Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (28 page)

The day was still warm outside, although Lilian insisted on a cardigan being placed around her shoulders. Rosie hoped that if she could get a bit of weight on her she might not feel so cold all the time.

She led her next door. Rosie had refurbished the bell that hung above the door, which had got so gummed up with muck and stuff she couldn’t imagine the last time it had rung. She had scrubbed and scraped and polished it with Brasso, and now it dinged out cheerfully. When she heard it, Lilian exclaimed despite herself. Then as she walked forward into the new, shiny sweetshop, she stopped dead.

‘
Oh
,’ she said, hands suddenly grasping a shelf to keep herself upright. ‘Oh.’

Rosie watched the colour drain from her great-aunt’s face and redoubled her efforts to support her.

‘What … what’s the matter?’ she said. But all Lilian could do was point around her.

‘But,’ she said, gasping for breath and leaning perilously, ‘this is … this is just how it was then. Just how it was.’

When Rosie had got her back, as fast as she could, and into bed, and made her some restorative tea with three sugars, she found Lilian sitting up, staring into space.

‘Uncross your ankles,’ she ordered, unthinkingly, then sat down on the edge of the covers. ‘Are you all right?’

Lilian’s eyes seemed a thousand miles away.

‘It hasn’t …’ Her voice was strangulated, tight and high. ‘It hasn’t looked like that … in a long time.’ She shook her head. ‘Just … just seeing it again. I haven’t really seen it … I haven’t really been there for … maybe a while.’

‘Yes, I’d gathered that,’ said Rosie, who’d had to reconnect the electricity.

‘It brought a lot of things back,’ said Lilian. She had been thinking of a hot summer’s day, with clean, gleaming windows, when the bell had dinged and in had walked a mop of brown curly hair.

‘What things?’ said Rosie, glad to see some colour come back into her aunt’s face. She was even nibbling on the chopped-up banana she’d put on a plate, without much hope of success.

‘Oh look, you’re eating one of your five a year.’

Lilian ignored her, which Rosie took as a good sign.

‘Tell me,’ said Rosie.

In Lilian’s head the bright bell, which had been silent for decades – it had got stuck one day and she’d forgotten to fix it, and well, maybe she had been distracted, then time had gone on and it didn’t seem to make much sense to fix it, she could always see anyone in the shop – had been like a clapper tapping on her conscience, rousing all her memories.

‘Someone I know,’ she said, ‘who used to come into the shop. And when he did, the bell would ring.’

‘Ooh,’ said Rosie. ‘Intrigue! A man! Tell me everything!’

But Lilian just looked tired. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I had better have a little rest.’

‘All right,’ said Rosie, ‘but I am waking you up very shortly, you can’t snooze the day away. It makes the nights too long.’

‘My nights,’ said Lilian faintly as Rosie closed the door, ‘my nights are always too long.’

Rosie wondered about Lilian all that afternoon, as she handmade traditional signs to distribute round the town, advertising the reopening of the shop and 20 per cent off all first-day purchases. After all, Lilian had kept the fact that the shop was closed a secret from all of them for years. How many other secrets did she have? And it was mad to think you could get as old as Lilian, who was almost as old as a person could possibly be, and not have had at least some intrigue. She had obviously been quite glamorous. Never left the village, so there must have been someone there. The only problem was, Rosie felt, as a nurse, would she be doing the right thing for Lilian’s health by digging into it?

Aha, she thought, smiling at the sight of the doctor’s surgery. The door to the large house was opened by a distracted-looking receptionist. ‘Can I ask you to put a few leaflets out?’

Hearing her voice, a mop head popped round one of the large surgery doors.

‘I thought that was you,’ said Moray. In fact, he had seen her walking down the street and found himself hoping she would stop by; updating his filing was a tedious business. Also, he wanted to know why she was wearing an apron. There was no doubt about it: as a general rule, she dressed more peculiarly than anyone he had ever met. But apart from that, he liked the idea of a partner in crime.

‘Hello!’ said Rosie.

‘Have you come to join the surgery?’ asked the receptionist.

‘Oh no,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m perfectly healthy.’ Moray raised an eyebrow. ‘And I’m not staying.’

‘No,’ said Moray. ‘Don’t you want to fill in a form just in case?’

‘Well, if I was staying, I wouldn’t want you as my doctor,’ said Rosie.

‘Really? Do you get lots of those really embarrassing illnesses they show on television?’

‘No!’ said Rosie.

‘Are you sure? Vestigial tail?’

‘Are you even allowed to ask me that?’

The receptionist rolled her eyes, used to Moray.

‘Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it. Like all doctors I only focus on the body part and never connect it afterwards to an individual.’

