Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  Piñatas on the other hand are heathen monstrosities and have no place in a civilised society.

  ‘I’m not going, so stop it.’

  It was 4pm on Saturday 27 October. The shop had been overrun all day, with Hallowe’en lollipops, white chocolate skeletons with raspberry icing, gum balls that looked like eyeballs, gobstoppers with teeth and large bags of economy sweets in every conceivable flavour and hue for people expecting huge parties. Tina had suggested making up special Hallowe’en bags with a few sweets in, to be handed out easily without mess, and these had proved highly popular. Edison had sat in the corner putting the sweets into bags.

  ‘Hester doesn’t believe in Hallowe’en,’ he said sadly. ‘She said it’s commercialised tooth-rot and encourages loutishness. She says if I like I can come to her druidic festival next week. But it always rains and I don’t like all the men with beards who hit trees.’

  Rosie and Tina swapped worried glances. ‘Would you like to come out with us?’ asked Tina hurriedly. ‘Kent would love to go with you.’

  Kent and Edison had become friends, which Tina mostly approved of, although she worried about Edison filling Kent’s head with nonsense. Rosie had pointed out that Kent was robust enough to figure out the world for himself, and ever since they’d started playing together Edison had hardly mentioned Reuben, his imaginary friend, and Tina had been mollified. It was a little hard on Emily though.

  ‘Yes you are,’ came the crotchety voice over the loudspeaker. ‘Tina, you tell her.’

  ‘I would love to go,’ said Tina. ‘Jake and I supposedly have a date and I can’t seem to get further than the bloody Red Lion!’

  Rosie stuck her lip out.

  ‘It is going to be full of bloody nobbers, all of whom will look down their noses at me – you wouldn’t believe what the woman in the pub was like – and go “Hwa hwa hwa” when they laugh and dance with swords and talk about horses. Of course I’m not going. I’m staying in to watch The X Factor and it will be lovely.’

  ‘Did you ever go to those balls, Miss Hopkins?’ asked Tina.

  Lilian was silent for a while. Then, ‘Not at first. Of course, she was the girl of the big house, I was just the sweetshop lady. But then the world changed, and lots of new people moved into town, and it suddenly didn’t seem to matter quite so much exactly who your parents were, and then we somehow … we became friends. We’d had a lot of people in common growing up. But it was too late for me by then!’

  ‘Too late for what?’ said Rosie. ‘If you say “to find a husband” I’m going to put you in a dogs’ home.’

  ‘To really enjoy the dancing of course. And the beautiful gowns, and the champagne that flows all night, and the wonderful food, and the romance of it all, the men so handsome.’

  ‘Argh!’ said Tina. ‘Honestly, I am going to go and say I’m you. They won’t care.’

  ‘You should,’ said Lilian.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Tina. ‘Someone would hand me a tray of empty glasses before I’d been there five minutes, I know it.’

  The bell tinged, and Lady Lipton breezed in, imperious as ever.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘It’s the little scarecrow. How are you?’ She eyed Rosie. ‘Still not got any clothes sent up for the winter?’ She was looking at Rosie’s floral frock. It was freezing outside now, incredible given that it wasn’t even November. The ground was frosted over every morning; Lilian’s garden looked like a twinkling fairyland.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘But what are you wearing tonight?’

  Rosie looked at the ground.

  ‘Not that, I hope. You know, it is formal.’

  ‘Uhm,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, come on, spit it out. Also, you.’ She meant Tina. ‘I need all the eyeball gobstoppers you have. I think it will be hilarious for my guests.’

  Tina jumped to it. Rosie couldn’t bear the rudeness.

  ‘I’m not coming,’ she said quietly, but she knew she could be heard.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lady Lipton looked like she couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘I’m not coming. Tonight.’

  ‘Whyever not?’

  Rosie was on the brink of making up a good excuse – she would keep her manners even when Hetty didn’t – when the voice squawked again from the baby monitor.

  ‘Because she’s a bloody idiot!’

  Hetty looked all around her in surprise and consternation; it did sound like Lilian was booming out of nowhere.

  ‘Lilian? Where are you?’

