Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Auxiliary,’ said Rosie, quietly. The rain showed no sign of letting up. But she had held down heavy patients before, helped with catheters, held paws … well, hands.

  ‘I might be able to help,’ she said.

  The woman revved the engine.

  ‘Get in then,’ she said brusquely, and took off with a squelch of brakes in the mud before Rosie had even closed the door.

  Rosie patted the dog’s head. ‘There, there. You’re going to be all right. I just need to wash my hands, then we’ll make you feel all better, yes?’

  The dog whined slightly in response, his eyes glassy, which worried Rosie. She knew it was better when patients were bolshy; it meant they still had a bit of fight left in them.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said, but the woman in front was already driving through the rain like a maniac.

  Back in the village, which turned out to be over a completely different hill from the one Rosie would have expected, the sky was dark and the streets were empty. The practice was locked up – there obviously wasn’t a surgery every day, and it had been closed that morning when Rosie passed by – but the white Land Rover that had sprayed her earlier was parked haphazardly up alongside the building, and a side door was open. It was peculiar, the surgery had obviously at one time been a rather grand house, and still had a fully laid-out garden, including a shed.

  Rosie barely had time to notice this before the woman was opening the boot and the two of them, as gently as possible, started to lug out the huge dog.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘It’s Bran,’ said the woman, her voice choking. ‘Oh Bran, darling.’

  Holding open the door with his elbow, his newly sterilised hands in the air, was a tall man trying to wipe a large mass of hair off his forehead with his other elbow. It wasn’t a very elegant manoeuvre.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he was shouting.

  The women followed him in and he let the door clang behind him. ‘If Hywel finds out about this, we’re screwed,’ he said as they followed him down a small passage to a sluice room at the back of the building.

  ‘Did you stop to pick up a hitchhiker?’ continued the man. He spoke very quickly and helped them lay the dog out on his back.

  ‘She says she’s a nurse,’ said the woman.

  The man looked impatient and unconvinced. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m a nursing auxiliary,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ he said, shortly. Fortunately Rosie had seen this kind of thing before in A&E, many times. It was just a stab wound, she told herself. To a dog.

  ‘How much do you think he weighs?’ she replied. The doctor was already trying to fill a syringe with anaesthetic.

  ‘Twenty? Twenty-five?’

  They both glanced at the woman, but the sight of Bran stretched out and whining piteously was clearly too much for her, and she dissolved in tears.

  ‘Let’s say twenty-five,’ said the man. ‘We don’t want him waking up and biting us.’

  Rosie went round to the back of the dog’s head and made soothing noises while she held his paws apart. The man looked very tentative indeed as he stood over the animal with his needle. Bran chose this moment to wake up and growl, writhing and howling and twisting his body in agony. As soon as the doctor tried to hold down one paw, another would wriggle free, and the dog wouldn’t stay still long enough for him to get the injection in. The woman had gone to pieces completely.

  ‘God, Jim really picks his time to go foal a bloody horse in Carningsford,’ he muttered to himself.

  Rosie, almost without thinking (although trying her best to avoid the biting end), clambered up on to the table and, as she had been taught to do with violent drunks and drug addicts, held down the dog’s thrashing paws in a wrestler’s hold, which allowed the doctor to practically kneel on the bottom one. The woman let out a howl, but quickly the doctor seized the scruff of the dog’s neck and, smoothly, sent the needle deep into the vein.

  After a few seconds, the creature started to relax. Rosie checked his breathing and took a quick glance at his pupils, before nodding at the doctor and releasing his front paws. The woman was still standing there, half in shock, trembling and agape.

  ‘Hetty, do you want to go wait in the waiting room,’ said the man. It was an instruction, not a question. ‘You,’ he said to Rosie. ‘Get scrubbed in and you’re going to have to hold the area for me.’

  Rosie boiled up catgut at the same time, while the doctor selected the right fine instrument and crouched down, starting to carefully coax out the wire. She watched, breathlessly, as he extracted pieces of metal.

  ‘Stupid old fence,’ said the man. ‘It’s rusted to nearly nothing.’

