Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘So am I,’ she said, squeezing his hand.

  The main street was empty; everyone was up past the churchyard, in Farmer Stirling’s large pasture, now churned up by van wheels. Over in the next field, teenagers in neon vests pointed out parking, and tinny music played through a sound system so bad it was completely unidentifiable. Edison’s grip grew a little tighter. Over the PA a man was talking so rapidly and in such a thick Derbyshire accent Rosie had trouble following it: something about a pony parade and a cucumber competition. The place was thronged with people, all of them, Rosie noticed, wearing a waxed jacket and wellingtons. She hadn’t realised that it was the kind of thing that needed wellingtons, she thought, glancing down glumly. She was wearing wedges. They were pretty, comfortable and good for the shop. Now, she was in severe danger of lurching into a bog. She never got it right.

  There were wooden walkways, thankfully, round the perimeter of the field, and Rosie stuck to those, as carefully as she could, looking for the tombola stand. Plenty of people nodded at her as she passed and she smiled back politely and tried to say hello to everyone, while clopping along like a particularly ridiculous mare. She peered into tents – there was one full of different types of jam, and some very serious-looking people sniffing and tasting them; one with huge, ridiculous vegetables that looked like they were on steroids; a baking tent, where she would have liked to spend a little bit more time, till she overheard the PA bellow that the tombola draw was about to take place in Tent A. Tent A was, of course, all the way back round the field again, but Rosie decided not to risk cutting through the parade of lambs in her silly shoes, and walked the entire circumference, feeling flustered in the process. When she passed Mrs Isitt, the woman simply looked at her feet and made a loud harrumphing noise, as if you couldn’t expect anything else from a townie like her. Fortunately, just after her came Mr Isitt, walking so much better he was like a different person. As Mrs Isitt stalked into the jam section (Rosie pitied anyone who dared to enter against her), Peter drew her to one side. ‘My tomatoes,’ he said. ‘Best ever.’

  Rosie grinned, finding it miraculous that something she had planted – well, mostly Jake, but she had been involved too – had actually grown.

  ‘That’s brilliant!’ she said.

  ‘It’s because of unseasnly high temechurs,’ came a voice from her side. ‘Mr Isitt, do you know about the terrible threat of globa warmin?’

  ‘We must dash,’ said Rosie, smiling. ‘But you are looking so much better.’

  ‘Reckon,’ said Peter.

  ‘Mr Isitt!’ came a voice from inside the tent. ‘Mr Isitt, get in here!’

  ‘Back to normal,’ said Peter Isitt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie, looking after him as he followed the summons inside the marquee.

  Finally, they made it to the right tent, and she crashed in, holding up the enormous box of chocolates, just as the tub was beginning to spin.

  ‘Here it is!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t start without us!’

  The entire room turned to look at her. Of course, standing up on the stage, wearing her magnificently large coat and with a rather haughty expression on her face – slightly more haughty, Rosie found herself thinking, than you might expect in someone drawing a ticket out of a spinning box in a draughty tent in a hill village – was Hetty. Lady Lipton herself.

  Rosie immediately glanced around for Stephen. Hetty saw her do it, and smirked. Chrissie, Anton’s wife, immediately approached her and took the large red-velvet box off her with sincere thanks, as Hetty drew the first ticket out of the box and announced to a red-faced farmer that he had won – he looked absolutely delighted – a free fifteen-minute dental check-up at Roy Blaine’s. The farmer’s face went from delight to sadness all at once.

  Rosie hauled out the raffle tickets Lilian had made her buy earlier and handed them to Edison to watch for her, but as the prizes came and went – a large ginger cake; an hour of free gardening; a fishing rod – she realised she wasn’t about to get lucky, even as Lady Lipton conferred effusive congratulations on the winner. Finally it came to the large box of chocolates, and a roar of applause went up as the winner was found to be Anton.

  ‘Now,’ said Lady Lipton, ‘I’m afraid Anton can’t have his prize, as his wife is on the committee.’

  ‘Everyone’s wife is on the committee,’ said Anton in shock, his lower lip wobbling.