  ‘She’s on the monitor,’ said Tina shyly.

  ‘Why isn’t she coming?’ continued Hetty.

  ‘Ask her yourself,’ said Lilian.

  Because I fancy your son and he thinks I’m a servant and you think I’m a golddigger, thought Rosie bleakly.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Hetty, red in the face.

  ‘Because I have nothing to wear and I won’t know anyone there,’ mumbled Rosie.

  ‘What’s that? What nonsense,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘Invite some friends, we always get some people passing out from drink before dinner. What about you?’

  Rosie would have pointed out that Hetty and Tina had lived in the same village for thirty-five years, had not Tina immediately looked delighted and barely stopped short of clapping her hands.

  ‘Ooh, yes please!’

  ‘And you can bring that dirty Isitt labourer if you must,’ sniffed Hetty. ‘A bit of what I believe you call “eye candy”. Not quite so broken-veined as the rest. And I’ve invited that poofy doctor. Isn’t that enough chums?’

  Rosie felt her face flame.

  ‘And I’ll lend you a dress!’ Hetty boomed.

  Rosie couldn’t bear to think what that might be like. Did they make waxed dresses?

  ‘I have a full-length kilt I’m sure will look splendid on you. Of course Bran used it as a blanket, but it’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘I’m sure I can find something for her,’ pleaded Tina.

  ‘Jolly good!’ said Hetty, handing over a twenty for the huge bag of sweets. ‘See you at eight, trippety trip.’

  And the bell clanged and she was gone.

  ‘Eek!’ said Tina, turning to Rosie to give her a hug. ‘Now it’ll be great! What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rosie.

  ‘What?’ said Tina. ‘Don’t hide it from me. Ooh!,’ Her excitement got the better of her. ‘I wish Todd could see me now. He would be livid. Do you know how many times I’ve been to something like this? Never!’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, we can make idiots of ourselves together … What’s up?’

  ‘It’s stupid,’ said Rosie.

  ‘What?’

  Rosie was torn. On the one hand, she couldn’t bear to reveal what an idiot she’d been. On the other, if she didn’t tell someone she thought she was going to burst.

  ‘It’s Stephen,’ she said. ‘I fancy him.’

  Tina stared at her for a few seconds, then burst into peals of laughter.

  ‘What? Why’s that funny?’ Rosie was stung.

  ‘Oh no, it’s not, it’s not, it’s just … Oh,’ said Tina, ‘back when we were at school … he didn’t go to our school of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rosie.

  ‘He was sent away. But when he came back in the holidays … oh wow. Everyone fancied him.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘He was always slouching round the village with a book of poetry, in a furious mood because he’d just had another big fight with his dad.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Did anyone ever pull him?’

  ‘Oh God, no. What, him mess with the likes of us?’ Tina grinned. ‘It wasn’t for want of trying though. Claudia Mickle once cycled into a wall, craning her neck to take a look at him. She needed four stitches.’

  ‘OK, OK, I get the message,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Then he went all weird of course …’ Tina suddenly looked stricken. ‘I mean, I’m really sorry … There’s no
reason he wouldn’t fancy you back, none at all!’

  ‘There are a million reasons he wouldn’t fancy me back,’ said Rosie, starting to clear up. ‘All of them tall and blonde and rich and posh and bearing iPhones.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Tina, ‘I know you’re the boss and everything, but not for long. So. I order you to come with me. Just because you fancy someone is absolutely no reason not to let me go to the party of the year. It wouldn’t be fair. I’m going to text Jake and Moray right now and order them to come and pick us up, and we will go, and get squiffed again and ignore all the stupid posh folk and have a brilliant time, the four of us. It’ll be great. And that big stupid pouty Stephen won’t know what he’s missing.’

  ‘I can’t say no to that, can I?’ said Rosie. ‘I’d be ruining everyone’s night out.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Tina. ‘Free champagne.’

  ‘Can I be your footman?’ asked Edison, hopefully.

  They’d forgotten he was there.

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘But you can come to our next X Factor sleepover.’

  ‘Don’t tell my mum it’s television.’