  ‘Will you be able to get it all?’

  The damage, though painful, didn’t seem to be too deep, as he drew out the last poking piece, spiked with blood. The man shrugged.

  ‘He can have an X-ray at the veterinary hospital tomorrow. But we need to get this little lot sewn up. An infection in there could be very nasty.’

  Once the stomach was stitched up, with a large amount of antibacterial powder, they could both relax a bit, and Rosie stood next to him, passing over the catgut and the scissors as he made a very tidy job of the rest of the dog.

  ‘You’re good at that,’ she observed at one point. ‘I’ve worked with some right butchers.’

  ‘I always liked it,’ admitted the doctor. ‘I miss a bit of the wet work in general practice.’

  He let a smile cross his face. ‘I’m Moray.’

  ‘Like the eel?’ Rosie said, then immediately felt like an idiot. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Moray. ‘I use it as a diagnostic tool. If you don’t say “like the eel” then you’re obviously suffering from some form of mental distraction or injury.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosie, feeling herself go pink. She noticed the stitch needed trimming and did it unconsciously.

  ‘So, what – a veterinary nurse just suddenly appeared at the right moment out of the sky?’ said Moray.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Rosie, pleased he thought that. ‘No, no. I’m a real nurse. Well, not really. I’m a nursing auxiliary. Or at least, I was.’

  Moray raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, that was lucky,’ he said. ‘It got really hairy there before the anaesthetic. Don’t know what we’d have done without you. Do you have a name, Nursing Auxiliary, or are you just going to vanish on your magical raincloud?’

  ‘I’m Rosie,’ said Rosie. ‘Do you do this kind of thing a lot?’

  ‘Almost never,’ said Moray. ‘Actually, never. You?’

  Rosie shook her head, and they smiled at each other as, slowly, the dog stirred just a little.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get all this hair out of here,’ said Moray. ‘It won’t go down well.’

  And sure enough, when Dr Hywel Evans, head of practice, rolled up forty minutes later, after a telephone call he had completely failed to understand, he was frankly amazed to find a dog on the sluice-room table, out for the count. (Moray and Rosie had slightly overestimated the anaesthetic, despite the giant weight of the dog.) His most junior partner and a total stranger were putting a large bandage on it while a woman cried tears of relief in his waiting room.

  Moray turned around just as he entered.

  ‘I think we got it all,’ he was calling through to the waiting room. ‘But probably worth an X-ray and a check-up just in case.’

  Rosie saw Dr Evans had a face like thunder.

  ‘Hello?’ she said tentatively.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded a corpulent, comfortable-looking man in tweed.

  ‘Oh’ she said, her face falling. After the adrenalin of their dash to the surgery, Rosie finally realised just how many illegal things she’d done in the last forty minutes.

  ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear. I’m so sorry … it was just …’

  Hye looked from the dog to Rosie to Moray to the dog again
.

  ‘You … you brought a dog in here?’

  ‘Nothing else to be done, sir,’ said Moray respectfully. ‘Jim Hodds is over the other side of the mountain in the middle of a tricky foaling. Perforated abdomen. The dog would have died, sir. And, fortunately, this young lady happened to be passing and proved the most excellent nurse.’

  ‘That is absolutely and categorically not allowed,’ Hye spluttered.

  Rosie moved back towards the table and tentatively rested her hand on the dog’s head. To her astonishment, Bran lifted his head a tiny amount, and gently licked her hand. Despite the amount of trouble she was in, she couldn’t help it. She was delighted.

  ‘Hey, boy,’ she said softly, her voice trembling.

  Moray’s face broke into a smile. ‘Hey, old fellow!’ he said. ‘Look at that, Hye.’

  ‘Well, I can’t … I can’t believe this,’ said Hye. ‘Do I need to call the police?’

  ‘Do you need to call the what?’ came a loud, imperious voice, and the dog’s owner strode into the room.

  ‘He’s stirring,’ said Rosie. The woman rushed over and put her hand to the dog’s muzzle, and he tried another tentative lick.

