Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop

by Jenny Colgan

  He returned to his marking.

  “Hey,” he said a few minutes later. “Are you okay?”

  But Rosie had already gone upstairs to bed.

  “ALL RIGHT,” SAID Stephen. “Once more.”

  The class looked up at him obediently. It was still amazing to him, he found, how much he enjoyed his job. Throwing himself into it was just about the best remedy for physical and mental pain that he knew. Getting a slow child to catch up with their reading, making the class laugh explaining arithmetic in terms of dogs and sausages, and hearing uplifting young voices sing and lisp their way through the nativity play. Stephen wasn’t too keen on nativity plays. There was too much hideous competition between the parents as to who did what, so he was having five very brief tableaux then moving straight on to the communal singing parts that everybody enjoyed.

  “GLOO-­ooo-­oooo-­ooo-­ria,” yelled the voices happily to the thump of the bumpy old out-­of-­ tune piano he could barely play. He would deal with his mother’s bad mood later.

  His thoughts strayed to Rosie. Oh God, he seemed to have managed to turn everybody against him. Again, he thought mournfully. But he was in no fit state to be thinking about the future at the moment. Couldn’t she see that? Could nobody see?

  “WHERE HAVE YOU been?” asked Lilian crossly, shouting into her mobile phone as usual even though a normal tone of voice would have done perfectly well.

  “Angie’s been to see you every day,” said Rosie defensively.

  “Yes, well, Angie’s not you, is she? All she talks about is Australia and finding a man.”

  “Maybe that’s what I need to talk about,” said Rosie gloomily.

  “What’s that? Don’t talk nonsense. You’re entirely too sensitive.” Lilian sighed and hung up. Rosie was moping about terribly; it was very dull.

  She wandered over to where James Boyd was sitting, pretending to be reading a book. He glanced up, his blue eyes still piercing, and she got a sudden flashback. They stared at each other for a moment, horrified.

  “Oh my,” said Lilian, out of breath and sitting down with a thump on the thick cushions. “Oh my. Sorry.” Her fingers fumbled unconsciously for her emergency button. “Sorry. Just for a moment there . . . you looked exactly like . . .”

  “Lilian,” said the voice, and it was a voice from the past. It was a voice she knew incredibly well. But it could not be. This voice was dead. This voice had been dead seventy years. This voice’s entire generation had passed . . .

  “Henry Carr,” breathed Lilian, all color drained from her face. “Henry Carr. You sounded exactly like Henry Carr.”

  “Henry Carr,” repeated the old man, and a tear rolled down his cheek suddenly, but Lilian couldn’t tell whether he was saying a name he knew or just repeating her words back to her.

  “Did you know him?” she asked. “Did you know Henry Carr?”

  But suddenly, as fast as he’d been there, he was gone, his blue eyes fixed on the far window, out onto the snow that fell thickly on the holly bushes.

  LILIAN SIDETRACKED EDWARD as he came in the door.

  “Mr. Boyd,” she said.

  “It’s Lilian, isn’t it?” he said politely, dusting the snow off his shoulders.

  “You can call me Miss Hopkins,” said Lilian. “It’s just . . . I wanted to ask you about your father. James.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s definitely James, isn’t it?”

  Edward looked at her strangely.

  “What an odd question.”

  “I know. Only, and I know I am a very silly old lady, and I can’t see a thing and have no idea what I’m doing half the time . . . and I think I’m going dotty.”

  “Miss Hopkins, you are as sharp as a tack, and you don’t fool me for a second.”

  “Only, it’s just that your father reminds me of someone very much. Someone I knew during the war.”

  “Oh,” said Edward. “I’m so sorry. I was born after the war.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” said Lilian. “And your father?”

  “He grew up in Halifax. Weavers, most of his relatives.”

  “Did you know your grandparents when you were little?”

  “Only on my mother’s side. My father’s parents died when he was small. He doesn’t even have a photograph.”

  “Right,” said Lilian. “Right. That’s fine.”

