Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘What do you think? Too much?’

  Lilian looked up from perusing the local paper.

  ‘You’re in here,’ she said, handing it over. On the little sixteen-sheet, filled with small ads for washing machines and farm machinery, was a picture of the newly refurbished sweetshop.

  ‘Ooh!’ said Rosie. Underneath it said, Teeth-rotting Hopkins family trying again.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosie, surprised by how much this knocked the wind out of her sails. ‘That’s not very nice.’

  ‘No,’ said Lilian.

  ‘It’s actually horrid,’ said Rosie.

  Today marks the reopening of Lipton’s formerly derelict sweetshop, in the same place; returning from the grave to wreck the teeth of another generation of Lipton children.

  Rosie looked up. ‘Lilian?’

  ‘I think your scrambled eggs are burning.’

  ‘OK, hold your horses,’ said Rosie, grating cheese into them as Lilian looked on almost hungrily. Rosie was delighted at this, as she slipped two slices of wholemeal bread under the grill – there was no such thing as a toaster in Lilian’s doll’s-house kitchen. She added two strong cups of tea and they sat down at the table.

  ‘Lilian, who edits the local paper?’

  ‘The Lipton Times? It’s that awful charlatan Blaine.’

  Rosie glanced at the other stories in the thin sheets, most of which appeared to be about tooth-whitening competitions at the local school.

  ‘So he does this job on the side?’

  Lilian looked sad. ‘It used to be a thriving paper, the Lipton Times. Everyone read it, had a journalist and an editor and everything. Then, you know …’

  ‘What?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘That thing everyone talks about. The really big news paper in the sky that came along and ruined everything else, blah blah blah.’

  Rosie was stumped, until light finally dawned. ‘You mean the internet?’

  ‘Well, yes. I hate that thing.’

  ‘The whole thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You hate the entire internet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lilian looked at her as if she was the biggest idiot ever.

  ‘Because it took my lovely local paper and turned it into a ridiculous free rag, that’s why,’ she said. ‘And I’ve scarcely had a proper letter in seventeen years! Why on earth would I want anything to do with that?’

  ‘You know,’ said Rosie, thinking suddenly, ‘if you were online you could send sweets to anyone anywhere in the world.’

  ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’ said Lilian.

  ‘Well, maybe people might like old-fashioned sweets,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe they’d like proper humbugs and half-decent jellies and proper Turkish delight, not that weird pink stuff, wrapped up nicely and sent properly.’

  Lilian looked as unconvinced as it was possible for a person to be.

  ‘Well, you’re full of pep this morning,’ she said. ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Rosie. ‘I did wonder if it would be too much.’

  Rosie was wearing a Get Cutie dress which suited her very nicely. It had a sweetheart neckline and three-quarter-length sleeves and a pattern of nesting birds, and was protected by her candy-striped apron. A mob cap covered her dark curls.

  ‘It’s the cap, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘The cap’s too much.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say the cap was too much,’ said Lilian, a ghost of a smile hovering round her lips. ‘Although it does look a little bit like the themed catering staff Hetty gets in at the big house round Christmas time, or for those awful wedding things she does.’

  Rosie snatched it off. ‘It was just an idea,’ she said hastily. ‘Plus I need to wear it when I’m handling the chocolate.’

  Lilian snorted. ‘Political correctness gone mad.’

  ‘I don’t think it is,’ said Rosie gently. ‘I think it’s just basic cleanliness.’

  ‘I always kept a clean shop!’ said Lilian.

  The women regarded each other.

  ‘Let’s not talk about the mice right now,’ said Rosie, who had spent several unpleasant mornings emptying traps. ‘So, are you coming? I’m going to have free lollipops! And balloons!’

  ‘Free?’ said Lilian.