‘Is that true or the kind of thing all doctors who work in small towns say?’ asked Rosie suspiciously. She’d been privy to more than a few pharmacy-cupboard conversations that did not bear out this statement. Moray glanced quickly at the receptionist in a way that confirmed what Rosie had been thinking.

‘Never mind,’ added Rosie hastily. ‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you. I just wanted to put out a few of these leaflets.’

Moray took them. Rosie’s spinster calligraphy teacher of long ago would have been delighted to know that he was actually quite impressed.

Come to the grand reopening of Hopkins’ Sweets and Confectionery … no request too small …

20% off on our grand reopening day!

There followed a list of available sweets, and the promise that everything would be served with a smile, and a special gift for the first fifty customers.

Moray looked at Rosie sternly.

‘Rosalind,’ he said.

‘It’s Rosemary actually,’ said Rosie.

‘Really? I prefer Rosalind.’

‘OK, Morgan.’

Moray gestured round the waiting room, which held lots of old toys and magazines and, on the walls, many bossy posters.

‘What do these say?’

Rosie glumly looked at a poster of an apple and an orange wearing training shoes, bearing the slogan
We love fresh stuff
. Next to it was a picture of a pair of scales that said
Weighty matters
and beneath it a terrifying list of ailments that would befall you if you were carrying a few extra kilos. And, worst of all, a picture of a child lying on the sofa playing computer games with the horrifying caption
Choose an early death – do nothing
.

‘Cor,’ said Rosie, ‘it’s very perky round here. No wonder everyone is miserable and sick, staring at those half the morning.’

‘Hmm,’ said Moray. ‘So you don’t think there’d be any conflict of interest in us stocking your leaflets?’

‘But these are just sweeties!’ said Rosie. ‘They’re not made of scary trans-fats. We don’t have to give away free toys to get
the kids coming back. They’re just sweets! A treat, not their bloomin’ breakfast!’

‘Can I give you a bit of advice?’ said Moray. ‘Don’t go into …’

‘Mr Blaine’ said Rosie. ‘I know. I’ve met him.’

‘If I wasn’t a medical professional, I’d say keep out of his way altogether.’

‘Look,’ said Rosie, taking out her pen. ‘What about this?’

On the bottom of a leaflet she quickly scribbled,
And don’t forget to eat your five fruit and veg a day too!

‘That’s like people who tell you to drink whisky responsibly,’ said Moray. ‘You do have to wonder if someone isn’t taking the piss.’

‘Well, I think you’re very not helpful towards a local enterprise,’ said Rosie. ‘
And
, you know, if the business works well it will be good for the town economically and, as everyone knows, the better off everyone is, the better their health is. So actually it would be making Lipton healthier, if anything.’

‘You’re wasted in sweets,’ said Moray, ‘when you should really be in epidemiology.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rosie.

‘Well,’ said Moray. ‘I might take a few, with your fruit and veg waiver, thank you. If you do something for me.’

‘Is it what I think it is?’ said Rosie, with a twitch of an eyebrow.

‘No,’ said Moray. ‘It’s to go see Stephen Lakeman again. You’re the only one who seems to be able to get any sense into him.’

‘That is
exactly
what I thought it was,’ said Rosie.

‘Oh, was it?’ said Moray, looking momentarily guilty. ‘Uhm, yes. I mean. Obviously. Great.’

Rosie felt bold enough, in the end, to cycle up the hill to Peak House by herself. She figured it would be just what she needed to counteract the effects of the stodgy meals – including roast pork with crackling and apple sauce, which she had guessed, correctly, that Lilian would be unable to resist. Being here was actually helping her cooking skills. Gerard’s favourite home-cooked meal was pasta with supermarket tomato sauce ‘with no bits’.

Roads that zipped by in a Land Rover went on for bloody ages at ridiculously steep angles. Why on earth people lived so far out of the way, Rosie couldn’t imagine. Her rucksack weighed a ton on her back, she got a stone in her shoe and was cursing for once not the rain but a hot summer day that made her striped T-shirt cling to her back.

Finally, and in a thoroughly grumpy mood, thinking it probably wasn’t worth all this effort to deal with someone stonewalling her and being rude for twenty minutes, she dismounted, stiff and saddle-sore, outside the back door.

Maybe, she thought. Maybe this time he’d be pleased to see her. Drop the hostility. Maybe he’d realise he needed someone like her. And maybe pigs would fly.

Rosie rapped loudly on the kitchen door, then marched in before he had the chance to tell her to go away.

‘Meals on Wheels,’ she announced. There he was, still in that same seat at that same table. It beggared belief that he was still there, in the same spot, after all that time.

‘Are you
still
here?’ she asked, trying to keep the horror out of her voice.