  ‘I’ll tell her it’s chromosomes,’ promised Rosie, as Hester came up the path, as usual looking as though she was carrying the world’s problems on her shoulders. ‘OK, scurry off, footman.’

  ‘You will look very beautiful at the ball,’ said Edison seriously as he grabbed his coat and cap and left. ‘Both of you.’

  Tina and Rosie looked after him.

  ‘You know, it’s not an expression I use very often, and I mean it in its original sense,’ said Rosie. ‘But that is a very queer little boy.’

  ‘Neh,’ said Tina, already making arrangements on her phone. ‘He’s right.’

  There was a happy snuffle from the baby monitor.

  ‘Lilian!’ said Rosie warningly.

  ‘I am pleased you are going to the dance, that’s all,’ said Lilian.

  1944

  The news seemed to be getting slightly better; even Terence, on his leave, had seemed more cheerful. The tide was turning, everybody said. The Germans were in retreat. The war was going to finish.

  Lilian couldn’t believe the war would ever be over. She had been a child when it started. Now, she felt about a hundred years old. People lost, people moved – she had taken a bus, a four-hour journey, to see Margaret’s baby, and they had discovered, once she had oohed and aahed at his little fingers and toes and round chunky cheeks, that they had very little in common any more.

  Margaret kept asking her if she was stepping out with someone, and Lilian didn’t know how to answer; the very thought of it seemed unbearable. Not that men didn’t ask; didn’t come in looking for sweets on the top shelf to make her climb up, or casually ask if she wanted to go to a dance. But, having refused that first dance, Lilian didn’t know if she ever wanted to go to another. They seemed to cause nothing but trouble. Margaret urged her to find a beau – there’s no men left, you know, ducks, she said. There’s going to be a right scramble once this is all over – and pushed her in the direction of the American GIs, who seemed so tall and exotic and handsome. ‘Go wi’ one of them,’ she said. ‘You’ll get a whole new life.’ Gerda Skitcherd was talking about going to America; it sounded thrillingly exotic.

  But Lilian didn’t want a whole new life. She wanted her brothers back round the table, and her da happy, and Henry back. The fact that these were impossible wishes didn’t seem to have any bearing on the way she felt about it at all. And she knew Margaret was giving her good advice; good within the ways of her world. Her George was a decent enough chap too, she knew. But it was as if she were frozen; she could feel all this good advice, but she couldn’t seem to move, to take it.

  Gordon came home one honeysuckled spring evening. Henry had now been away for one year and four months, or 432 days. Rosie assumed Ida was getting word of him; she never heard and was far too proud to ask. She hoped he wasn’t scared out there. She hoped he wasn’t seeing terrible things. She wondered if he thought of her as much as she thought of him, while knowing, deep down, that that couldn’t possibly be the case. But she had changed now. She knew he wasn’t coming back to her, he couldn’t. Dorothy was toddling about now, while remaining quite the most thrawn child anyone in Lipton could remember. Her mouth was a permanent kidney bean of dissatisfaction. Ida was developing frown lines between her eyes. Lilian had seen Henry, once, on leave. The family was walking down the high street. Ida was obviously displeased at something; she was shouting at Henry, who had lost weight and gained muscle, and looked tall and rangy and somehow older in his army suit. He wasn’t saying anything. Lilian had hidden behind her bedroom curtains until he’d gone away.

  But now, she told herself, all she cared about was that he was safe. That he wasn’t bleeding in a field somewhere; or with half a leg missing like Dartford Brown’s youngest, hopping about the streets, trying to make jokes about how it could have been worse, but with an ocean of pain behind him. Still, all she cared about, Lilian told herself, was that Henry came home safe. When the war finished. If it ever did.

  ‘Look what I have for you,’ said Gordon, ebullient as ever, dragging his huge heavy kitbag over the flagstones of the kitchen floor. Their da looked up from his ledger.

  ‘What’s this then, son?’

  Gordon flashed his cheeky grin. He’d been promoted, twice, and was now a lance-corporal, but to Lilian he was still a fat-bottomed boy in short trousers, getting away with murder.

