Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (45 page)

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Naughty girl.’

‘Is that really your pig or did you put a magic spell on my mother? And it’s true,’ he said, ‘I did like it when you didn’t know. You can’t imagine what it’s like around here, everybody knowing everyone else’s business. And now the news is out, ooh, Stephen’s OK again. The jags will be out in force.’

‘What are jags?’

Stephen looked at her wryly. ‘You don’t know? Uhm, they’re like wags. But for chaps they think have big houses.’

‘Really?’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

‘You’re lucky,’ said Stephen, grimacing. ‘Neither side tends to come out of it well.’

Rosie shot a look at Edison, who was touching a cactus.

‘I can imagine,’ she said.

‘Sometimes it’s easier to have secrets,’ Stephen mused. ‘I mean, you might have disliked me because I was an oaf, but you didn’t dislike me because I killed my dad.’

‘It was definitely the oaf thing,’ said Rosie. ‘But, Stephen, you didn’t kill your dad.’

‘She thinks I did. So I imagine half the town thinks I did. And look at me now, still not facing up to my responsibilities.’ He bit his lip. ‘He meant to disinherit me anyway.’

Rosie absent-mindedly ate a marshmallow. It helped her to think.

‘Did you love him?’ she asked, finally, swallowing. She gave piglet one too.

‘Of course I did!’ said Stephen. ‘I loved him however he was. Unfortunately he didn’t extend the same courtesy to his son. You can’t make people be how you want them to be!’

They both looked at Edison, who had pricked his finger on the cactus but was trying to cover it up and not cry in case he got a telling-off.

‘And she backed him all the way.’ Stephen rubbed the back of his head, then smiled, cynically. ‘Just because they were right doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed off about it.’

‘How were they right?’

‘Because if I’d been clearing land mines it could have saved my leg and … and …’ His voice trailed off.

‘Did you like it in Africa?’ Rosie asked him gently.

‘Some of it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I stayed eight years. I loved the people – no jags! – and building the school, and the children … The children were so amazing. They didn’t care that they didn’t have big houses or computer games or fucking liberal arts degrees … All they wanted to do was learn, and play, and be kids.

‘I didn’t want to stay there for ever,’ he said. ‘But yes, I was happy. I didn’t want to think about bloody Lipton and bloody Lipton Hall and all the dreary day-to-day penny-pinching
stuff
of it. Paintings and rugs and roofs and taxes and all of that. Out there we hardly had anything, but it was real life, you know?’

In a funny way, even though their experiences couldn’t
have been more different, Rosie did know. To leave behind everything you had in the world: your home, your friends, your job. It was something she knew a bit about too.

‘I would have come back one day,’ said Stephen. ‘You must think I’m such a child.’

‘Families are families,’ said Rosie. ‘Always complicated, no matter how old you are.’

‘But to get stretchered back here in disgrace, without Fe … Dad. Without Dad.’ Stephen stared at the floor. ‘I think anyone would have found it difficult.’

‘I agree,’ said Rosie.

‘But if I’d been better suited to the army, I’m sure I’d have got over it a lot quicker.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘You know, when I was in A&E, we got a lot of poor sods and drunks in. Half the broken-down creatures we saw in there were ex-military men. They feel it too. They’re just not allowed to show it.’

‘Whereas because I’m a spoilt sissy with a free house, I am?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. Then she tried to put the piglet down again. ‘I wish all old soldiers were.’

The fête was quietening down outside, the overloud PA system finally silent. Stephen looked miles away.

‘Akibo,’ he said, ‘and his brother, Jabo. Akibo was really serious, all the time. Had a million questions about all sorts of things. Was obsessed with Manchester United. There was one TV in the village, but it didn’t show the football of course. But sometimes I could get up to town and go to an internet caff,
and I’d check out the scores for him. He was delighted. Once a charity sent us down some clothes, and I looked the shirt out for him. It was like I’d got the whole team to stop by and do a kickabout with him.’

‘Probably better,’ said Rosie. ‘They’re not that nice.’

‘He was thrilled. Didn’t have a clue really, what it meant, or what it was. Just something to be obsessed by.’

‘I think I know someone he’d have got on with,’ said Rosie. Edison was playing a very complicated game involving leaf spaceships divebombing over the cacti.

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘I bet. And Jabo was just the most beautiful child ever. So cute. All he wanted to do was whatever Akibo was doing. He’d sit with a piece of paper and a stone and pretend he was writing letters. And you’d say, “Are you doing your sums, Jabo?” and he’d say, “
Yessuh! Nine! Seven! Sixty!
”’

Rosie smiled.

