Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop

by Jenny Colgan

  Everyone gathered at the sweetshop for news, then headed down to Malik’s and the bakery and Manly’s for more news, then sometimes popped back in again on their way home just to update everybody.

  Mrs. Baptiste came in for cough drops and was forced to admit that yes, the local council had suggested that the children be bused to Carningford Primary “until a solution could be found.”

  “That sounds ominous,” said Rosie.

  Mrs. Baptiste nodded her head.

  “I agree,” she said. “As soon as they start, there’ll be no going back. And it’s an hour there and an hour back; they’re too little for that long a day. So what will happen?”

  “They’ll move away,” said Rosie glumly.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Baptiste sadly.

  “But the parents will get anxious, won’t they?” said Rosie. “About the children missing school.”

  Mrs. Baptiste sighed. “Yes, I know.”

  Just then the bell tinged, and Lady Lipton swept in. “I’m going to see Stephen,” she announced crossly. “Can you give me his toothbrush and a change of clothes.”

  “Of course,” said Rosie, still feeling guilty about being so aggressive the other day.

  “I’m sorry if I was rude before.”

  Lady Lipton looked completely surprised.

  “You?” she said, as if Rosie were a bug who’d passed her on the street. “Oh, I didn’t notice.”

  Rosie internally rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, good,” she said. “You can take him his post too.”

  A huge mound of cards had arrived that morning, illustrated similarly to Edison’s.

  ‘What is this rubbish?” said Lady Lipton.

  “I’ll take it,” said Rosie, conscious that it might end up as kindling otherwise. “I think he’ll be out by the end of the week.”

  “Good,” said Lady Lipton. “I’ve no truck with hospitals.”

  Rosie popped out and came back with a change of clothes and the new Tom Holland book.

  “Tell him I’ll be up later,” she said. “In fact, if you want to wait, we could go together.”

  Lady Lipton looked astonished.

  “Why would we—­”

  “Never mind!” said Rosie quickly. “Just tell him I’ll be up later”

  As Henrietta clanged out of the shop, Mrs. Baptiste and Rosie exchanged a glance.

  “Oh, she is DIFFICULT,” said Rosie.

  “She’s all right,” said Mrs. Baptiste with the instinctive village loyalty. “And you know . . .”

  She paused, as if something had just struck her.

  Rosie saw it straightaway from her face.

  “She does have the space,” said Mrs. Baptiste.

  “Oh my God!” said Rosie. “I didn’t think about that. Move the school! Do you think she would? Yes. I mean, she’d have to, for Stephen’s sake.”

  “Doesn’t she hate him being a teacher?”

  “Yes, but if it was under her roof . . . she could keep an eye on him.”

  “And there’d be a million and one health and safety hoops to jump through,” mused Mrs. Baptiste.

  “Well, it’s only a temporary emergency measure,” said Rosie. “Just till the council fixes the school.”

  “Decides on a solution,” corrected Mrs. Baptiste. “Well, it would save them the cost of a bus.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” said Rosie. “Well, no, it’s a terrible idea given that Lipton Hall is unheated and slightly falling down. But it’s about a million times better than sending them all away. If Lipton loses its children, it’ll lose everything. ”

  “I completely agree,” said Mrs. Baptiste. “So would you be a darling and ask her?”

  “WHAT?” said Rosie, spying a well-­laid trap. “Me? Why do I have to ask her?”

  “Because she’ll do what Stephen wants. Anything from us, it’ll just go straight over her head.”

  “She hates me.”

  “Don’t be daft,” said Mrs. Baptiste. “She talks to you. If she really hated you, she’d never notice you at all.”

  “I think I’m going to join the Socialist Workers Party,” said Rosie crossly.

  “Could you get Stephen to do it?”

  “He’s a bit off his box at the moment,” said Rosie. “Also, anything that involves him setting foot in that place for longer than is strictly necessary makes him extremely uncomfortable.”

  “There you go then,” said Mrs. Baptiste. “You know, in the old days, Lilian would have done it.”

