Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (14 page)

Margaret giggled and squeaked at him and told him to hold his tongue, heating up the rollers by the fire and ordering Lilian to sit still, even when the smell of singed hair was rising up through the little kitchen
.

Lilian tried to sit still, but she couldn’t deny the truth: that since last week, she had thought of little else but Henry Carr. Suddenly, everything she had found irritating about him – the teasing, the cheek, the hanging around the shop – now it had stopped, she found she missed it beyond reason. The idea of him walking out with Ida filled her with horror. Gerda had not, in the end, been sacked, but she had been demoted and was keeping her head low in the village. But tonight, maybe tonight, with her new hair … maybe Henry would look at her again the way he’d looked when they’d patched up Hetty. And this time she would hold his gaze, and toss her lovely black hair, and—

‘Darn it,’ said Margaret, who loved American movies to distraction
.

‘What?’

‘Never mind.’

‘What?’

‘It smells like that farrier fire we had last spring in here, do you remember?’ said her father. ‘Those horses screamed like the very devil.’

‘What are you
doing
?’ said Lilian, scrambling to her feet and trying to see her whole head in the very small mirror that hung in the hallway
.

Margaret unsuccessfully tried to hide a small ringlet of burned-off curls behind her mauve dress
.

‘Margaret!’

‘I’m sorry!’

‘You’ve ruined it!’

‘I didn’t mean to!’

‘There, there, girls,’ said her dad, laughing heartily, and suddenly, as if on a whim, took out the bottle of Johnson the butcher’s homemade rhubarb wine he kept for special occasions
.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a glass. Celebrate two lovely girls going out to have a good time.’

‘One of them half-bald,’ said Lilian crossly. This was a disaster
.

‘And no messing about, you understand? If you have to dance with a chap, I want it to be someone nice, local, good family. None of that seasonal Derby mob.’

The girls blushed bright red, and Margaret let out a haw-haw peal of laughter. A large group of young men were down for the harvest, hence the dance. Margaret giggled, her hand in front of her mouth. Lilian rolled her eyes as if to indicate that all that was beneath her; trying her best not to betray that she did, indeed, have her heart set on finding a nice young man. A very specific one, that was all
.

Her father poured them all a small glass of wine. He knew other fathers worried about their daughters, but if anything he wished he could worry more about Lilian. And with three sons in the war – they’d said Gordon didn’t have to go, could stay and mind the shop, but his headstrong youngest son was having none of it – he had enough to worry about. But he knew it wasn’t easy for her, the one left behind, and the only girl. When the boys came back on leave and told their stories of the big cities and the shows and the lights, he felt sad for Lilian, stuck here with the shop. But what else could they do? A living was a living, even in wartime. Still, she could do with a bit of fun. She wasn’t a daft piece of stuff like Margaret, or a sly little number like Ida Delia Fontayne; Lilian was a decent sort, and he’d like her to meet a decent chap. Before the war took ’em all, he thought glumly, and drained his glass
.

Feeling warm and jolly, and just about over the hair incident, Lilian and Margaret rattled off on their bicycles towards the village hall, Lilian’s heart thumping in her chest, her cheeks flushed without the need of make-up, eyes sparkling. The late-summer air was warm for once, clear and gentle, the stars just starting to come out overhead. Even missing a hank of hair, Lilian felt as close as she ever had to beautiful
.

Rosie was determined to start the next day afresh. She smiled at her aunt, who was coming to the table and trying not to look over-curious about the porridge with wild honey, full cream and fresh blueberries Rosie had made for her.

‘Lilian,’ she said, ‘did you ever take legal advice about your book?’

Lilian looked shifty. ‘I can’t talk about that,’ she said, pursing her lips, and sat herself down. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s to …’ Rosie nearly said ‘fatten you up’ before realising that was unlikely to go down well.

‘It’s the fashion breakfast,’ she said. ‘It’s what the models eat.’

Lilian sniffed. Today she was wearing a cerise shift dress with a bright red scarf tied at the neck. It could have looked a bit peculiar, but with her silver hair nicely done at the back, it was actually rather chic.

‘Where did you get the cream?’ said Lilian.

‘Uhm, the Spar,’ said Rosie.

‘Well, don’t. The Isitts have a perfectly good dairy farm down the road. Just don’t get put off …’

‘Put off by what?’

‘Never mind,’ said Lilian. ‘That’s where you go. It’s two miles out the village, turn left, down the hill. Can’t miss it. Milk too. Take the empty bottles back.’

‘You want me to walk two miles with empty milk bottles?’

Lilian raised her eyebrows. ‘No, of course not. You can take the bike.’

‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, there’s a problem with that.’

Lilian made her step out into the bright golden morning. Rosie didn’t trust it, though, and was leaving nothing to chance. Although the shops in the village seemed only to sell those waxed jackets, they’d come to look increasingly attractive in the light of how her H&M shearling was bearing up, i.e., not at all. Plus she was, as she reflected, absolutely brassic. She followed her great-aunt out behind the little cottage and into the dreamy garden.