  ‘Bran,’ said the woman. ‘Oh, Bran.’

  She briefly buried her face in the animal’s neck. Dr Evans watched in disbelief.

  Then she turned to him. ‘Hye Evans,’ she said. ‘Your young doctor and this strange girl just saved my dog’s life. They were magnificent.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Lady … Lady Lipton,’ stammered Dr Evans. Rosie’s eyes opened wide with shock.

  A lady! Well, that was a stupid reaction, obviously. But even so. Maybe that’s why she had kept insisting that it was ‘her’ road. Because it was.

  ‘Amazing. You are so lucky to have this young man at your practice. I shall tell everyone so.’

  ‘Uhm, but …’ stammered Dr Evans.

  Lady Lipton nodded. ‘I’ll pay you for the medicines, of course. Without these young people around it would have been a very different night indeed. You know, it’s not the first time I’ve been to this surgery and found nobody here.’

  Moray and Rosie looked at each other and grimaced.

  ‘You’ll still need to get him X-rayed,’ warned Moray.

  ‘I certainly will,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘Well done, Hye. Nice to see you take on somebody competent for a change.’

  Hye spluttered.

  ‘I’ll send Mrs Flynn down to clean up. Now, please, Moray, could you help me lift my darling boy back into the car?’

  Moray snuck off after helping Lady Lipton with her big woofer. He wanted to find the girl – what was her name again? – and thank her. He had no idea if she was just passing through or not. It had taken him a while to realise what was peculiar about her, then it finally struck him that she had been soaking wet.

  Chapter Five

  ‘In 1932 the Milky Way appeared in the US, followed by Mr Mars junior’s invention, the Mars Bar, in the UK in 1933. 1935, the Aero, 1936 Maltesers, and in 1937 the Kit Kat, Rolos and Smarties. In music the equivalent would be the golden age of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. In painting it was the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance and the advent of Impressionism at the end of the nineteenth century; in literature, Tolstoy, Balzac and Dickens …

  ‘Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror, 1087 William the Second. Such things are not going to affect one’s life … but 1933 the Mars Bar and 1936 Maltesers and 1937 the Kit Kat – these dates are milestones in history and should be seared into the memory of every child in the country.’

  So said none other than Roald Dahl, and he should know and in fact gets the last word on just about every single sweet-related issue out there.

  So take that, you smarty-pants ‘one square of 90% cocoa dark chocolate with chilli taken with a glass of Chateau Petrus 1978’ brigade, and naff right off. Here are the facts: the more rarefied and bitter you take your chocolate, the less you TRULY like and appreciate the stuff. The chocolate you grew up with, mass-produced, high in fat and sugar, low in cocoa, is one of the many, many things that made Britain great. Along with, of course, Roald Dahl.

  If you truly are a chocolate snob, then the great mass-market bars cater for you too, with the most exquisite, perfectly balanced fusion of chocolate-based mint flavouring: the Fry’s Chocolate Cream (plain, in the navy blue wrapper). If this peak of delicate, sweet and ever so slightly sharp, mouth-melting infusion of happiness, class and flavour does not assuage your snobbish tastebuds, then you’re doing it wrong. May I therefore commend to you an alternative volume entitled Being Pointlessly Snotty and Showing Off: A User’s Manual.

  It took the adrenalin wearing off for Rosie to realise just how wet she was. That, and stepping out into an afternoon as clear and blue as the morning she’d left Lipton. What on earth had the weather done? Had it been an entirely topical downpour? As she dripped up the road towards Lilian’s house it seemed unfair that so many faces turned towards her to stare. Didn’t they know they lived in a mad climate?

  Lilian was pottering about in the house looking worried when she arrived, but desperately trying not to show it too much.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she said. ‘I thought you’d turned around and gone home. Which you can do whenever you like.’

  Lilian wondered if she’d been too hard on the girl before. Although she did look absolutely atrocious.

  Rosie didn’t mention how close she’d come, alone on the hilltop, to pledging to go home.

  ‘There was a storm! I got drenched!’