  “Now you’re just trying to make me feel guilty on purpose,” moaned Rosie.

  “Is it working?”

  “Yes.”

  THE PHONE RANG.

  “SO, I’ve booked the tickets,” came a loud and lively voice. “We can’t wait!”

  Rosie’s heart stopped. She had completely and utterly forgotten about Angie. Or, to be strictly accurate, Angie, Pip, Desleigh, Shane, Kelly and Meridian. All of them. Descending.

  “Oh my God,” said Rosie.

  “What is it now?” said Angie. “It’s not like you ever get up to anything in that sleepy little place you live in.”

  “No,” said Rosie. “Hardly anything at all. When are you arriving?”

  “Next Tuesday! We’ll be there for two weeks! Isn’t it bonzer!”

  “You don’t say bonzer,” said Rosie. “Surely. Do you? Do you say that now?”

  “Oh yeah! Good on yer!” said Angie. “Listen, it’s twenty-­six degrees today. The kids aren’t going to know what’s hit them.”

  “They sure aren’t,” said Rosie, glancing outside at the deep drifts. There had been no more snow today, but the top had crusted over with ice. The attic room, without Stephen’s comforting presence, had become unspeakably cold; there was frost on the inside of the windows. The previous evening Rosie had had to pile every article of clothing from her wardrobe on top of the bed just to keep the heat in. Fortunately, the combination of a sleepless night the night before and the knowledge that nobody was actually going to die had combined to make her drop off almost immediately, whereupon she had dreamed repeatedly that she was being buried alive.

  “Okay,” said Rosie. “Great! We can’t wait . . . either . . . Did you say you’ve booked the flights?”

  “Booked, paid for, non-­refundable!” said Angie. “We had to use up basically all of our savings, but it’s totally going to be worth it, I can tell.”

  Rosie gently let her head slip to the countertop. Mr. Dog, who was having a quick snooze underneath, reached up and licked her hand. Rosie nuzzled him.

  “You,” she said after she’d hung up the phone, “are the only uncomplicated person I can relate to around here.”

  “Aooow,” said Mr. Dog in a comforting fashion.

  “WE HAVE NEVER been busier,” said Rosie to Lilian.

  “Don’t show off,” said Lilian fussily. “They feel sorry for the children.”

  “Yes, I know that,” said Rosie. “I was just looking for, you know, the bright side.”

  They were doing up the home for Christmas in nice traditional wreaths, no cheap tinsel. Every resident had been invited to contribute something from their own past Christmases, and Rosie had brought up the carved wooden manger, which fit beautifully on top of the drawing room mantel.

  Lilian sniffed.

  “Well, when you have to sell the house and the shop, try and sell it to some City banker who’ll pay far too much money for it, so I can stay here. I don’t want to come and live in your London squat.”

  Rosie was horrified.

  “What do you mean, London squat? I live here.”

  “Yes, but what would you do with no school, no sweetshop? Live off Stephen’s teaching earnings?” Lilian chuckled, a hollow sound.

  “I can’t believe you’re bei
ng so defeatist about everything.”

  “I’m an old lady,” said Lilian. “The world is in the business of letting me down. It’s not for the faint-­hearted, getting old, you know.”

  “Well, that’s fortunate,” said Rosie. All the trepidation she’d felt about approaching Lady Lipton about the school situation suddenly drained away in the face of Lilian’s lack of confidence. She’d show her!

  “Actually, I have a plan to save the school.”

  “Do you?” said Lilian sniffily.

  “Yes! We’re going to move it into Lipton Hall.”

  Lilian blinked twice and her lips twitched.

  “You’ve mentioned this to Hetty?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay. Well I can’t imagine anything she’d like more than fifty snotty-­nosed brats charging around the Constables. And who’ll pay to heat it?”

  “The council,” said Rosie stubbornly. She had only the very vaguest idea of who the council was and what it did.

  “Oh, Roy Blaine?” said Lilian. “He’s agreed to help you, has he?”

