Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (61 page)

Rosie looked at her, sitting like a queen with a blanket over her knees in the front seat. Stephen was driving. She still couldn’t believe it. That he was there, and that he was hers. The last few weeks had been a blur. Gerard had been unimaginably decent; mind you, when she’d gone to see him his shirts were perfectly ironed and his hair had been cut.

‘Yolande likes me to look my best,’ he’d said when she mentioned it. ‘She loves doing all that stuff.’

He looked even more well-fed, if that were possible, but undoubtedly, in Rosie’s eyes, happier. Gleeful, in fact. She was slightly sad – she was human after all – that after all those years it had been somebody else, but she couldn’t deny it was right.

‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘And your mum likes her?’

‘She
loves
her,’ said Gerard. ‘Well, there are a
few
things she doesn’t do quite right, but I’m sure Mum will sort her out.’

Rosie smiled to herself. Finally Gerard’s mum had someone to spar with. She must be delighted. Rosie had given them the most enormous box of chocolates, which made Gerard light up with glee, just like a little boy, and she’d thanked him profusely for his cheque. Yolande had a lovely three-bed house on a nice estate, with a little patch of garden. It was perfect for them, although Rosie couldn’t help but look at the tiny square of green scrub and what it had cost, compared to her wide open spaces and vast country vistas. How could they bear it? How had she borne it for so long? Then she realised that she was going native and smiled to herself.

‘Thank you,’ she said to Gerard from the bottom of her heart.

He shrugged. ‘Mum said it was the right thing to do.’

‘It was,’ said Rosie. ‘Even though I didn’t deserve it. Thank you.’

And they hugged, tentatively and awkwardly.

‘And if you’re ever in …’

‘The wilds of rural Derbyshire? I know, I know.’

‘There’s a big box of sugar mice with your name on it.’

Gerard smiled. ‘I’ll remember that.’

She had had to tear herself away from Stephen to look after Lilian. It had been a struggle. Thankfully Tina had agreed to take on longer hours in the shop, but even so, Rosie found it incredibly difficult to leave Stephen’s old cast-iron bed in the high, pale bedroom in Peak House, with its view of nothing
but sheep all the way down the valley, the clouds so near it was as if you could touch them. As the winter gales and rain blew in from the hills they felt as close and elemental as the weather.

But life had to be planned; work had to be done; arrangements had to be made. Tearing themselves away every day made their reunions more urgent, so they had a perverse pleasure all of their own. But inch by inch, things started to take shape. The deeds were signed over in front of a sweet, quiet notary. Lilian insisted on giving power of attorney to Rosie. (Angie, from Sydney, was utterly bemused by the entire business, but took it in her stride.) Rosie was on the point of looking for a tenant, without wanting to be too obvious about it, when Stephen, with his head in her lap in front of the fire one evening, talked about how he was getting sick of Peak House, and his mother needed it back to rent as a holiday cottage before she went bust again. He’d been thinking for a while of moving to the hustle and bustle of the village, he said, and Rosie had teased him and asked about London.

‘I hate London,’ mused Stephen. ‘I was only moving there because everyone here thought I was a dingwad. Correction:
you
thought I was a dingwad.’

‘Yes, but I never said I don’t
like
dingwads. Anyway, you’d have been a dingwad in London too. Just a posh one.’

‘The worst kind,’ said Stephen, rotating his leg out in front of him. ‘But fair-weather friends were still better than none at all.’

Lilian woke up from the sofa where she’d been pretending to have a snooze.

‘So what are you going to do, Lipton?’

Stephen shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I expect my mother will rope me into something or other, trying to make the estate pay its way. Which it cannot do and it’ll be even worse when I get my paws on it.’

He sighed. ‘I just wish I could do something more useful.’

Rosie froze. She was terrified, every day, that he would say he wanted to get back to Africa. Even though, one night when he woke, wild-eyed and covered in sweat from a terrible dream, she had held on to him tightly and assured him, promised him, that he would never have to go back there again. His sorrow and guilt – that he wasn’t brave enough to go back again, that he never could – had only made her love him more, for owning up to it, for not pretending everything was fine and ballsing it out. That was what got people killed.

Lilian sniffed. ‘You know they’ve just lost one of their teachers down at the school?’

There was a silence.

‘Was this about five minutes ago?’ said Rosie. ‘Lilian, really, you’ve practically invented Twitter all by yourself.’

‘I would say it’s imminent,’ said Lilian. ‘So, if you were looking for a job to annoy your mother and that makes even less money than a sweetshop owner …’

Stephen thought about it for a while. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Hmm.’