  She started to move away when suddenly Dorothy Isitt arrived, her face furious as usual, to perform a duty visit to her mother, Ida Delia. Dorothy and Edward hadn’t been introduced, but as Dorothy stood, she patted the snow off her arms in exactly the same way Edward had. Lilian noticed suddenly that their eyes were exactly the same greeny-­brown color. Of course Dorothy still had a mass of thick curly hair, graying now, whereas Edward had none.

  And I, thought Lilian that night in her single bed—­Lilian had never in her life not slept in a single bed—­I am a silly, daft, romantic old lady. I am going completely round the bend.

  Then a thought struck her. An awful, frightening, sad thought—­but maybe a necessary one.

  “WE’RE A BIT worried about your father,” Cathryn had said to Edward earlier.

  “Oh dear.”

  They watched him, still staring, the untouched book on his lap, his eyes miles away.

  “I hope he’s not causing any trouble?”

  “No, no trouble at all. He’s a pleasure to have around. But actually, that’s slightly my concern, to be honest. He’s become very quiet, showing none of the more violent signs of dementia, none of the physical activity you’d expect. Moray’s worried about his weight. He’s drawn very fully into himself.”

  “You think he’s unhappy here?” asked Edward, his heart starting to race. Please let her not say he had to go home. Not now, after all they’d been through.

  “I’m not sure,” said Cathryn. “I don’t think it’s that either. But he seems very thoughtful, very wistful. It’s like he’s gone somewhere else.”

  “And that’s bad?” said Edward with a gulp.

  “I’m not sure,” said Cathryn again. “I expect lots of medical ­people would disagree with me, but there is a stage to dementia where living in the past all the time, rather than jolting horribly between past and present . . . it feels gentler, somehow. Kinder.”

  Edward blinked.

  “You’re not just telling me what I want to hear?”

  “I would never do that,” said Cathryn. “Getting old is a horrible business, Mr. Boyd. It’s not my job to sugarcoat it for anyone. But here he seems . . .”

  “At peace?” said Edward. “Do you think?”

  “I’m just passing on my observations,” said Cathryn, turning briskly away.

  Quietly, Edward went and sat on the arm of the chair next to his father and gently draped an arm over his shoulders. During the last horrible few years, James would have jerked, shouted, responded with fear, and on one or two occasions, with actual violence, to the point where they had all tried to avoid physical contact as much as they possibly could.

  Now James let the arm rest there without commenting or moving it or possibly even noticing. Edward let his head fall to the side so that it rested gently against his father’s and then, without making a sound—­he was an orderly man—­he let his tears fall silently into the old man’s soft white hair.

  Chapter 15

  ROSIE TOOK ANGIE out shopping at Bennetts and Debenhams, followed by afternoon tea with a glass of fizz thrown in at the Cathedral Quarter Hotel in Derby. Stephen was taking his class sledding for PE and had invited the children along. Desleigh had sighed with relief and booked herself in for a “pampering day,” whatever that was. Angie had been up for going too, but Rosie had managed to talk her into accompanying her on a shopping trip to Derby instead.

  The wind was absolutely howling in their faces, and their carrier ba
gs were flapping around their legs, and they were glad to collapse with their packages in the steamy warmth of the hotel, heaving identical sighs of relief as they did so.

  “The works, please,” said Rosie to the waitress, who still wore an old-­fashioned black dress and a white apron. “This is on me, Mum.”

  “Actually, I should get this,” said Angie. “You know the exchange rate is unbelievable. Everything here costs about five pence to me.”

  Rosie briefly considered it—­everything did not feel like it cost five pence to her—­but of course she fended her mother off at once.

  “Don’t be daft, Mum. Shut up and eat your scones.”

  Angie smiled, put out her suntanned hand and rested it on Rosie’s pale white one.

  “Oh, Rosie Posie,” she said. “I do miss you.”