  “He’s not—­?” said Rosie.

  “Head of the council,” confirmed Lilian.

  Roy Blaine was the local dentist who’d been waging war against the sweetshop for years; he’d wanted to buy the property and turn it into a car park last year, but Rosie had managed to fend him off. This had made him more disagreeable than ever.

  “Well, he doesn’t want Lipton to shut down!”

  “He’s talking about moving to Carningford, taking on a bigger place,” said Lilian. “He reckons he’s gotten too big for Lipton. So if the council sells the schoolhouse to developers and gets a load of second-­home incomers in here, it’ll be all to the good as far as he’s concerned. I heard him talk to his grandfather about it. He shouts. He pretends it’s because Jim is deaf, but he isn’t in the slightest bit deaf. Roy just likes everyone to know how well he’s doing. He is such an insipid worm of a man. And those teeth scare me.”

  Roy’s teeth had been veneered and whitened to within an inch of their life. The rest of his face was sunken and a little gray. The effect was horrific.

  “Oh BUGGERATION,” said Rosie, exasperated. “Do you think you could talk Hetty around?”

  Lilian looked at her.

  “I’m not in the business of upsetting my few visitors by irritating them,” said Lilian.

  “Really? You don’t seem to mind with me.”

  Lilian ignored this.

  “Where’s tea? It’s scones today.”

  “I’m going to move into this care home,” said Rosie, not for the first time.

  “So tell me about Angie and Pip and everyone,” said Lilian. “Do you think Angie will remember me?”

  “Of course she will!” said Rosie. “Pip remembers you too. You used to send us sweets at Christmas, and he used to guzzle the lot and throw up all over the place. Every single year. “

  Lilian smiled. “I have a soft spot for a greedy boy,” she said. “It’s the hoarders and the misers I can’t abide.”

  “Everyone likes Pip,” said Rosie. “He’s the most laid-­back guy on the planet. That’s why Australia suits him so well.

  Lilian nodded. “And the children?” She had a crotchety look for children, but it was all for show. Lilian had never forgotten a child she’d served—­she knew half the assistants in the care home by their first names—­and always had a generous hand on the scales for the poorer mites.

  “Not sure,” said Rosie tactfully. “I hear a lot of yelling. But that might be, you know, just ‘kids’ as a concept.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Lilian, fixing her with her sharp eyes. “I don’t believe I see you getting any younger.”

  “As always, my dear great-­aunt, that’s my cue to go,” said Rosie, kissing the old lady gently on the cheek and nodding to Dorothy Isitt, Ida Delia’s daughter, on the way out.

  THAT LEFT STEPHEN. He was lying on his side today, facing the window.

  “Ha, you look like you’re ignoring me,” said Rosie. “Or posing for a life model class. Can I sketch you like this?”

  “I have never been so fucking bored in my entire life,” came the voice, slightly drawling. “I haven’t slept a fucking wink and I want to go home.”

  “You’re better,” she observed and came around the other side.

  “Ooh, you’re growing a beard,” she said. “Do you want me to shave you? Or no, maybe leave it, it’s sexy. A bit painful. But quite sexy. Hmm.”

  “Ha, can you shush, please, so I can kiss you?” said Stephen. “Do notice I’m kissing you, even through my terrible pain.”

  “What would you rather have, a kiss from me through terrible pain or more drugs?”

  “Don’t make me answer that.”

  “When can I take you home?” said Rosie with feeling.

  “Today if you like,” said a passing nurse. “He’s been nothing but a pain in the arse.” But she had a smile on her face.

  “Why do you get to be a pain in the arse but ­people still like you?” said Rosie once the nurse had gone. “It’s really, really annoying that you’re good looking.”

  “You still like me,” said Stephen. “Don’t you?”

  “I do,” said Rosie. “Do you still like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because you’re not going to in about a minute.”

  She explained the plan to move the school to his mother’s house.

  “Oh Lord,” said Stephen. “Really?”