He glanced up at Rosie. ‘Posh enough for you?’

‘Perfect,’ said Rosie, her heart brimming. ‘Perfect.’

And now today was the day. Stephen drove slowly, being careful over the icy bumps and ruts, up the winding road to the
home. As they crested the hill, Lilian let out a sigh. Rosie was leaning over from the back seat, holding tight to her hand.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she whispered. ‘We’re here.’

Lilian nodded. ‘I know, my dear. I know.’ But her voice quavered.

They spent an awkward hour settling her in and unpacking her things – it had seemed so much in the car, and it helped a lot to humanise the spotless, cosy but bare little room. Finally, Marie gently hinted that they should leave so she could introduce Lilian to the other residents.

Rosie turned towards her aunt. ‘I …’ Then she didn’t know quite what to say.

Lilian shook her head. ‘Don’t …’

Both of them stood there for a moment. Then, for the first time, Lilian stepped forward and took Rosie in her arms, and they held each other in an embrace, Rosie enveloping Lilian’s fragile frame. She felt so tiny, Rosie thought.

‘You’ve put on weight,’ she whispered.

‘Shut up,’ said Lilian. And then, after a pause, very quietly, ‘Thank you, my darling.’

‘We’ll see you in the shop next weekend,’ said Rosie. ‘And if you learn how to use that mobile phone you can put it on speaker and shout at us all day.’

Lilian indicated Stephen, who was lounging by the door.

‘From one wounded bird to another then?’

‘I heard that!’ said Stephen. Rosie grinned and blushed.

‘All right,’ said Lilian. ‘Off you go, the pair of you.’ And Rosie kissed her again on her soft white cheek.

Then they did go, hand in hand, walking gently through the falling snow, stopping, out of sight of the house, to have a
quick snowball fight. Rosie screamed as Stephen chased her, her wellies full of snow, up to the avenue of trees.

‘I can’t believe you can finally outrun me,’ she said, her face pink from the wind, her mouth laughing wide. He grinned full at her.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to. In fact I faked the entire thing.’

‘Piss off!’

He laughed and put up his hands.

‘OK, OK. I didn’t. I didn’t, obviously. But Rosie—’ His tone turned serious for a moment. ‘I never thought … I never in a million years thought that out of something so awful would come … something so sweet.’

And Rosie thought of her life and how terrible she had thought it would be, to be buried alive in the country, looking after an elderly lady, and how selfish she had been.

‘I got lucky,’ she said. ‘God, I got lucky.’

‘So did I,’ said Stephen fervently. And beneath the freezing grey sky; the cloud cover that wouldn’t lift for another six months; regardless of the windy weather, they kissed until it got dark. Which wasn’t very long. But they kissed on anyway.

Lilian was tired after being introduced to a long line of old women mostly, all of whom seemed nice. Ida Delia wasn’t there, but after supper Lilian made her way, timidly, to the games room. Sure enough, sitting in the elegant salon, looking out into the darkness, was Ida Delia.

Lilian, taut with nerves, cleared her throat.

‘Ahem,’ she said. Ida Delia looked up through thick pink-rimmed glasses. Then she nodded.

‘Lilian Hopkins,’ she said. Then a pause. ‘It is Hopkins, isn’t it? You didn’t get married and change it?’

Lilian felt a bolt of frustration shoot through her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I did not get married and change it.’

Ida Delia nodded. There was a long silence; much left unsaid went between them.

‘Well,’ said Ida Delia finally. ‘I have a box of dominoes here, if you’re interested.’

And after an equally long pause, Lilian shrugged.

‘All right,’ she said. And she sat down quietly, and they opened the box and began to play.

The letter was tear-stained and rain-stained and goodness knows what else; it was hard, after all this time, to make out anything on the yellowing paper that had come back with his watch and his medals, and been saved, many years ago. It said, in Henry’s very recognisable handwriting, just one thing; a note, perhaps for a letter never sent, or simply an affirmation. Ida had kept it all this time, almost convincing herself over the years. If she screwed up her eyes and pretended, or was telling people who had not known them both that the ink had run in the rain, or the sweat or the blood or whatever it was; that where it said, ‘I will love you always, L,’ that it was not an L but an I; an I caught in the rain. That was all. She had never shown it to anyone, not even Dorothy, who would snort at anything romantic anyway. She could never ever entertain the belief that it said L and not I.

But maybe; just maybe, thought Ida Delia Fontayne, it was time.