  ‘And,’ said Lady Lipton, ‘we’d like you here next year to play again. Do I have your permission to donate these to the local children’s home?’

  ‘No,’ said Anton.

  ‘Yes!’ said his wife, and jumped up on stage before he could stir himself. She shook Hetty firmly by the hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, in what was meant to be a quiet aside, but was picked up on the ear-shattering PA.

  ‘And finally,’ said Hetty, ‘our top prize.’

  There was a murmur throughout the room, with many people checking and rechecking their tickets. The tombola twirled round, but Rosie barely paid attention; she was busy thanking Anton, who looked pink, but not pleased, at being complimented on all sides for his generosity. So at first when Hetty called out the number Rosie missed it completely, and Hetty was required to repeat herself.

  ‘Yellow 197! Yellow 197!’

  Gradually Rosie became aware of a tugging at her sleeve.

  ‘What is it now, Edison?’ she asked, suddenly aware that she would probably have to take him to the toilet at some point, and wishing his mother hadn’t dumped him on her in such an insouciant fashion. Sure enough, the boy was hopping up and down.

  ‘Do you need to go to the loo?’

  Edison shook his head. ‘No. Oh, yes I do now. But, look! Look!’

  He waved the ticket in the air. It was yellow, number 197.

  ‘There it is!’ shouted one of the farmers behind her. ‘She’s got it!’

  There was a general outburst of clapping, and much chat. Rosie glanced around, looking confused.

  ‘Up you go,’ said Chrissie. ‘Go and collect it. I’ll keep the boy.’

  ‘Go and collect what?’ said Rosie, but before she could think, Hetty was beckoning her up on stage. The man from the local paper crouched down in front of her to take a photo, and the room applauded as Rosie, feeling extremely confused, was handed a very small, very pink, very curious-looking piglet.

  ‘What … what’s this?’ she said. The camera flashed, capturing, Rosie suspected, the most gormless look in the history of Lipton, which would be saying something.

  ‘It’s your pig,’ said Hetty. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘First prize in the raffle.’

  ‘A pig.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not a car?’

  As Rosie held the pig, it started to pee on the straw and mud floor of the marquee. It didn’t stop for quite a while. There was much guffawing, particularly when the pee began to flood her already muddy River Island wedges.

  Rosie decided just to stand still and pretend it wasn’t happening. Hetty was laughing her head off.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with a pig?’ she hissed.

  ‘Bacon sandwich?’ said Hetty, clasping her hands round Rosie’s shoulders so the photographers could get another shot. After that the crowd drifted away, leaving Hetty, Rosie, Edison and the pig.

  Edison was absolutely fascinated with the creature. He would approach within a few centimetres of her – it was a her; she had two long lines of little teats running down her stomach – and they would go nose to nose and regard each other seriously, then he would back off again.

  ‘What am I meant to do with this?’ said Rosie. ‘Would the children’s home like it?’

  ‘That’s a very valuable animal,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘I’d hold on to it if I were you.’

  Rosie looked at it mulishly. The pig looked back and made a small grunting noise. It was, she supposed, rather cute.

  Lady Lipton let out a sigh.

  ‘So. It appear
s that my son. And the, ahem, the entire town. Thinks I owe you an apology.’

  Rosie looked at her. ‘But you don’t.’

  Lady Lipton shrugged. ‘I was … I was upset. It appears that … yes. Without you … well. He is up. And about. And outside. So. Thank you. Thank you for what you did for Stephen.’

  ‘And Bran,’ reminded Rosie, with a slight twitch of the lips. It was such an unusual sight to see Hetty cowed, she was attempting to prolong the experience.

  There was a pause.

  ‘So how’s—’

  ‘Bran’s fine, thanks,’ said Hetty.

  Rosie smiled to herself. She had walked into that.

  ‘My son? Well, I wondered when you were going to ask.’

  ‘I was going to ask before someone handed me an incontinent pig,’ said Rosie. ‘Then I got distracted.’

