Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  She was deranged by grief, and threw herself on Lilian as a fellow passenger on this ghost train, this awful ride into oblivion, where everyone else was on another track, but you were shunted off into a siding that went nowhere. Lilian couldn’t bear that either.

  Henry, though, did nothing, and it was everything. He didn’t say anything, didn’t mention Ned, didn’t engage her in conversation. He just came away as often as he could from the farm, at lunch or in the evening, and let her lie there, her head on his shoulder or sometimes by his knees like a child, and weep till it was out. Then she could go home, and make supper, and try to get her father to eat, and answer questions from the ministry and fill in papers and orders and sometimes – not often, but sometimes – get some sleep.

  One morning, just before the dawn, she lay there trying not to think about Ned, sleepless, her eyes gritty, her head feeling like it was on an endless loop; the same thoughts, the same fears going round and round again, until she couldn’t think straight; such a mess of exhaustion and fear and horror and gloom she wanted to black herself out completely; felt like hitting her head against the narrow iron bedstead, just to get it to stop for five minutes. As she turned under her hot bedspread once more, she heard the rattle of a little stone against her window.

  At first she got a shock of terror; she had been thinking so strongly about her brother that she thought it was he, summoning her. But as she jumped up, heart pounding, and went towards the front dormer, she saw in the early light a figure wearing brown canvas trousers held up with braces, one of which, she noticed, was missing a button; a collarless shirt which was open at the neck and had been washed so often the thin stripe had faded to almost nothing. His throwing hand held the back of his sunburned neck, the other supporting his bike. Nothing else stirred in the village, except far away over the hills, where a kite circled lazily.

  He looked up at her with that heart-meltingly shy smile, and put his finger to his lips to shush her, then beckoned her down.

  She dressed in an instant, throwing water from the ewer over her face and rinsing out her mouth, then put on her plain, old-fashioned day dress. She’d lost all interest in clothes anyway, though she noticed even this plain old gingham was getting too big for her. She tried pulling a comb through her hair, but without much luck, then crept downstairs through the silent house.

  Henry refused to accept her demurral, insisting, all the time in silence, that she get on the bike seat. Worried that someone would see her creeping out of the house, Lilian couldn’t do much else but spring on.

  He pedalled off powerfully in the direction of his farm. The early morning mists of the dew ascending turned the village and the fields beyond into something out of a dream, as if they were moving through the clouds. As Henry picked up speed, Lilian began to feel a tiny change; a slight lifting; a sense that there was something within her that wasn’t just bleak and gone and empty. They went effortlessly uphill, then there was a long stretch down into the valley where the Carrs farmed and where they kept their sheep.

  As the bike picked up speed downhill Lilian exhaled and felt the tension leave her; the resilience of youth bouncing back in her, if only for a moment. Sitting behind Henry, watching his strong back, his hair whipping back from his head, hanging on round his waist as they bounced through the damp grass, the first stabs of light through the hills promising another hot English day and a cloudless sky. Momentarily she closed her eyes.

  ‘All right now,’ said Henry, as they clattered to a halt. He was pink in the face from the exertion. ‘Here. I have to pen them this morning, they need marking. But I have a problem.’

  Lilian looked at him, uncomprehending.

  Henry whistled, and Parr, his dog, shot out of one of the distant outbuildings like a black and white flash, arriving seconds later with his characteristic panting grin. He nestled his head under Lilian’s hand, and she gave him a good scratch. Henry frowned. He didn’t approve of petting working dogs. Lilian knew that of course, but did it anyway. Parr was a lovely dog by anybody’s standards.

  ‘Come by, Parr,’ said Henry. With another two short whistles, Parr bounded off to do his duty, Henry about to follow him.

  ‘Why do you need me?’ asked Lilian, timidly.

  Henry took a bottle of milk from his pocket. It was frothy and warm; the cows had been turned out already.

