Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (13 page)

‘Sweets keep for a long time. I’m coming back to the shop.’

‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. She hadn’t realised things were quite so bad. This wasn’t just from Lilian’s operation. The shop had obviously been like this for a long, long time, and Lilian had been unable or unwilling to tell anyone that she could no longer cope.

‘These aren’t even
legal
any more!’ said Rosie. But she couldn’t help opening the cigarette packet and inhaling the sticky candied scent of the little white sticks with the pink ends.

‘I used to love these,’ she confessed.

‘You’ll pay for those’ said Lilian.

‘I will,’ said Rosie. ‘What are they, nine pence?’

‘I was still getting some tourist trade,’ Lilian was saying, looking round her as if confused as to whether she was still open or not. ‘Some chocolates round Valentine’s day. But the children have moved on.’

‘But this could be … I mean the fact that it’s all unchanged …’

‘Well, nothing much good happens in the world of sweets. Everything they invent now actually tastes worse than the old stuff. It’s the children I feel sorry for,’ grumped Lilian. ‘So I saw no reason to change.’

Rosie looked at the ancient cash register.

‘How did you use this?’

‘Well, you just got used to it,’ said Lilian. ‘Decimalisation was terrible for the children though. It made their sweets more
expensive. It was an awful thing. I definitely think they should go back. Idiot politicians.’

‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen,’ said Rosie. ‘But on the plus side, keeping the till may have been a smart move. You know, this kind of thing is really fashionable.’

Lilian looked almost flattered. ‘Well, good things never go out of style,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘They never do. You know, adults like sweets too.’

‘You don’t say,’ observed Lilian dryly, as Rosie realised that, without thinking about it, she had stuck a sweetie cigarette in her mouth.

‘Ha! I don’t even smoke,’ said Rosie.

Suddenly there was a ting, as the little brass bell above the shop rang. Both the women turned round, Rosie slightly guiltily.

It was the woman with the dog. Or rather, Rosie supposed, Lady Lipton.

‘Coo-eee! Lils,
darling
. You have to hear about this extraordinary new girl in the village, you won’t
believe
what she did with Bran …’

She sounded like a different woman.

‘Oh, who is it?’ said Lilian eagerly. ‘Is she awful?’

Rosie rolled her eyes.

‘Hard to say,’ said Lady Lipton, then finally realised who else was in the room. Completely unperturbed, she held out her hand.

‘And here she is. Hello. Have you bought a proper coat yet? We’re predicted four days of rain by the way. Which either means nine, or none at all. Lils, I stuck the groceries in your
kitchen. Don’t tell Malik, I got Mrs Cosgrove to pick me up some bits at Asda. Man cannot live by Spar alone. Now, let me tell you the whole story.’

So Rosie had to stand by as Lady Lipton recounted the entire event to Lilian, leaving out the parts where she’d been hysterically upset about her dog and had to leave the room, but laying it on quite thickly about Rosie careering around in the rain wearing a bikini.

‘And that terribly smart young doctor managed to take out all the wire, wasn’t that wonderful?’

Not wanting to point out that she’d helped, Rosie busied herself by examining the rest of the shop. Not that there was much more to it; but the storeroom revealed itself to be a knocked-about treasure trove of gold bars, Wham Bars, caramels and chocolate eclairs, sherbet lemons and, to Rosie’s overwhelming excitement, an enormous jar of chocolate limes. Chocolate limes were her absolute, absolute favourite thing, yet she probably hadn’t thought of them for years. Now, all she wanted to do was scoff a dozen of them. And if that was how she felt, she wondered, surely other people would feel the same … would want to taste something again, something that had made them feel happy and loved and cared for as a child.

For her and Pip, it was Friday mornings, and their mum would give them twenty pence so they could choose what they wanted for school breaks. Rosie had a hazy idea you weren’t allowed to take in sweets for school breaks any more. That seemed a shame. She and her best friend Daniela would plan Fridays all week. One would get one thing and the other would get another, then they would solemnly split the bags
exactly between them. If there was an odd number, they would offer the sweet to their teacher, Mrs Gilford, who had bright yellow hair and wore lots of blue eyeshadow and was, Daniela and Rosie were convinced, actually a princess in disguise. Mrs Gilford would smile politely and, when they explained that they were trying to be fair, would always take the sweet with heartfelt thanks and a bright pink-lipsticked smile. Rosie, now she came to think of it, didn’t remember ever seeing Mrs Gilford eat one.

She did remember, though, how the feeling of being nice to their teacher and being praised for their generosity would stay with her all day, long after the fizzle of the sherbet bombs mixed with the heavy fondant of the orange creams had faded from her tongue.

She poked her head out of the storeroom. She wanted to know what that woman was nattering to her aunt about. Plus, she couldn’t help it. She was fascinated. She’d never met anyone with a title before.

‘Do you live in a big house?’ she asked, not realising how rude it sounded till it had come out of her mouth; almost like an accusation. Lilian laughed in a way that sounded as if she was trying to excuse her gauche London scruff of a niece, which made Rosie feel a bit hot and prickly.

