Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  There was a faint, not unpleasant hint of perfume as Rosie pulled the cool green silk over her head. It shimmered; almost iridescent. It wasn’t a forest green, or a racing green; more of a dark emerald, but the material itself was so light it seemed to dance before the eyes. Rosie was convinced it would be too small, but there was ruching along the back, cleverly concealed at the waist.

  ‘It’s to allow room for dancing,’ grumbled Lilian when she saw her. ‘Of course you stretch it out.’

  ‘You were bigger then though,’ argued Rosie.

  ‘I was,’ said Lilian. ‘You’d think you’d be happy that being terribly old helps you lose weight. I assure you, you won’t be.’

  Finally, however, Rosie wriggled and shrugged and felt the material flow over her hips with a soft swooshing sound. She could tell by the way Lilian and Tina had gone silent that they approved.

  ‘What?’ she said. Lilian, suddenly, quickly, found herself wanting to look away. Rosie was a softer-looking girl than she had been; not so angular; her nose not so long, her shoulders not so pointy. But something in the long, dark curling hair and the wide pink mouth caught and tugged hard on Lilian’s memory; the memory of a hopeful young woman in front of a full-length mirror, waiting, and waiting, until there was no point in waiting any more, and then continuing to wait, in pretty dresses, even when she knew that what she was waiting for would never come …

  ‘You look amazing,’ said Tina. ‘That colour is gorgeous on you!’

  Rosie dashed off to the full-length mirror over the bath. She couldn’t help smiling at what she saw there. Odd, really – and, frankly, annoying when you thought about it – but a few months of staying off the late nights, and getting a bit of fresh air, and not eating takeaways, or nicking all the chocolates patients brought into the wards; of not working nights, or wrestling catheters at 4am, or blearily making her way home through the dawn and trying to sleep through car alarms and buses and parties and deliveries and noises in a busy London street; it had changed her. She could see it. Her skin looked soft and creamy, with a pink blush in her cheeks that she identified, correctly, as excitement. Her grey eyes were clear, and the green in the beautiful silk dress made them shine. Shed of her practical clothing and slouching demeanour, she felt …

  Well. Beautiful would be silly, she told herself. But really, this was as good as it was going to get.

  She went back into the sitting room, grinning.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Tina. ‘Look at you, cat who’s got the cream. OK, so you look lovely.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rosie. ‘I will go back to being my normal grumpy self immediately.’

  She caught sight of her great-aunt’s stricken face.

  ‘Lilian,’ she said, darting forward. ‘Lilian! Are you all right? Are you feeling all right? Show me your left hand.’ She turned back to Tina. ‘I’ll have to stay behind, I can’t go.’

  ‘Stop being daft,’ said Lilian. ‘I was just thinking how nice you look. Now, go into the larder and look behind the mustard box on the highest shelf. Carefully.’

  They put the ancient, dusty, exquisite bottle of champagne into the freezer, on Tina’s advice.

  ‘Probably ruin it,’ she said with a nervous giggle.

  ‘It was probably ruined a long time ago,’ said Lilian. ‘It’ll be the most undrinkable muck, probably.’

  ‘Stop being such a pessimist,’ said Rosie. ‘I can’t believe you’ve had that there all this time. It could be worth a fortune. Can’t you sell it?’

  Lilian shrugged. ‘It won’t be worth that much. Anyway, sell it so you can pack me off to a home? Not bloody likely.’

  ‘Actually I was thinking we could use the money to hire a nurse for a bit, so there,’ said Rosie.

  ‘You’d never guess you two were related,’ said Tina.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what Miss Green Dress says,’ said Lilian, undaunted. ‘That is my bottle of champagne. Your granpa Gordon liberated it during the war and brought it all the way back to Derbyshire. He brought two actually. We drank the first one to celebrate Gordon being home – he said it would be like drinking stars. I thought he was talking rubbish myself. But by his second glass, my da was singing a stupid song about blackbirds I hadn’t heard since my ma died. We spent the whole afternoon just laughing, and talking about Neddy – that was my middle brother, he died in the war – and, well. It was the first time I’d been happy in a long time. And then we were going to keep the second one for Terence coming home, but then we weren’t all there together, and he was always so low-key anyway, hated any fuss, didn’t even invite us to his wedding, the bugger. So we never drank it. Then your granpa went off to London and that was the end of that branch of the family, till a few months ago.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rosie, listening intently.