  ‘It’s called marketing,’ said Rosie. ‘And I thought … if you wanted to come … Moray has a spare wheelchair in the surgery I thought he might lend me.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Lilian. ‘I’m not going to sit out there like one of those awful war-wounded old … I mean one of those awful old crones.’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m hoping … well, I’m hoping we get some people. Jake said he’d bring along some farm boys and I’ve handed out lots of leaflets and …’

  ‘No,’ said Lilian. ‘Lipton people don’t fall for things like that, I think you’re just going to have to face it, Rosie. I do appreciate what you’re trying to do for me here, and it would be nice for you to find someone and let things continue, I suppose. Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘Is that a thank you?’ said Rosie.

  ‘But we must face things, Rosemary. These shops … they’re dying. Like everything else. Like the post office. Like the newspapers. Like me, and everyone I’ve ever bloody known.’

  Lilian attempted a wry smile, but it didn’t sit well on her old, too thin face. It showed off long, teeth in sunken gums, and cheeks with deep crevasses running down the middle.

  ‘We’re done. It’s nice of you to come here, and it’s nice of you to look after me, and if we can sell the sweetshop as a going concern, well, that will be jolly wonderful for me, I suppose. I can find a home, and sit in a corner and watch television all day with drool hanging out of my mouth. I know what you’re up to.’

  ‘We’re not “up to” anything,’ said Rosie. ‘I thought it was wrong you being left to cope on your own. I still think that. And I’m trying to do the best I can for you and for the shop. And I think …’ Rosie stole a glance at the large helium canister that had been delivered the previous evening, ‘I think we can do that.’

  Lilian snorted. ‘I was fine, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ lied Rosie for the nine hundredth time. ‘I know you were, Aunt Lil. We’re just trying to help. I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘People shouldn’t help until they’re asked.’

  Rosie thought of someone else.

  ‘Some people can’t bear to ask,’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s where I come in.’

  It was another lovely day; Rosie noticed the sweet smell of freshly cut hay in the air. The town was full of itinerant labourers, a few late holidaymakers and the first groups of children. By eight thirty, Rosie had already mastered the helium canister for the balloons (quickly passing over a small pang of loneliness that Gerard wasn’t there to hear her funny voice) and stuck them up outside. Listening to the happy tinkle of the bell, she turned quickly to see a small boy looking up at her solemnly. She recognised him from before.

  ‘Hello, Edison,’ she said.

  ‘I’m here early,’ said the boy, blinking behind his thick glasses. ‘I thought if I got here early I might be able to put away some of the sweets before the big boys take them off me.’

  ‘Tell the big boys not to do that!’ said Rosie. ‘Or punch them.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said the boy. ‘I’m a pacific.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A pacific. It means I don’t fight back, as it’s morly wrong.’

  ‘Are you a pacifist, Edison?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edison. ‘That’s what I said.’

  Rosie took out the big dish of old-fashioned lollipops – strawberries and cream, lemon and lime, and blackcurrant and vanilla, each lollipop with the colours swirled around its top and tied up in a simple twist of waxed paper.

  ‘Well, one way of looking at it,’ said Rosie, ‘is that you never start a fight, but if you get into one, make sure you fight back.’

&n
bsp; Edison was closely examining the lollipops, picking them up and turning them over in his hands as he tried to make up his mind.

  ‘Yes, but the thing is,’ he said, sounding like a very small professor, ‘my glasses cost one hundred and fifty-nine pounds, you see? I have stig-mis-ma. Mummy says it will make me very clever.’

  Rosie arched her eyebrows, then glanced outside. A woman with a severe haircut and no make-up gave her a tight smile, then glanced deliberately at her watch.

  Don’t start a fight but always finish it, her granpa, Gordon, had always said. He’d given her lessons on the balcony of their old flat. It had come in handy precisely once, in year four, against a gang of hardcore girls from the next estate. The second she’d used Granpa Gordon’s patented neck-whacker, the girl had staggered back, screaming abuse, and she’d never had the slightest bit of trouble from them ever again. She was tempted to teach Edison the neck-whacker right now, but suspected his mother wouldn’t approve. It was bad enough bringing evil sugar to town, she supposed.

  ‘Have you decided yet, genius?’ she asked.

  Edison looked absolutely helpless.