  They had had such a fun afternoon choosing gifts for the children, trying on clothes—­Rosie as usual trying to steer Angie toward the more conventional and Angie doing the opposite to her pretty daughter—­and just spending time together, chatting, gossiping, doing normal mother-­daughter stuff. But it was not normal at all because underneath it was the constant sadness that after Christmas, Angie would depart—­first for London, then for Paris so Desleigh could see it, then home. Back to Australia.

  “I miss you too, Mum,” said Rosie. So much had changed during the last three years. She missed Sunday lunch at Angie’s, the gravy in the little gravy boat that was heated from underneath by a candle; going to the sales on Boxing Day; watching Corrie with tomato soup on nights when her ex, Gerard, was out. Or just their long chats on the telephone; the time difference between the UK and Australia meant their talks were never quite satisfactory. One of the benefits—­possibly the only benefit—­that Rosie could see about growing up without a father was that you became a mummy’s girl. You couldn’t help it.

  “You know, I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it to upset you—­mostly I just wanted to annoy that horrible lady,” said Angie. “But we have been talking among ourselves . . . I mean, you know, there’s just so much opportunity in Australia. Pip’s worried about you. And nurses get paid really well, compared to here. You could have your own house, your own swimming pool, meet a nice man.”

  “I’ve got a nice man,” said Rosie reflexively.

  “Really, babe? I mean, charming, posh, all of that, but . . .”

  The champagne came, with tea, too. They paused while the waitress poured it out.

  “ . . . that house, darling, that family . . . Do you think so? Really? I mean, he said himself he’s got no interest in getting married. . . . Are you happy just to stay his bit on the side forever? Aren’t you better than that?”

  “I’m not his bit on the side, Mum.”

  “Darling, I love you. And I have never been anything but proud of the choices you’ve made, you know that.”

  Rosie realized that her struggle to fight the tears was going to be pointless.

  “And when you dropped everything, and came up to help Lilian, I was so proud of you. So thrilled.”

  “Mmm.”

  “But darling, you’re thirty-­two years old.”

  Rosie flushed pink.

  “I know that, Mum.”

  “Your best years . . . I mean, are you going to spend the rest of your life tinkering along? . . . Well, who knows what you’ll do if the sweetshop closes? . . . But the thought of you having to pander to that horrible woman and spend time in that dreadful freezing house, waiting around for . . . I mean, he’s very handsome and can turn on the charm and all of that, but, Stephen . . . you know, he’s not like us, is he?”

  Angie had, unwittingly or otherwise, touched on the very core of Rosie’s insecurities around him. She could never forget, last year, his flirtation with Cee Cee, the terrifyingly tall, posh blonde from London, who had looked at her as if she were some kind of scrubber.

  “Love, I’m trying to be kind, but . . . in the end, you know. Isn’t he just going to end up with someone exactly like himself? Don’t they all have to marry each other anyway?”

  “Don’t be daft, Mum. This isn’t Downton Abbey.”

  They buttered their scones in silence.

  “Meridian’s really taken to you,” observed Angie after a moment or two. Rosie’s face softened.

  “Oh, she’s adorable.”

  “She looks a lot like you as a child, you know.”

  Rosie nodded; she’d seen the photographs.

  “I know.”

  “I can’t tell you what it’s like as a mother, to see the way you look traced in someone else’s face. . . . She makes me miss you more than anything else.”

  “She’s very cute,” said Rosie.

  “I think she’s going to need her auntie,” said Angie. “Kelly doesn’t let her away with much. And I’m not sure Shane knows where he is half the time. And Desleigh’s rushed off her feet . . .”

  “I wish they’d take that game away from Shane,” said Rosie suddenly, tactfully not commenting on whether or not Desleigh seemed rushed off her feet. “I’ve absolutely no idea if he’s a nice boy or not. He doesn’t say a word, just grunts.”

  “I know,” said Angie. “It would take a bit more time to really get to know him.”

  The restaurant door banged open in the wind, letting in some other freezing shoppers.

  “Do you think you’d ever move back?” asked Rosie tentatively.