  ‘And, well, me and my da kept waiting for some great occasion to drink it on, and it just never arrived. We were working when the war ended, everyone came in and spent all their coupons on as many sweets as they could manage, and we were rushed off our feet. And then after Da died, well. I never thought to have it after that, I never was much for the drink.’

  Tina and Rosie swapped glances. Rosie squeezed Lilian’s hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lilian.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rosie gently. Then, more awkwardly, ‘Would you mind squeezing back please? Just so I can check?’

  ‘Ah, away with you!’ said Lilian, giving her a hard squeeze that involved digging her beautifully manicured nails into Rosie’s hand. Rosie jumped up, laughing and went to get the glasses and fetch the bottle out of the freezer. But it wasn’t that funny, she thought. A life should have more opportunities to drink champagne than that.

  Tina carefully peeled back the ancient, brittle foil and untwisted the wire.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I can’t pop this. Honestly, if it all goes wrong, I’ll be a mess.’

  Rosie took it from her.

  ‘I will now try to look like I do this every day of the week,’ she said, smiling. ‘OK, everyone cover their eyes.’

  And she very carefully and very slowly twisted the old cork out of the bottle. It eased itself out with a gentle pop, no great crack at all, and the women held their breath in case it had gone flat. But it smelled good, a deep, viney scent, and when Rosie poured it into Lilian’s heavy crystal glasses, it made a satisfyingly fizzy noise. It was darker than champagne Rosie had drunk before, but when she took her first sip from the thick-edged glass, it still burst on to her tongue.

  ‘Not so fast!’ commanded Lilian, as if she drank champagne every night and this was a terrible breach of etiquette on Rosie’s part. ‘This is special, and we must have a toast.’

  Tina giggled nervously. ‘Oh yes! To … to … hmm. Babysitters! And big posh nights out! And …’

  ‘Your friend is very noisy,’ said Lilian.

  ‘You’re not allowed to be rude to Tina,’ said Rosie. ‘I won’t allow it. Say sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Tina.

  Lilian raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ll make the toast. To exciting nights out, where anything could happen. How when you’re young and in a pretty dress you should always say yes to a ball.’

  Rosie rolled her eyes.

  ‘This is pretty much what I said,’ whispered Tina.

  ‘To grabbing what you want, Rosemary. As quickly as you can. And to love …’

  ‘Hurrah,’ said Tina.

  ‘… and to family,’ concluded Lilian. And then they chinked the heavy glasses.

  Rosie smiled.

  ‘That was a lovely toast,’ she said. And Lilian had been right about something else: it was like drinking stars.

  Tina had not lied about the size of the affair. The entire driveway to the great house was lined with braziers, lighting the way up the side of the moor. Rosie couldn’t resist a shiver of excitement. The weather had turned, suddenly, vicious; colder and colder. There were mutterings that it might snow. And
then Moray and Jake had turned up, parping loudly in the Land Rover – Jake looking big and uncomfortable in his hired dinner suit, Moray a totally-at-home smoothie in his. ‘Of course it won’t matter,’ Moray was explaining to an awkward Jake. ‘All the real poshos turn up in their pinks.’

  ‘In pink?’ Rosie asked innocently. The other three all tutted.

  ‘No,’ said Tina. ‘They’re red. Red hunting jackets. They’re called pinks.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rosie. ‘How clever of posh people to come up with their hilarious codes.’

  Lilian had told them to hurry up and be off, they were going to be terribly late – but insisted they take the champagne with them. She said this was because it was wasted on her when they could share out the good stuff among them. She did not add that she could not bear to spend the evening sitting staring at the bottle and thinking of things that were long past.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t persuade you to join us, Miss H?’ said Moray with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I promise not to swing you too fiercely round the dance floor.’

  ‘All those ghastly old hoorays yelping and barking at each other till three o’clock in the morning? Oh, no thank you,’ said Lilian.

  ‘That was exactly what I said!’ said Rosie.

  ‘No, no, you young folk go and have fun.’

