of the house. And getting out of the house is the first step in this. Trust me. I’ve worked on bariatrics. I’ve cleaned stuff out of crevices I thought was starting a new civilisation.’

Moray shot her a look.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe you can
occasionally
be useful when I’m not digging you out of ditches.’

That didn’t sound much like a date, Rosie thought. Useful wasn’t a word you used about a date. It was a word you used about a stapler. No. Good. Best to put the whole thing behind her.

‘It’s hard,’ said Moray. ‘I can’t yell at Anton. We are the whole support team out here, but we’re not the police. It’s not illegal to overeat.’

‘That’s what we used to say when they brought in the same drug addicts four times a week,’ said Rosie. ‘Of course, drugs
are
illegal, but the same principle applies. Do what you can, keep moving on. Patch and dispatch.’

‘Are you sure you want to open a sweetshop?’ said Moray. ‘Because you still sound a lot like a nurse to me.’

‘Do you know how many people turn up at sweetshops covered in blood?’asked Rosie pleasantly.

‘Almost none?’ ventured Moray.

‘Almost none. With a small subsection of skinned knees. Anyway, I’m not opening up a sweetshop. I’m selling a sweetshop.
Very
different.’