  “She’d do it for you.”

  “She’d do it for me and then lock me in the cellar.”

  “Just be clear. Say you’re not going to move back in, you’re not going to take on the estate, you’re just going to borrow it for a bit.”

  Stephen bit his lip.

  “Come on, what’s the alternative?”

  Stephen shrugged.

  “Maybe they would be better off in Carningford, without some maniac trying to run them over. Be a bit safer.”

  He was facing the window, looking out over Rosie’s shoulder.

  “No,” said Rosie. “Don’t be stupid, okay? It was a freak accident. It’s not even in the papers anymore.”

  Stephen shrugged.

  “It happened. Maybe Lipton isn’t the best place for them to be.”

  “You can’t believe that,” said Rosie, horrified. “You can’t. You wouldn’t leave Lipton to die.”

  “That’s being a bit overdramatic, don’t you think?”

  “A lorry crashed into the building,” she said. “There’s a kid upstairs hovering between life and death. How dramatic do you want me to be? We need to fix it. And I want you . . . I want you to be where you belong. What are you going to do if they shut the school? You’ve always been a teacher.”

  “You’re the one who wants me to move back to Mummy’s house. I guess that’s where I belong.”

  “Now you’re being spoiled,” said Rosie crossly.

  Stephen shrugged. “You asked me what I thought and I told you.”

  “I didn’t ask you what you thought,” said Rosie. “I asked you to help me.”

  There was a pause.

  “Look at me,” said Stephen. “I can’t even help myself.”

  Rosie slammed the huge pile of cards and letters down on his bed.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it by myself.”

  “Are you being Saint Rosie again? You do just love those lost causes.”

  Rosie stared at him and decided to leave before she said something she’d regret.

  “YEAH, ANYWAY, SO that went well,” said Rosie to a comatose Edison.

  Hester and Arthur weren’t upstairs—­perhaps they’d finally cracked and gone to get something to eat—­and the ward was quiet. Rosie sat down by Edison’s bed
and held his hand, and sniveled a bit. But she didn’t change her mind.

  Downstairs, Stephen glanced again at his watch, wondering how long he would have to wait for his painkillers, trying not to focus on the pain. He shouldn’t have snapped at Rosie, but really, couldn’t he catch his breath, just for a moment? He . . . couldn’t let her see how shaken up he was. Not by the operation, that had been nothing, . . . but the whole thing had brought Africa right back to him, and he couldn’t . . . he couldn’t bear to feel that way again.

  Chapter 8

  THE NEXT DAY, Saturday, was torture. Rosie was hard pressed at the shop, run off her feet. The Santa train had arrived, finally, and just as Tina had predicted, every family in town brought their children out to look at it tootle around the snowy little hillside on its merry way. Rosie liked seeing the happy faces of the children, such a contrast with their confused, pained looks of the week before. The adults, though, still bore traces of the fright they had all had.

  “All right, all right,” she said, knowing how very strongly Lilian would disapprove, and coming out with a bucket of little wrapped bonbons. “One each for all being very brave and doing exactly what Mrs. Baptiste told you.”

  The children converged on the bucket, chattering excitedly.

  “Can I have one?” said Hye Evans, the other local doctor.

  Rosie looked at him severely. “I don’t know. Do you sit on the local council?”

  “Of course,” said Hye. “I’m an alderman.”

  “Are you going to close the school?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not something I can discuss with you,” said Hye, his pink face turning red.

  “Well, no sweetie,” said Rosie. “Unless it would help?”

  She watched as Hye stomped off. “I’m rubbish at corruption,” she noted gloomily.

  She hadn’t been able to get the fight with Stephen out of her head. He hadn’t texted her or anything, which meant he was obviously still adamant that he was right. She could barely serve the flow of customers without checking her phone every two minutes, even though she couldn’t get a signal, and her face was so glum that Moray actually laughed when he swung by for some sweet golf balls to take to his new doctor boyfriend in the next village over. He was being very secretive about him for some reason.