  And she ushered them out the door. If that great-niece of hers saw a tear in her eye, she’d cancel her entire evening, sure as eggs were eggs. And they could snuggle up and watch television together and it would be like having a daughter, or a really good friend, or both, and then Rosie would cook them something nice and it would be lovely.

  Lilian hardened herself. She would not be selfish. She would not, she would not. She would not stand in Rosie’s way.

  ‘Out!’ she barked at them. ‘Out of my house immediately!’ And she shut the door behind them, as the young folks exchanged glances at the grumpiness and irascibility of the old.

  Out in the deserted main street of the village, as they walked companionably up to the car – Moray gallantly put his coat around Rosie’s bare shoulders, whereupon Jake, walking behind with Tina, started fumbling and wondering if he should be doing the same – they passed the bottle between them, Moray whistling at the vintage. As they did so, the first flakes of snow began to fall.

  ‘It’s October,’ said Tina. ‘Where is this global warming?’

  ‘It’s nigh on November,’ said Jake, looking up in a worried farmer’s way. ‘This is going to play havoc with my cabbages.’

  But Rosie didn’t listen to either of them, just stared up into the freezing night sky, stars sharp and ice cold among the clouds; the flakes beginning to whirl now in the street lamps, and the champagne coursing through her veins. She smiled broadly. The sleepy village looked like something off a Christmas card, the cobblestones dotted here and there with tiny specks of white. She felt giddy and excited, and despite the disappointments of the day, and the knowledge that she didn’t have a chance with Stephen – well, who cared about that? Who cared about any of that? She was still young(ish); she did look, as both the men had pointed out, very pretty in her green dress. Even though it was silly, and old-fashioned, and pompous, and kind of ridiculous—

  ‘I’m going to the ball!’ she announced loudly.

  ‘So am I!’ hollered Tina, her happiness much less complicated than Rosie’s at that moment, as Jake’s fumbling hands attached his coat around her shoulders.

  Moray bowed low in front of the door of his Land Rover.

  ‘Your carriage, mesdames.’

  And laughing and yelling, they took off up the hill, along the driveway of flaming torches, to the great house that was Lipton Hall.

  Chapter Twenty

  Turkish Delight

  Turkish delight has had a bad reputation since that man C.S. Lewis – a positive genius in other ways – linked it for ever with one of the most terrifying creations in literature, the White Witch of Narnia, and that naughty, sticky, traitorous Edmund. But with the sensuous pleasure imbued in its melting, gelatinous texture, and, when made in the proper way, delicately perfumed with rose petals, flavoured with oils and dusted with sugar, it reclaims its power as a sweet as seductive as Arabian nights. The fact that it now carries with it a whiff of danger merely adds to its pleasure. It is not, truly, a sweet for children. They simply complain, and get the almonds stuck up their noses.

  ‘Who are these people?’ said Rosie, still nervous and exhilarated from the champagne and their snowy drive up the hill. ‘And are you sure the area’s only non-mad health professional should be stepping out of the driving seat of a car slugging from a bottle of champagne?’

  ‘Ask the local police superintendent,’ said Moray. ‘He’s over there.’

  The place was thronged. Up close, and floodlit from below, so it could be seen from miles off, Lipton Hall was truly imposing; built in the Queen Anne style, with red sandstone, gargoyles on the upper reaches. The rows of windows were brilliantly lit with chandeliers, and loud voices and rowdy laughter poured out from each of them. Rosie felt her ebullient mood shrink a little.

  ‘How does she pay for all this?’ she wondered aloud. ‘I thought they were broke.’

  ‘Oh, she is, completely,’ said Moray. ‘People pay a fortune to come.’

  ‘They pay?’ said Rosie. ‘Do we have to pay?’

  ‘We do not have to pay,’ said Moray. ‘We are Lady Lipton’s guests. But you’ll see big tables full of the rotary club and the masons and all sorts.’

  ‘But why do they want to pay?’ said Rosie, completely confused.

  ‘To rub shoulders with the toffs of course,’ said Moray, as if talking to a slow child.

  ‘They pay to do that?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Could you just get inside, before I take you home? And if you start singing “The Red Flag” you’ll be in serious trouble.’