  “I couldn’t now,” said Angie, looking straight at the door. “It chills my bones, this. You know, when you wake in the morning in Sydney, you can smell the bougainvillea and the hibiscus and the jasmine in the window, and obviously lots of ­people go down to the beach, eat their breakfast overlooking the sea—­the coffee’s amazing. And the light hits the top of the harbor bridge and the opera house, and the sun is like diamonds on the waves, until it feels like the entire city is just glowing. There’s just so much possibility. And there aren’t many Hettys there, I’ll tell you that.”

  “So they won’t have much space for a fat old nurse with a failed sweetshop then,” said Rosie.

  “Don’t be daft,” said Angie. “You’d love it. Think of it: a new start, some soft, warm summer air. We’d get you set up in a little apartment by the sea, yeah? Not too far from all of us, but not too close either. Introduce you to some ­people? Come round for Sunday lunch? We do it on the barbie now. Just think about it.”

  MORAY LOOKED UP, surprised at the name next on the list for Saturday morning office hours but trying his best not to show it.

  “Hello,” he said, casually neutral.

  Stephen limped carefully over to the comfortable leather seat in front of Moray’s old desk, glancing briefly at the examination table with its roll of paper at the foot, and the wooden toy corner for the little ones. Seeing Stephen walk into his office was so entirely unexpected for Moray that he buried his head in the notes. He and Stephen had been good friends once; Stephen had been full of plans for them both in Africa, a doctor and a teacher, but Moray had not wanted to go, and Stephen had never quite forgiven him.

  “Leg problems?” said Moray.

  “No, the leg’s fine,” said Stephen, settling himself carefully.

  “And your back . . . is it healing? . . . You have been through the wars,” said Moray, then instantly regretted his turn of phrase.

  “It’s fine,” said Stephen. They sat there in silence for a few moments, both men wretchedly uncomfortable. Stephen began to wish furiously that he hadn’t come. On the other hand, he was hardly going to talk to Hye about it . . . and anyone else was just too risky.

  He stared at his hands.

  “Okay,” he said. “I . . . I . . .”

  For a horrifying moment he thought he was going to cry. He hauled it back.

  “I keep . . . I keep getting flashbacks.”

  Moray looked at him. He looked�
�­well, not awful. Stephen never looked awful, but there were purple shadows beneath his eyes, and he was a little thin.

  “After the accident.”

  Moray nodded carefully.

  “Trouble sleeping?”

  Stephen laughed hollowly.

  “And have you . . . have you spoken to anyone about this?”

  Stephen shook his head.

  “It’s Christmas. Everyone’s meant to be happy, having a good time. I’m not going to get in the way and spoil everyone’s fun.”

  This was precisely what Moray thought he was already doing, but he didn’t mention it.

  “You don’t want to talk to Rosie?” he asked gently. Stephen’s gaze was anguished.

  “I . . . I don’t want to be her patient. I don’t want her looking after me, everyone feeling sorry for me all over again. Do you see?”

  Moray did see. He was also of the opinion that this was a terrible strategy.

  “But don’t you think she’s worried about you?”

  “Don’t you think she’d be more worried about me if she thought I’d gone off my head again?”

  Moray shrugged.

  “She seems an understanding person. And it didn’t put her off before.”

  For once, the ghost of a smile passed Stephen’s lips. Then he shook his head.

  “No. No. There must be another way.”

  Moray sighed.

  “Well, there are sleeping pills and anti-­anxiety drugs, but I’m not going to give you those.”

  “I thought you might say that.”

  “ . . . I’m not saying they’re not helpful. I would just want you to explore other solutions first. I have the name of a very good therapist “

  “Christ, it’s not one of those forest weirdos, is it?”

  “No,” said Moray, crossing his fingers. Stephen glared into the middle distance.

  “Stephen,” said Moray gently, “I think this needs fixing. And I am telling you now that it can be fixed. You can make this go away. Probably a lot faster than you think. There’s a method called Exposure Therapy where they make you talk it through again and again until it stops freaking you out; the outcome rates are very encouraging. And it’s quick.”