  ‘We’ve got one … She was very late,’ he said. ‘Her mother got caught on the wire. Bloody stupid buggers, sheep. Tore her own bloody throat open. And the little one … she’s not adapting well. Needs a bit o’ help.’

  Sure enough, Lilian could see, just up the hill, that as the sheep trotted along in unison to Parr’s practised manouevres, there was one lamb, small for the time of year, trailing behind, its nose practically on the ground.

  Lilian nodded. ‘All right.’

  ‘It will take all day to round them up otherwise,’ said Henry.

  But he didn’t need to explain himself. Lilian understood, as she picked up the little lamb – it was easy enough to catch, trailing along, bleating piteously; underweight. She knew why Henry had thought of her when he saw it. She sat on a rock in the corner of the field and waggled the teat of the bottle under the lamb’s nose. At first it struggled and wriggled, anxious and frightened. Then it caught the scent of the milk, and sniffed, nervously. Its little body felt heavy and warm in Lilian’s arms, its white fleece still soft and pure. Finally, the lamb figured out what to do, and she felt its entire body relax as it grabbed hold of the teat and started sucking vigorously, and Lilian held it close as the sun came up, and the lamb drank the bottle, and Henry and Parr got on with their day’s work up the valley, and she felt, if not happy, then a tiny modicum of peace.

  Rosie was whistling. She couldn’t help it. She’d woken up bright and early, and it was a glorious day. But more than that, yesterday she’d had her first delivery for the shop. And today she was unpacking it all. The smell, even through the cardboard boxes and packaging, was light and rosy, with tinges of mint and lavender; fruit and sweet caramel escaping through the shop. With the freshly cleaned windows, the sun shone straight in on the new, brightly polished jars, washing which had taken her all morning, two breakages and an entire bottle of washing-up liquid. And some swearing. But now they were perfect, clean, sparkling and new, and ready to be filled with humbugs and jujubes and cola cubes – black and red, Rosie had found herself adamant on this point, even though the red ones were very difficult to track down and had eventually been sourced from a small warehouse in Aberdeen. There were long red liquorice laces, to be pulled out two at a time, and striped candy canes, even though they were a bit Christmassy. Rosie felt strongly that you couldn’t call yourself a sweetshop if you didn’t have striped candy canes.

  ‘And,’ Angie had been relentless, ‘you’ve got to have a business brain, my love. Any buyer is going to want to see profit and loss accounts, all of that.’

  Rosie had shaken her head in disbelief.

  ‘Angie! You sent me up here for, and I quote, “a couple of weeks looking after the old lady”. Now you’re telling me I need to apply for Dragon’s Den.’

  ‘There is not a man on Dragon’s Den I don’t fancy,’ said Angie dreamily for a minute. ‘Anyway, think about it. Of course you have to know how the business works.’

  ‘I’m a nurse,’ said Rosie.

  ‘An auxiliary,’ sniffed Angie.

  ‘I’m hanging up on you.’

  ‘No. Listen.’

  Angie had, it cannot be denied, taken on enough temp jobs in her time. And, as Rosie grudgingly reminded herself when she was getting annoyed, her mother had worked her head off, every single day, to provide for her and Pip when no one else had given a toss.

  ‘Now, listen to me,’ said Angie. ‘Let me try and get it through to your bandage brain how it works.’

  And she had explained, rather well, in fact, how the business should run: what percentage she should spend on stock; what the difference was between turnover and pr
ofit; how much stock to hold. Rosie ended up grudgingly taking notes, holding the old receiver awkwardly clamped to her neck. At last it started to make a bit of sense.

  ‘Angie,’ asked Rosie finally, after she’d been listening for an hour. ‘You know when you were working your head off when me and Pip were little and we didn’t have much money and stuff …’

  ‘You never went short,’ said Angie.

  ‘I know! You were amazing! I didn’t even realise at the time! I liked getting toothbrushes for Christmas. Anyway. All I wanted to ask is, Lilian here … I mean, she doesn’t really have anyone to spend money on. Did she ever … I mean, well, I suppose she was busy and everything, but …’

  ‘Did she ever help us out? Is that what you’re asking?’