‘Well, that very much depends what you think of as big,’ said Lady Lipton, busying herself with something on the counter. Rosie correctly interpreted this to mean ‘yes, ginormous’.

‘Doesn’t it get freezing?’

Both women stared for a moment. Then Lilian burst out laughing.

‘It certainly does,’ she said. ‘That’s why Hets is down here all the time.’

‘It most certainly is not,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘I’m being charitable.’

Lilian snorted. ‘You’re being cosy. Look at her,’ she ordered Rosie, and lifted the edge of the woman’s Barbour jacket with her stick. Underneath was a gigantic man’s pullover, patently ancient, and the holes in the wool showed evidence of another underneath.

‘And it’s still summer,’ cackled Lilian. ‘You wait till November, she’ll be camping out in her front room.’

‘You overheat your house dreadfully,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘It’s not good for you.’

‘She’s strong as an ox,’ interjected Rosie, who’d witnessed Lilian hurling logs on to the fire already that afternoon.

‘Apparently I’m as strong as an ox,’ said Lilian. ‘And she’s a nurse, she ought to know.’

‘Auxiliary nurse,’ said Lady Lipton and Rosie made a quick note not to underestimate her. ‘And what exactly
is
an ox?’ she added.

‘It’s a gigantic cow. A boy cow,’ Rosie said, flushing, with a sudden stab of panic in case it was the one where you cross a donkey and a horse.

The two women laughed.

‘Well, enjoy your stay,’ said Lady Lipton, sweeping out.

Rosie watched her go. ‘
Well
,’ she said. ‘After I saved her dog and everything.’

Lilian chuckled. ‘Oh, that’s just Hetty’s way.’

‘Ugh,’ said Rosie. ‘I hate it when people say, “Oh, they’re just like that.” If someone is rude and not very nice, they shouldn’t be like that. Everyone else shouldn’t have to make allowances just because they’re Lady Snot-a-Lot. Anyway, she needn’t worry. I won’t be going near her stupid road again.’

Chapter Six

Dolly mixtures, like chocolate buttons, are often considered a training sweet, to be discarded when the adult teeth arrive. This is a shame; taken together, or separately, dolly mixtures are a fiendishly clever mix of jelly, pastes and the highly covered, and coveted, cube sweet, coming in purple, reddish pink or green (green being the least popular, naturally). The natural resilience of the cube, when taken with the softer fondant of the layered rectangle, the inner tube, and of course the sugared jelly, combines to form an entirely satisfactory trinity, together or separately. Although the advent of the ‘giant’ packet (and the encroaching hegemony of those filthy all future reference to which has been removed on legal advice) has mostly been a bad thing, producing both sweet exhaustion and obesity, a cudlike, bovine chewing without tasting in front of forty-two-inch televisions pumping out garbage twenty-four hours a day, ruining our children and all future generations, here an exception can be made.

In the case of dolly mixtures, the move to the larger packets, or indeed anything which reminds the more mature sweet buyer of their delicate, balanced triangle of excellence, can only be commended.

1942

Lilian’s father looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face. ‘So, just a night out with your friend, is it?’ he asked, poking at his bacon and eggs. They kept a few layers out the back still, like most people, supplementing their rations, and the vegetable garden had been there as long as the cottage itself
.

Lilian looked again at the little pot of rouge Margaret had given her. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. Sometimes she thought life had dealt her an unfair hand, not just in losing her mother – there were plenty of motherless and fatherless children among her aquaintance – but in having three big brothers and no big sisters, meaning there was no one to give her the merest hint of feminine insight. She could talk to Neddy about just about anything, but not boys. Terence was far too strait-laced, and Gordon was a grub, that much was obvious
.

Her friend Margaret tried to help, but Margaret was daft as a brush and boy-mad and only wanted to get married and do winching, and Lilian was never quite sure whether to follow her advice or not. She dabbed a little rouge on her cheeks
.

‘Ah, now you look like you’ve been hauling in the fields all day,’ said her father, realising as he did so that it was exactly the wrong thing to say to his only daughter, sharp, clever Lilian, whom he loved dearly but didn’t even pretend to understand
.

Lilian sniffed, and pulled down last year’s sprigged cotton dress. Its sleeves now looked dated, and the waist was dropped too low to show off her pretty figure; she looked like a stick, she thought, all up and down. Still, at least Margaret could do her hair. And sure enough, here came Margaret now, clattering along on her bicycle, her hair tightly lacquered and her bright eyeshadow and dress as tight as modesty allowed, almost disguising the slight cast of her eye. Margaret never mentioned her eye, but hated her front snaggletooth and would often spend the entire evening with her hand positioned directly in front of it. Despite this, she was funny and loyal and daft and Lilian loved her
.

‘Come on, you,’ said Margaret. ‘Let’s be having you.’

‘Well, you look like you’re going to kill them fellas tonight,’ said Lilian’s father, who found Margaret much more the type of straightforward girl he could get a handle on
.