  The pig obligingly started peeing again. Rosie was past caring by this point.

  ‘He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. He’s going to be all right,’ said Hetty, wonderingly, as if she couldn’t quite believe it.

  Rosie bit her lip.

  ‘But why weren’t … why weren’t you … Sorry, but I have to ask.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I looking after my only son?’ said Hetty. There was no one else in the tent now except the two of them and Edison. Hetty turned away.

  The tombola stood there quietly, and Hetty flicked it, quickly, with her fingers.

  ‘You don’t have children, do you?’ she said.

  ‘Edison, could you go and play outside for a moment?’

  Edison shook his head instantly. ‘I’m not lowed outside. Stranger danger!’

  Rosie rolled her eyes. ‘All right, sunshine. Go play over in the very furthest corner of the marquee.’

  Edison bit his lip.

  ‘Then I’ll buy you a gluten-free ice cream.’

  Edison scampered away.

  ‘I do, kind of, appear to have children,’ said Rosie ruefully, looking after him.

  ‘Until you do,’ Hetty said, smiling tightly and sitting down. Rosie sat down too; her feet were killing her. Not knowing what to do with the piglet, she put her on the floor, where she instantly squealed until Rosie picked her up again.

  ‘I definitely do already,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Until you do,’ went on Hetty imperiously, ‘you can’t know. You can’t know how much you love them.’

  Rosie thought of her mum, madly in love with Pip’s brats, even when they treated her like a serf.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said.

  ‘And when you’re a family … you just try as hard as you can to hold it all together. And when you’re part of a certain type of family …’

  ‘You mean posh?’ said Rosie, wondering if Hetty was about to explain away her own behaviour as the result of having too much money and too big a house.

  ‘No … I mean, having a responsibility for something. Like you have a responsibility towards the shop. In our case, Lipton Hall. Try to preserve our heritage and not throw everything away. We got plenty of offers to turn it into some tacky hotel or horrible old people’s home, you know.’

  ‘People need hotels and old people’s homes,’ said Rosie.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Hetty. ‘Rosie, don’t you understand what I’m saying? I don’t even know why I have to justify myself to you. I lost my husband. And my son. Even though I bounced between them for years trying to make it right. Even though I tried everything. You have no right to march in here with your big city ways and think you know about us. No right at all.’

  Rosie felt ashamed suddenly, as Hetty’s face manifested how deep was her grief.

  ‘I’m sorry you lost your husband,’ she said. ‘So sorry. But that night … I still can’t get my head round how quickly you came running when it was your dog and how late you were when it was your son.’

  Hetty turned on her, suddenly furious once more.

  ‘Bran loves me back,’ she said, imperious. Rosie cast her eyes to the ground. ‘And don’t you ever think I stopped trying,’ Hetty added. ‘Not for a second.’

  She turned and stormed out of the tent in her wellingtons. Rain had now come on properly, and the drops trickled down her large waxed hat. Rosie watched her leave, feeling awful. She glanced down. Edison was back at her side.

  ‘That looked awkward,’ he observed.

  ‘How old are you?’ she grumbled.

  Rosie went out in search of lunch – she felt like she’d been up for hours – and someone to give the pig to. The fête was in full swing; dogs were showing off their prowess at jumping obstacles round what looked like a miniature race course; people walked about proudly wearing large rosettes that they’d won for different competitions, marmalade and pickles being one she saw prominently displayed. The photographer from the local paper was taking a picture of Roy Blaine handing over a winner’s cheque to someone with an entire flock of lambs in front of him. Roy was displaying all his gnashers for the benefit of the camera. It was lucky the sun had gone in, thought Rosie savagely. He’d blind half the crowd. It occurred to her that she hadn’t had enough sleep.

  She found him – and realised instantly it wasn’t really lunch she’d been looking for – in the corner of the flower tent, of all places. It was practically deserted, and a shocking display of incredibly vulgar dahlias had taken first place. But on the floor was possibly the most even surface in the entire place, green Astroturf. Stephen was crossly, and painfully, inching his way up and down it with a large stick.