‘In there,’ said Lilian, indicating a small shed. Just the walk round into the garden had puffed her out.

‘Seriously?’

Lilian nodded her head towards the door, and Rosie finally did as she was bid, heaving and straining just to open the rusty bolts.

Inside was a huge black metal spider of a thing, a ton weight. Rosie popped her head back out.

‘You’re not serious,’ she yelled.

‘Are you here to help me or not?’

Rosie hauled it out. It was the size of a small tank. She leaned it against the wall. They both stared at it.

‘What is it?’ she asked, finally.

Lilian looked at her in consternation. ‘That’s my bike! I’m going to let you use it. It’s not that I can’t because of my hip or anything, it’s just that I don’t want to.’

The bike was very old, solid, with a huge basket on the front. It looked like something the witch rode in
The Wizard of Oz
.

‘Yes, well, I can’t ride a bike.’

Lilian’s substantial eyebrows shot up. ‘You
can’t
?’

Rosie metaphorically backpedalled furiously. ‘Well, of course I can … I mean, I did when I was younger. Obviously.’

Her mother had occasionally taken her and Pip to the park and sat having a flask of tea and a fag while they wheeled their second-hand bikes around, then dumped them to play on the climbing frames. Rosie wasn’t sure this really counted.

You couldn’t ride a bike on the roads where she had grown up – well, some kids were allowed, but not them – and you couldn’t ride them to school or they’d get nicked, so Rosie had never really got in the habit. Who thought success in adult life
would depend on whether or not you could ride a bicycle, anyway?

‘You know,’ said Lilian, ‘you’re in luck; I’ll get Jake Randall round. He fixes bikes for the kids in the village. I’ll send him round when we’re done and he’ll fix it up for you pronto. He’ll do anything for some Highland Toffee.’

Rosie sighed and headed back indoors again.

‘I’m supposed to be looking after
you
,’ she said as a parting shot.

‘You will be,’ retorted Lilian, ‘when you pick up the milk and cream. And do notice which of us is wearing pyjamas in the street … Hello, vicar!’ she called out to the passing man in the dark suit. Rosie scarpered up the stairs.

And there wasn’t even any point, Rosie thought, in getting dressed up today, given the horrible job of emptying out the shop, so she was steeled for the arched eyebrows by the time she came back downstairs in her old jeans and a fleece, her bouncing black curls forced up in a floral scarf. Lilian glanced over.

‘So Angie says you have kind of a boyfriend?’ she enquired, as Rosie filled a large bucket with soapy water and grabbed a scrubbing brush from under the white butler’s sink.

‘Why did I ever think you were a quiet, frail old lady when you used to visit us? You’re actually really nosy.’

‘Because,’ said Lilian dramatically, ‘I only ever came to your house in London when I was recovering. From adventures.’

‘What sort of adventures?’

‘I’m not just an old lady who runs a sweetshop, you know.’

‘Well,’ said Rosie. ‘Tell me about them.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Lilian, picking up the empty breakfast bowls. Rosie noticed Lilian’s had been scraped clean. ‘It’s nearly time for
The Archers
.’

‘Well, I won’t have time to tell you about Gerard then.’

‘Gerard? What kind of a name is that? Sounds very modern.’

‘Yes, amazingly the man I’m going out with isn’t a hundred years old.’

Lilian looked expectant.

‘Well,’ said Rosie. ‘He’s little and cute …’

‘Sounds like a squirrel,’ sniffed Lilian.

‘He’s a pharmacist,’ said Rosie.

‘Not a doctor then?’

‘No, it’s completely different,’ said Rosie, not revealing that Gerard had never quite got over applying and failing to get into medical school. ‘It’s a very responsible job, he’s really good at it.’

‘Putting bum cream in paper bags?’ said Lilian.

‘If you’re going to be rude we don’t have to talk at all,’ said Rosie. ‘In fact, I want to get started anyway.’

She picked up the heavy brass keys from the sideboard.

‘What are you doing?’ said Lilian suspiciously. ‘Get started on what?’

‘One of the things I came here to do,’ said Rosie in a tone that, on the wards, would brook no arguments. Her mild-mannered mother and brother had always wondered aloud where she’d got it from. Rosie was beginning to figure out the answer. ‘Sort out your shop.’

Lilian had a radio in the shop too, and Rosie retuned it from Radio 4 to Radio 1, and hauled out a roll of huge black binbags. There was nothing for it; a lot of this stuff simply had to go. There wasn’t a dishwasher in the little cottage, so she was going to have to wash out all the glass jars by hand too, and they weighed an absolute ton. Still, thanks to a strict matron and a steady training programme at St Mary’s, if there was one thing Rosie knew how to do, it was scrub things down; ideally, so thoroughly that every germ within a five-mile radius would run cowering in terror. The sun shone again through the grubby windows, making her job easier as she could spot every line and smear; every age-old fingerprint and trodden-in line of treacle or caramel. She started at the top and worked down, lining up all the glass jars, sampling everything and checking for sell-by dates. Any chocolate with white spots was binned instantly.