  Rosie shrugged. ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter, I mean, everyone’s busy.’

  But she was surprised by how much emotional weight the question had.

  ‘Of course she did,’ said Angie, softly. ‘We’d never have made it through without her, and your granpa. All the Hopkinses. That sweetshop kept us afloat for years.’

  Now Rosie looked around approvingly. There was Edinburgh rock in its pretty pastel dustiness, and Turkish delight by the pound set out in the glass display cabinet next to the violet creams and chocolate truffles. Rosie had started off very small on the expensive handmade chocolates though, and had bought some tiny boxes if people just wanted to try one or two. She wasn’t sure how big the market would be here. Whereas who didn’t want rainbow drops? Or raisin fudge, or cream-whipped caramel chews? She kept whistling, happily, as she donned her new apron.

  She’d persuaded Lilian it was an essential shop purchase, after Lilian had offered her a clean, soft but obviously very old white one. This apron was chic, stripy and brand new, and Rosie kept admiring it and thinking how fond of it she was before remembering that she was a modern professional woman and liking a pinny was betraying the sisterhood. Then she remembered that she was actually restarting a women-run business and therefore it was absolutely fine and anyway, the new owners wouldn’t need to keep it if they didn’t want it.

  Humming cheerfully, she tidied the boxes away neatly, making final alterations so all the jars stood equidistant in a row, their labels facing outwards. She’d wanted to get Lilian to make the labels, but her fingers were so stiff with arthritis she’d found it almost impossible, so Rosie had used her own loopy writing. She’d kept Lilian’s original scales, polishing them up with Brasso and newspaper till they absolutely gleamed. Even though she had to sell things metrically, she still expected everyone to ask for quarters and half-pounds, and had memorised her responses precisely (Is that 224 grams? Coming right up!), and was also trying to figure out a way of measuring that request of her childhood: can I have twenty pence worth please?

  She’d also kept the antique till – even though she reasoned that if times got tough they might be able to get something for it on eBay – but found a cheap electronic one second-hand. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her how to work it, but she was sure it would come to her, and she’d hidden it behind the counter as far from sight as possible, hoping to keep the illusion of the original sweetshop intact.

  At last, she’d done as much as she could do. The whole place was gleaming. It was as bright as a new pin. If Rosie squinted so that the new till, with its little green light, was entirely out of sight, the sweetshop looked like a set from a period drama, or something out of Harry Potter. It was, to her eyes, utterly beautiful. She sighed with satisfaction.

  ‘Lilian?’ She knocked on the cottage door before she went in, even though no one else ever did. ‘Lilian? Do you want to come and see something?’

  Lilian was dozing, slightly irritably, in her blanket. Rosie didn’t want to wake her up, but she was stirring. Plus she felt that Lilian ought to try to stay awake a little more during the day; she was complaining she didn’t sleep well at night. It was in many ways, Rosie often felt, not unlike looking after a baby. Except not quite so adorable.

  ‘What? Why are you always shouting at me?’ Lilian squinted. ‘Did I give you that apron?’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ said Rosie. ‘Come on. Give me your arm.’

  Grumbling and reluctant, even when Rosie told her she didn’t have to change out of her slippers, Lilian got up.

  ‘Leave the house in my slippers? I don’t think so. I am old, my dear, not a slattern.’ So Rosie had had to kneel down and slip on her rather elegant heeled shoes with the ankle button.

  Lilian leaned on Rosie heavily as she left the house. Rosie had borrowed a stick from Moray but was having almost no joy in getting her to use it. She hoped her aunt used it when she wasn’t looking.

  The day was still warm outside, although Lilian insisted on a cardigan being placed around her shoulders. Rosie hoped that if she could get a bit of weight on her she might not feel so cold all the time.