‘Akibo wanted to come with me to get – God, of all the stupid things. A frog. I was going to dissect a frog with them. I wasn’t meant to, but I thought it would be a useful exercise, something good to do. I’d learned all the parts and everything. And Akibo came to help because he was useful for that kind of thing, knew a lot. And Jabo came because … because Jabo did whatever Akibo did.’

He stuttered.

‘There wasn’t … I don’t know. But I don’t think there would have been enough left for their mother to bury.’
Suddenly there was a shriek from the opening to the tent.

‘
What
is going on here? What are you doing with my gladioli?’ came the high, strident tones of Mrs Isitt. Behind her, in marched Roy Blaine.

‘Those are
my
cacti,’ he said, enunciating very clearly. ‘Grown in the unique sterile environment of my dental surgery. They are
not
a toy.’

Edison jumped up, quivering with fear.

‘Are you responsible for this child?’ said Mrs Isitt.

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’

Mrs Isitt let out a sniff.

‘Can I pay for the damage?’

‘Can you go to one of your fancy-schmancy London shops and just
buy
your way out of trouble, you mean?’ said Mrs Isitt. ‘Those took a year of hard work.’

Rosie felt pink and confused. She stood up. As she did so, the piglet gave a scream and went tearing towards Mrs Isitt’s ankles.

‘Call your pig off!’ she screamed. ‘Call it off!’

Rosie looked helplessly at Stephen, who finally, it seemed, had a smile back on his face.

‘So you see,’ he said, ‘why I was so desperate to get back here.’

‘Can you sort this out?’ she asked him desperately. ‘Can you talk to your mum?’

‘She doesn’t know anything about catching pigs,’ said Stephen, looking puzzled.

‘I don’t mean the blooming pig, you divot,’ said Rosie. ‘I mean you.’

Rosie went back to the house. Peter Isitt, thank God, had offered to take the pig away and look after it for her, and Rosie had seen a spark in Mrs Isitt’s eye that made her think the pig must be worth something. She crept back through what was now substantial rainfall and early dusk, with a lovely set of lamb chops she had felt only momentarily squeamish about buying from the butcher’s tent – perhaps she was turning into a country girl after all – and some new potatoes, green beans and fresh mint from the produce stands, the potatoes still covered in earth. Edison’s mother picked him up at the gate and thanked Rosie.

‘I know adults enjoy his company. He’s so intellectually stimulating, so far beyond the boys his own age.’

Rosie, who was undoubtedly fond of Edison, still bristled at the concept that Hester was doing her an enormous favour.

‘Well, a boy still needs friends,’ she said. Then she knelt down. ‘It was lovely to see you, Edison.’

‘Thank you,’ said the grave little boy.

‘Can I give you a hug or would that be inpropreet?’

Edison glanced at his mother.

‘Best not, eh?’ said Hester in a jaunty tone. And Rosie was left staring after them as they walked off, shaking her head in disbelief.

Tina had not only scrubbed the whole shop from top to bottom, she’d helped the sweetshop have its best day ever, and cashed up perfectly. Rosie couldn’t believe it, and insisted on paying her. Tina looked at the money.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘It’s like having a real job again.’

Rosie looked around. Tina had moved the chocolate teddies
right to the very front, near the till. It was a good strategy. Few small hands could resist a chocolate teddy, and few grandparents could resist buying one.

‘You know,’ said Rosie, ‘there have been expressions of interest …’ She thought again of Roy Blaine’s terrifying image of rows of gleaming gnashers. ‘But why don’t you see … talk to the bank or someone?’

She looked round the softly lit sweetshop, at the ancient jars; the neatly stacked piles of candy-striped paper bags that needed to be pulled off a piece of string, then looped over, twice, to make a secure carrier; the big brass scoops for the shards of cough candy that reflected the lights through the jar and turned them into a kaleidoscopic prism.

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘if anyone has to take it over, I’d really like it to be you.’

The second she walked in the house, unlocked as ever, she knew. Not a light was on; neither was the perpetually-tuned-to-Radio-4 wireless. The fire wasn’t lit and there was an odd smell in the air.

Rosie rushed to the bedroom, cursing herself for being absent for so long. Her great-aunt was sitting up, shaking and staring straight ahead. There was something wrong with the left side of her face, Rosie saw with a sinking heart. And there wasn’t a second to lose.

Chapter Seventeen

Barley Sugar

Barley sugar is nature’s way of making sure you don’t feel too guilty when you are unwell and want to eat sweets. The concept of barley as a healthful, life-giving cereal, albeit found in confectionery as more of a trace element, should help lift your mood. And under the circumstances, when you’re feeling poorly, the best possible remedy is to improve your mental attitude, which means that eating a sweet which feels on some level as if it might be good for you is surely the way forward.