  ‘Remember your friend who isn’t allowed to eat sweets?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Reuben?’

  ‘Yes, Reuben.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Edison.

  ‘Would you like to take one for Reuben?’

  ‘But would that be morly wrong?’

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Not if some mean people are going to try and take your lollipop. You can offer up Reuben’s, if he wasn’t going to eat it anyway.’

  Edison’s brow furrowed as he followed the ramifications of this. Finally, his brain ended up at a solution he liked, and he smiled and popped his head back up.

  ‘OK!’ he said. ‘Can I have strawberries and cream and Reuben would like lemon and lime. Or maybe Reuben would like blackcurrant. I hate blackcurrant. Maybe some people who are mean and take Reuben’s lollipop would then go bleargh bleargh yuck yuck we are going to be sick we hate blackcurrant so much.’

  ‘That could happen,’ said Rosie.

  Edison nodded his head, and Rosie popped the sweets in a bag for him.

  ‘Congratulations!’ she said. ‘You are officially our first customer.’

  Rosie propped the door open, to find several rubber-neckers, passers-by and curious children had gathered round.

  ‘I now pronounce this sweetshop … open!’ said Rosie, with a big smile.

  In poured quite a river of people. Rosie looked among the little boys and girls to see if she could work out exactly which ones were making Edison’s life such a misery, but they all looked identically rosy-cheeked and adorable.

  ‘I’m going to get the biggest bag ever in the world and buy every sweet in this shop,’ announced one tow-headed chap.

  ‘Me too, I’m going to do that,’ said his friend. ‘Except mine will be the biggest bag in space and so it will be even bigger than yours, so there.’

  ‘I am going to bring all my birthday money, all the money I got, it’s a lot, it was ten pounds, yes and I am going to buy all the chocolate in the shop,’ said another.

  ‘You will not,’ said a mother’s voice, and when Rosie looked up she realised it was Maeve Skitcherd, the receptionist from the doctor’s surgery.

  ‘Hello!’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Maeve. ‘I couldn’t resist. When I was little Miss Lilian always used to have … I don’t suppose they even make them any more, I never see them anywhere …’

  Rosie cocked her head, keeping her fingers crossed. This was the crux of it; this was where the shop could rise again. Not from the pennies and birthday money of the children, but from the memories and desires of the adults.

  ‘… I don’t suppose you have any mint creams?’

  Rosie nearly punched the air with pleasure. They did. She had restocked as much of Lilian’s originals as she could track down.

  ‘Why yes,’ she said, ‘of course. Would you like a big bag or a small bag?’

  Even though Rosie had been metric since she’d started out in nursing, she knew it wasn’t the right thing for a traditional sweetshop, so she was selling small, medium and large bags at one, two or three pounds. You could choose all of one kind or, for medium and large bags, mix up two or three scoops together.

  ‘Ooh, large,’ said Maeve, colouring with pleasure. ‘Or maybe small. No. Large.’

  And while Lavender, her daughter, unwrapped her strawberry lolly, Rosie filled a large bag with Maeve’s mint creams. (Rosie made a mental note: when offered a fruit-based choice, children invariably plump for strawberry. A tiny thought behind that said that knowing this wouldn’t matter a bit when she sold the shop on to its new owners, but she suppressed it quickly.) Maeve couldn’t wait. She picked out a mint cream as soon as she’d handed over the cash, and sank her teeth into the large white disc.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, as the sharp taste flooded her mouth. ‘They haven’t changed a bit. Not a bit.’

  She went pink. ‘I used to have a big bag of these on my way home from school every day. It was where all my pocket money went. Everyone else would have something different – alphabet sweets, and whichever name you spelled out would be the name of the boy you were going to marry. But I just stuck with these, I was completely addicted to them. Every day, for about a year. Then I just kind of forgot all about them. Alice Mandon had the alphabet sweets, Carly had the sugar mouse, she was always watching her weight … You know, I must find Carly and tell her about this place being open again. She loved it. We got back in touch, you know, on Facebook …’

  Then she checked her watch. ‘Anyway, why am I telling you this? I’ll be late opening up the surgery, and Hye will be furious.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ boomed a voice behind her, and Maeve jumped, turning round.