  ‘Well, this is Derbyshire, darling, not the Balearics. Run yourself a bath and get a proper coat.’

  Rosie put the kettle on and ran her fingers through her hair. Without wanting to drop anyone in it about treating a dog in a doctor’s surgery, she mentioned in passing that she’d met the local doctor.

  ‘Hye Evans? That fat old fool,’ said Lilian. ‘That man couldn’t diagnose a nail sticking out of your leg if you turned up with a nail sticking out of your leg, saying, “Doctor, I just accidentally hammered a nail into my leg.” And trust me, I should know.’

  ‘Uhm, no, the other one.’

  Lilian’s eyebrows went up. ‘Were you quite so damp at the time?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Rosie.

  Lilian glanced briefly at the glamorous portraits of herself as a younger woman but didn’t say anything. Rosie sniffed and marched upstairs to run the bath, trying not to glance in the bathroom mirror. Her hair had widened to twice its normal size, like a loaf of bread proofing by a stove.

  ‘I have a boyfriend, you know.’

  ‘Boyfriends, schmoyfriends,’ said Lilian. ‘I don’t see him here.’

  ‘I’m going to make you lunch,’ said Rosie. ‘And you are going to eat it. And then you’re going to get out of that chair, it’s not doing you any good.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, coming down warm and dry forty-five minutes later. She had only one jumper. That, she probably needed to rectify. Lilian was still sitting in her armchair listening to Radio 4 and staring into the fire. Rosie was tempted to join her, but she was here for a reason.

  She heated up the thick vegetable soup she’d grabbed from the Spar, ignoring the looks and whispers of the other shoppers at her dripping state.

  ‘Eat this. And the bread.’

  ‘This is oozing with butter,’ said Lilian, looking disgusted.

  ‘It is,’ said Rosie. ‘And if you don’t want me to make you eat two slices, I’d get on with it. Unless you want me to dissolve it in milk.’

  Lilian made a face, but started in on the soup. As she did so, she felt a little spurt of worry; how long had it been since she’d had hot food? Hetty popped in and warmed something up now and again but even she complained about her not having one of those new oven things that heated up things so fast. Lilian didn’t trust the idea of them, and anyway, she’d always got along fine without.

  ‘We need to get you a microwave,’ said Rosie. �
�You know. If you want to keep living here.’

  ‘Ugly things,’ murmured Lilian. ‘So many modern things are so ugly.’

  Rosie tried not to take this as a personal slight, but didn’t quite know how to respond.

  ‘Have you lived in Lipton all your life?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I’ve travelled,’ said Lilian crossly. It was none of this girl’s business. ‘I’ve been to York … Scarborough of course … Scotland once.’

  ‘London?’

  ‘I have no idea why the entire world seems so fixated on London,’ said Lilian. ‘I thought it was absolutely crammed full of unspeakable people, incredibly noisy and totally filthy.’

  Rosie grinned. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘All of those things. That’s what makes it so amazing.’

  ‘Well, if you like hooligans, I suppose.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever want to travel any further?’ said Rosie. ‘New York? Paris?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ sniffed Lilian. ‘I knew what I liked. And I had the shop. And I might go, still.’

  A silence descended, and the atmosphere grew stiff. Neither of them could quite say it. That there was no ‘still’. That what Rosie was here to do was not going to result in any trips to Paris. Lilian sniffed and turned away, refusing to touch her lunch.

  Afterwards, Rosie insisted on examining her aunt’s hip. Lilian would have liked to refuse, but realised she was in no position to do so.

  Sure enough, the wound was a little nasty and sticky round the edges, but nothing Rosie couldn’t sort out. Lilian, for her part, was a bit more impressed than she let on at Rosie’s cool hands and efficient manner as she changed the dressing. After that, Rosie figured there was no point in pussyfooting around any longer.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the business then.’

  Lilian looked guilty. ‘Well, since I hurt my hip …’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Rosie. ‘Honestly. I’ve seen it.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘But didn’t you ever want to sell up before? Retire? Go see Paris?’