  ‘Nice stick,’ she said. Stephen’s back stiffened, then he turned. Rosie realised she’d never seen him standing up properly before. He was taller than she had thought.

  ‘Nice pig,’ he said. Then he sniffed. ‘Can I smell …?’

  ‘It’s the pig,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘There’s flowers everywhere. That should mask it.’

  As if in response to this, the piglet leaned over and started eating one of the more gaudy arrangements.

  ‘So, how are you?’ Rosie asked, carefully. ‘Were they happy to discharge you?’

  ‘I’m not in the business of making nurses happy,’ said Stephen, a fact with which Rosie could not disagree. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m pretending I’m Charlie Chaplin. Plus, they gave me good drugs.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Rosie. Even so, she saw him wince and look around for a chair. ‘I saw Hetty,’ she added.

  Stephen winced again. ‘Oh yes? Did she tell you all about her hideous ungrateful son who killed his own father? I kind of liked it better when you didn’t know who I was.’

  He sat down. ‘Do you have any sweets?’

  Rosie nodded and felt in her pocket. The piglet immediately started snuffling at her hand.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Naughty girl.’

  ‘Is that really your pig or did you put a magic spell on my mother? And it’s true,’ he said, ‘I did like it when you didn’t know. You can’t imagine what it’s like around here, everybody knowing everyone else’s business. And now the news is out, ooh, Stephen’s OK again. The jags will be out in force.’

  ‘What are jags?’

  Stephen looked at her wryly. ‘You don’t know? Uhm, they’re like wags. But for chaps they think have big houses.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Stephen, grimacing. ‘Neither side tends to come out of it well.’

  Rosie shot a look at Edison, who was touching a cactus.

  ‘I can imagine,’ she said.

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier to have secrets,’ Stephen mused. ‘I mean, you might have disliked me because I was an oaf, but you didn’t dislike me because I killed my dad.’

  ‘It was definitely the oaf thing,’ said Rosie. ‘But, Stephen, you didn’t kill your dad.’

  ‘She thinks I did. So I imagine half the town thinks I did. And look at me now, still not facing up to my responsibilities.’ He bit his lip.
‘He meant to disinherit me anyway.’

  Rosie absent-mindedly ate a marshmallow. It helped her to think.

  ‘Did you love him?’ she asked, finally, swallowing. She gave piglet one too.

  ‘Of course I did!’ said Stephen. ‘I loved him however he was. Unfortunately he didn’t extend the same courtesy to his son. You can’t make people be how you want them to be!’

  They both looked at Edison, who had pricked his finger on the cactus but was trying to cover it up and not cry in case he got a telling-off.

  ‘And she backed him all the way.’ Stephen rubbed the back of his head, then smiled, cynically. ‘Just because they were right doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed off about it.’

  ‘How were they right?’

  ‘Because if I’d been clearing land mines it could have saved my leg and … and …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Did you like it in Africa?’ Rosie asked him gently.

  ‘Some of it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I stayed eight years. I loved the people – no jags! – and building the school, and the children … The children were so amazing. They didn’t care that they didn’t have big houses or computer games or fucking liberal arts degrees … All they wanted to do was learn, and play, and be kids.

  ‘I didn’t want to stay there for ever,’ he said. ‘But yes, I was happy. I didn’t want to think about bloody Lipton and bloody Lipton Hall and all the dreary day-to-day penny-pinching stuff of it. Paintings and rugs and roofs and taxes and all of that. Out there we hardly had anything, but it was real life, you know?’

  In a funny way, even though their experiences couldn’t have been more different, Rosie did know. To leave behind everything you had in the world: your home, your friends, your job. It was something she knew a bit about too.

  ‘I would have come back one day,’ said Stephen. ‘You must think I’m such a child.’

  ‘Families are families,’ said Rosie. ‘Always complicated, no matter how old you are.’

  ‘But to get stretchered back here in disgrace, without Fe … Dad. Without Dad.’ Stephen stared at the floor. ‘I think anyone would have found it difficult.’