  She led her next door. Rosie had refurbished the bell that hung above the door, which had got so gummed up with muck and stuff she couldn’t imagine the last time it had rung. She had scrubbed and scraped and polished it with Brasso, and now it dinged out cheerfully. When she heard it, Lilian exclaimed despite herself. Then as she walked forward into the new, shiny sweetshop, she stopped dead.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, hands suddenly grasping a shelf to keep herself upright. ‘Oh.’

  Rosie watched the colour drain from her great-aunt’s face and redoubled her efforts to support her.

  ‘What … what’s the matter?’ she said. But all Lilian could do was point around her.

  ‘But,’ she said, gasping for breath and leaning perilously, ‘this is … this is just how it was then. Just how it was.’

  When Rosie had got her back, as fast as she could, and into bed, and made her some restorative tea with three sugars, she found Lilian sitting up, staring into space.

  ‘Uncross your ankles,’ she ordered, unthinkingly, then sat down on the edge of the covers. ‘Are you all right?’

  Lilian’s eyes seemed a thousand miles away.

  ‘It hasn’t …’ Her voice was strangulated, tight and high. ‘It hasn’t looked like that … in a long time.’ She shook her head. ‘Just … just seeing it again. I haven’t really seen it … I haven’t really been there for … maybe a while.’

  ‘Yes, I’d gathered that,’ said Rosie, who’d had to reconnect the electricity.

  ‘It brought a lot of things back,’ said Lilian. She had been thinking of a hot summer’s day, with clean, gleaming windows, when the bell had dinged and in had walked a mop of brown curly hair.

  ‘What things?’ said Rosie, glad to see some colour come back into her aunt’s face. She was even nibbling on the chopped-up banana she’d put on a plate, without much hope of success.

  ‘Oh look, you’re eating one of your five a year.’

  Lilian ignored her, which Rosie took as a good sign.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Rosie.

  In Lilian’s head the bright bell, which had been silent for decades – it had got stuck one day and she’d forgotten to fix it, and well, maybe she had been distracted, then time had gone on and it didn’t seem to make much sense to fix it, she could always see anyone in the shop – had been like a clapper tapping on her conscience, rousing all her memories.

  ‘Someone I know,’ she said, ‘who used to come into the shop. And when he did, the bell would ring.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Rosie. ‘Intrigue! A man! Tell me everything!’

  But Lilian just looked tired. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I had better have a little rest.’

  ‘All right,’ said Rosie, ‘but I am waking you up very shortly, you can’t snooze the day away. It makes the nights too long.’

  ‘My nights,’ said Lilian faintly as Rosie closed the door, ‘my nights are always too long.’

  Rosie wondered about Lilian all that afternoon, as she handmade traditional signs to distribute round the town, advertising the reopening of the shop and 20 per cent off all first-day purch
ases. After all, Lilian had kept the fact that the shop was closed a secret from all of them for years. How many other secrets did she have? And it was mad to think you could get as old as Lilian, who was almost as old as a person could possibly be, and not have had at least some intrigue. She had obviously been quite glamorous. Never left the village, so there must have been someone there. The only problem was, Rosie felt, as a nurse, would she be doing the right thing for Lilian’s health by digging into it?

  Aha, she thought, smiling at the sight of the doctor’s surgery. The door to the large house was opened by a distracted-looking receptionist. ‘Can I ask you to put a few leaflets out?’

  Hearing her voice, a mop head popped round one of the large surgery doors.

  ‘I thought that was you,’ said Moray. In fact, he had seen her walking down the street and found himself hoping she would stop by; updating his filing was a tedious business. Also, he wanted to know why she was wearing an apron. There was no doubt about it: as a general rule, she dressed more peculiarly than anyone he had ever met. But apart from that, he liked the idea of a partner in crime.

  ‘Hello!’ said Rosie.

  ‘Have you come to join the surgery?’ asked the receptionist.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m perfectly healthy.’ Moray raised an eyebrow. ‘And I’m not staying.’