  Gordon drew two bottles out of his kitbag, and their da wolf-whistled. ‘Is that …’

  ‘Certainly is,’ said Gordon. ‘It’s pure champagne. From the vineyards of Sham-pag-nee itself.’

  ‘I’ve never even seen it,’ said Da, shaking his head. He picked the bottles up very carefully. ‘You carted these back all the way?’

  ‘Slept on them like a pillow,’ said Gordon. ‘Case anyone nicked ’em. I’ve been doing a bit of, well, nod nod wink wink on the side for the men, like. Making sure they get some decent grub. And these came my way. Thought I might need ’em for a bribe coming home, but I forgot what a straight old place England still is. So here they are!’

  Da sent Lilian down to the dairy for an ice block. Then he insisted they laid a bottle in it for an hour to get cool. Mostly, they sat around and watched it.

  ‘Put the other one away in the larder,’ said Da. ‘We’ll keep it for a special occasion.’

  Lilian tucked it right at the back of the top shelf.

  For when Henry comes home, she said to herself.

  They decided, wisely, to steer clear of the vodka experiments this time. To let Lilian join in, Tina brought half the contents of her wardrobe over, and they tried on everything.

  ‘When did you ever need a cocktail dress?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, you never know,’ said Tina. Rosie raised her eyebrows.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Tina. ‘So when Todd was going through his worst phase I maybe became a bit … shop-a-holicky. Apparently it was my way of getting him back for his illness. So his counsellor told me.’

  ‘Revenge cocktail dresses,’ marvelled Rosie, pulling them out. They really were beautiful. But however many they tried on Rosie – Tina was insisting on a little black sleeveless number – none of them was quite right. Most of them fitted OK as Rosie’s bust and small waist worked very well in a frock, but none was really her.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Rosie, coming and going for the sixth time. ‘The black one with the little bit of lace at the top – that’s probably the best we’re going to get.’

  ‘If you’d spoken to Lady Lipton before, we could have gone shopping,’ said Tina reproachfully. ‘In Derby they’ve got an Arndale.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to do any more shopping,’ said Rosie, looking at all the shoes.

  ‘No,’ said Tina. ‘I just need to go to more parties. Hurrah!’

  Lilian sighed. ‘The black is no good. It works on little Tina, but—’
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  ‘She’s not six any more!’ said Rosie.

  ‘She is to me,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Thanks, Miss Hopkins,’ said Tina.

  ‘But it’s no good for you. You need something to make you stand out. Make him notice you.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Tina.

  Rosie felt herself grow uncomfortably hot. She’d forgotten Lilian would have overheard the entire conversation she and Tina had had about Stephen.

  ‘Well, he won’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Lilian. ‘Stranger things have happened. Sometimes the handsomest man in the village does notice the girl with the dark hair.’

  ‘Not if it’s me,’ said Rosie.

  ‘I think Jake’s the handsomest man in the village,’ said Tina.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘Closely followed by Moray.’

  ‘Yup.’

  But they’re not the ones I like, Rosie found herself thinking. They’re not the ones I want.

  ‘If Hetty thinks her son is too good for my great-niece, she’s got another think coming,’ said Lilian. ‘Go into my bedroom. The large armoire.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘What do they teach you at school these days? The wardrobe. Tch!’

  Rosie did as she was bid. It was a huge old thing. Inside it smelled of camphor and beeswax. The clothes were packed so closely together it was hard to see what was in there.

  ‘Count six from the far right side,’ said Lilian. ‘No. Seven.’

  Everything was in dry-cleaning bags, immaculately ironed and hung. Rosie gasped as she started to leaf through them. There were beaded gowns in jewel shades; bright hot fuchsias; a jacket with a proper fox trim. Tina came charging in and her eyes widened.

  ‘Oh my God, look at this stuff.’ She popped her head back into the sitting room. ‘No wonder you always look so immaculate. This is a treasure trove in here.’

  Lilian shrugged and tried not to look pleased.

  ‘Well, everyone needs a hobby,’ she said.

  Tina pulled out things here and there, unheeding of Lilian’s commands not to. But it was the dress seventh from the end that drew the eye. Lilian had been absolutely right.