  ‘So this is where you’re sending all the sugar addicts, is it, young lady?’ said Hye. He really did look like a country-doctor caricature, Rosie thought again, in his tweeds and his pink shirt.

  ‘Hmm. Got any red hots?’

  Again, Rosie blessed her great-aunt for not throwing anything away, including her invoice records, as for the first time she used the stepladder – she hadn’t thought red hots would be in the least bit popular – to reach the higher shelves and put a bundle of the very strong cinnamon-tasting gobstoppers into a bag.

  ‘Terrify the children, these things,’ said Hye. ‘Stops them nicking ’em.’

  Rosie had an immediate picture of him as a small boy with a fat bottom in short trousers.

  ‘Hope you like them,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Hye. ‘I’m just glad you’re keeping away from the town dogs.’

  Rosie tried to flip over the paper bag so it twisted at either side, but she hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, or the big old-fashioned till, which she tended to jar with her elbow at awkward moments. She did both of these things now as Hye watched her in a patronising way. Then he turned to leave, popping a large red sweet into his mouth reflectively.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘that is not bad. Not bad at all.’

  Rosie smiled, genuinely pleased. Hye pulled open the door, his crusty demeanour diminishing somewhat.

  ‘I think Moray is very grateful for your help with our little … business up at Peak House,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  And the bell dinged, and he was gone. What did he mean, ‘business’? How was Stephen a business? Why was he such an important patient?

  But suddenly she found she barely had a moment to think about it, as the doorbell rang again. When the children melted away (one of them nicking one of her balloons – she wondered if this was the town troublemaker), the workers started passing by, some hovering outside to look at the window display. She had put out some of the most tempting and beautiful chocolates on the shadier side, and an arrangement of sugar mice and pigs playing on the other. Some people wandered in, and she greeted them all with a friendly smile. People requested the oddest things: rhub
arb and custards, and pineapple chunks, barley sugar and eucalyptus; sweets that sometimes Rosie had never heard of but often, thanks to Lilian’s little book, she found she did have on her shelves, fresh and shining in the glass jars.

  She weighed and twisted until she got the hang of it, and gave change for small bags and big bags. One huge box of heart-shaped chocolates was borne away by a newly married young man to his bride, seeing as, he admitted somewhat shamefacedly to Rosie, they had had to spend their honeymoon on the harvest even though she’d wanted to go to Malaga. This charming gesture (she couldn’t remember anyone ever bringing her a box of chocolates, though Gerard brought home pizza from time to time, when he was feeling really romantic) immediately made her knock five pounds off the price.

  To be honest, she hadn’t really expected to sell much. But here they were, inundated. Novelty factor. It must be the novelty factor. Everyone would pop in for a couple of days, then it would go back to normal. Which meant, Rosie thought, measuring out a small bag of Parma violets, which immediately filled the shop with their sharp, slightly astringent odour and made two small children ask for the same thing, that she should probably get it on the market as soon as possible. That would be the right thing to do.

  Rosie bent down and offered a small purple sweet to each of the children. They looked up at her, wide-eyed, then glanced at the woman standing by the door, who nodded indulgently.

  ‘I like your shop,’ said the little boy.

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Wass your name?’

  ‘I’m Rosie,’ said Rosie, smiling.

  ‘Heyo Miss Rosie. Mah name is Kent.’

  ‘Hello, Kent,’ said Rosie. ‘And what about you?’

  But the little girl, obviously Kent’s sister, was struck dumb with awe and stared at Rosie with her eyes and mouth wide open.

  ‘She’s very shy,’ said the woman in the doorway. She was slender, young and, incongruously in Lipton apart from Lilian, beautifully dressed, in yummy mummy style, in a soft pink cashmere pullover and expensive-looking draped trousers. ‘But I think she likes your shop. This is Emily.’