  Inside was a seething mass of people, all hailing one another and looking slightly pink in the face. Many were at the windows, marvelling at the snow. Rosie paused at the huge door, up the long flight of steps, then hopped over the threshold. The main hall was enormous, panelled, with large animal heads attached to the walls. A huge grandfather clock, just like in Peak House, stood at the end. Teenagers in white shirts and black trousers were taking coats, or scuttling about with drinks.

  ‘I always wanted to do that job,’ whispered Tina.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Oh, it’s notorious,’ said Tina, as Jake sniggered. ‘They drink all the leftovers and get into terrible trouble later on. Getting off with guests, getting off with each other. My father wouldn’t hear of it.’

  Jake smiled again.

  ‘You did it though?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jake. Tina grinned.

  ‘Course ’e did.’

  ‘And was it as bad as what her dad thinks?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ said Jake. ‘With the exception of us four, those kids in the black and white are going to have the best time out of anyone at this party tonight. And they’re the only ones getting paid.’

  Moray smiled nicely at one girl, wearing a black skirt that was obviously her mother’s. She went red, then immediately brought them glasses of champagne.

  ‘Thanks for what you said when I came in last week,’ she whispered – loud enough for the others to hear – as she brought the drinks.

  ‘I have absolutely no recollection of seeing you professionally,’ said Moray. ‘No one ever believes me, but it’s true. Can you keep us all topped up, sweetie?’

  The girl smiled and nodded eagerly.

  Looking round, Rosie thought she could see what Jake meant about not everyone having a good time. They moved to the left, where, opening off the great hall, was a ballroom, not panelled but with a parquet floor, pastel-coloured walls and, at the far end, large sets of French windows leading out on to a balcony overlooking a sunken garden. Despite the cold outside, the heat in the room was immense,
and the doors were open. People stood just outside, smoking cigarettes.

  There were stony-faced women in bejewelled boxy jackets over black dresses, looking disapprovingly at their red-cheeked husbands if they accepted another drink, or guffawed too loudly at a story. There were old chaps half dozing on the little antique chairs that lined the wall, jauntily patterned waistcoats stretched to bursting. Hye Evans was telling a raucous anecdote to a group of men, all of whom were laughing heartily. Next to him was a very skinny woman looking anxious in a tight column dress and lots of gold jewellery, her eyes skittering about the room.

  But there were happier groups too: young farmers out for a night of frivolity; fervent horse freaks in their smart red coats huddled in groups discussing fetlocks and farriers and all sorts of technical terms Rosie couldn’t understand as her party threaded themselves through the crowd to have a look round. Tina wanted to see everywhere and everything – even the loos! She was to be disappointed in this, as there was a set of Portaloos – the most lavishly appointed Portaloos Rosie had ever seen, it had to be said, but Portaloos nonetheless – lined up discreetly in the courtyard at the back of the house. Tina scuttled off to explore, Jake close behind her. It made Rosie smile to see it. Good. Tina deserved a good man. Moray was waylaid immediately they entered the room by dozens of people he knew, and, with his affable manner, fell into conversation with some of them.

  Unfussed, Rosie wandered alone out to the balcony beyond the French windows. The cold had driven most people indoors and the hubbub dimmed behind her as she gazed out at the garden, clear beneath the full snow moon. It was almost incandescently beautiful, watching the snow fall on the knot garden beneath the shadow of the house, on the hedges and the neatly trimmed borders; on the raked gravel and tumbling down the ridge of the land below.

  She felt, suddenly, as if she were being watched and turned, swiftly. Just inside the doors, in the corner of the ballroom, was a dark area filled with sofas and chairs. She had barely registered that a large group had moved there, but she saw it now, and was just in time to catch Stephen’s eyes on her. He glanced away quickly, as she gave a slightly awkward smile through the open door. He was surrounded. CeeCee was there, looking unbelievable in a cutting-edge metallic silver dress, with fierce studded shoes. On anyone not tall and skinny and stunning it might have looked a bit scary. On CeeCee it looked incredibly scary, but also utterly amazing. There were other girls there, many blonde, or with thick sheets of straight hair that covered their eyes, and dresses in pale nudes or sheer fabrics or plain unadorned black. Suddenly Rosie felt a silly wearing green, like a little girl in her party frock.