Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams

by Jenny Colgan

  And there were other young men, Stephen’s age, obviously his friends, laughing and drinking his mother’s champagne and flirting with the girls and teasing each other. One was wearing the most ludicrous pair of tartan trousers.

  Where were they? Rosie found herself thinking. Where were they when he was sitting by himself in the kitchen, pouring whisky down his throat?

  She composed herself to give the coolest, most distantly polite hello she knew how – it was, she knew, the only way. She risked another look, but of course his attention was elsewhere. How foolish, she thought, remembering how she’d looked at herself in the mirror. As if she compared to these model girls. But she knew that already. She was not going to be downhearted.

  To her delight, Moray came towards her, waving madly.

  ‘Dinner!’ he said. ‘You have to be quick, these country types enjoy their grub and they don’t hang about.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she said, proffering her arm. He might be the only gay in the village, but Stephen’s stuck-up chums weren’t to know that.

  ‘Hello,’ she said to Stephen politely as she passed by.

  ‘Hi,’ said Stephen shortly. Rosie hoped he remained as rude and as grumpy with CeeCee until the day he died.

  ‘Hi, CeeCee,’ she said. CeeCee looked up from a conversation and did nothing to disguise the fact that she had not the faintest idea whether she’d ever met Rosie before.

  ‘Oh yeah, hi,’ she said, then turned back to her friend.

  ‘That’s CeeCee,’ said Rosie to Moray, loud enough for Stephen to hear. ‘She’s very special.’

  Stephen didn’t react.

  ‘Well, it was nice of your mother to invite your nurse,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m going to find her to say thanks.’

  ‘I don’t …’ Stephen started but then couldn’t go on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think of you as my nurse,’ he said.

  ‘You just call me your nurse.’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Lippy!’ came a loud voice. An enormous pack of rugger buggers was crossing the floor. ‘You weapon!’

  Stephen looked crestfallen. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Dinner!’ said Moray.

  ‘You utter weapon!’ shouted the rugby boys.

  Rosie waved her hand.

  ‘I’ll just …’ she stuttered.

  Stephen was engulfed, as Moray walked her across the ballroom and in to dinner.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Rosie.

  ‘How long have you had a little soft spot for our lord of the manor?’

  ‘I do not …’ Rosie felt herself turn pink. ‘Never mind. I know everyone fancies him.’

  ‘Christ, yes,’ said Moray. ‘Oh well.’

  ‘Is that why you never wanted to look at his leg?’ said Rosie.

  ‘No, that’s because he’s an irritating arsehole obsessed with the moral high ground,’ said Moray. ‘It was miles easier just to get a pretty girl to do it.’

  ‘Aw, thanks.’ Rosie slumped.

  ‘You need more champagne,’ said Moray, though even before he did so his little acolyte had appeared, bearing more glasses.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rosie. ‘Oh, sorry. This is lovely. It’s all just silly bollocks, that’s all. I’m like a teenager with a crush.’

  They both looked in the young girl’s direction, who blushed bright red when she saw Moray’s eyes on her.

  ‘Christ,’ said Moray, ‘let’s get into the dining room immediately.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Stephen thinks about me,’ said Rosie. ‘Bugger it.’

  The dining room was more of a dining hall, with round tables set up with autumnal leaf arrangements and bright red poinsettia. Each table had a little pumpkin on it. Most people were already seated, the men smart, even Rosie had to admit, in their bright red hunting jackets, the women wearing all their jewellery, with their hair done and their lipstick bright. It was a nice sight, after all, made even nicer when they found their table was full of other fun young people from the village, the farmers and their wives, who outdid each other with filthy stories and silliness. Rosie could see that they got out so seldom, and their lives were full of such hard work, that they were determined to enjoy their night to the full, and they heckled the speeches and imitated the hunting horns that were blown to announce each course: mulligatawny soup, roast pheasant with autumn vegetables and game chips, and a splendid rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from the gardens.

  ‘There is not,’ announced Rosie, ‘enough ruching in this dress.’

  Tina and Jake were nowhere to be seen. Someone said that they’d spotted them in the orangery – a long, low conservatory running along the south face of the house – and Rosie decided to leave them to it. She couldn’t even see Stephen, and did her best to forget all about him, helped by the tremendous food, and a story about pig insemination she suspected she wouldn’t be able to forget even if she tried.

  The noise in the great rooms grew louder and louder as dinner finally ended and everyone repaired next door. One room was to have disco dancing, the other proper reeling. Rosie wanted to stay in the disco room, but Moray was adamant.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘How many times are you going to come to a thing like this if you piss off back to London?’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come to London with me?’ said Rosie. ‘I think you’d like it.’

  Moray gave her a look.

  ‘I do better here in Lipton than you will ever know, love. These farmers play a good macho game, but …’

  Rosie laughed. ‘What is it we say in A&E?’

  ‘Be safe, darling!’ they trilled together, as she let him lead her back to the ballroom, where a band with a fiddle player, an accordionist and a bodhrán drummer were all ready to go.

  ‘Good God, what is going on?’ she said, as several men including the one in tartan trews, and one unlikely but rather touching middle-aged couple, he in a kilt, she in a white dress wearing the same tartan as a sash, all took to the floor.

  ‘It’s easy,’ said Moray. ‘You just fold your arms behind your neck like this.’

  ‘How is this easy?’

  ‘Now take your partners for the Gay Gordons,’ the leader of the band announced.

  ‘Oh well, I see why you like it,’ grumbled Rosie. Moray ignored her and lined her up with everyone else, as the band leader walked them through it. And, sure enough, once she’d done it a few times, she got the hang of it, and found herself enjoying the skirl of the music. They bumped into a few people, but that was all right, everyone else bumped into them too, and Moray was a skilled partner, his hands always there to catch her as she twirled. And the green silk dress twirled beautifully. It was made for it. Made to be danced in, on a dark night in early winter, where the snow whirled in front of the great window panes of the big house.

  After the first dance, Rosie found she wanted to dance another, and another, and she found no shortage of partners. Gasping with thirst, she drank plenty of water but plenty of champagne too, then allowed herself to be carried off into a dance that involved two partners, Jake, who had reappeared, and Frankie, one of his farmer friends. Her head spinning, she danced and bowed and shimmied between them, lighter and more graceful, she knew, thanks to the green dress, than she had ever been in her life, and the skulking corner of silver-clad model-type wraiths with pouty mouths and tight half-smiles ceased to bother her at all.

  Traversing the room, floating in a huge bubble of champagne and company and the sheer pleasure of being out again; being out with friends and laughing and dancing and having a good time, she barely noticed when Frankie spun her round, then deposited her not two feet from where Stephen was sitting, still perched awkwardly on the sofa, his stick resting in his left hand. She gave an involuntary gasp of surprise to find herself so close to him, especially so flushed; her hair had escaped from the clasp Tina had found for it, and her curls were tumbled round her face, her eyes shining.

  ‘O
h,’ she said.

  Stephen’s face was like stone.

  ‘Oh,’ he repeated, flatly. There seemed nothing more to say.

  ‘Is there anyone in this town you don’t let yourself get manhandled by?’ he barked suddenly.

  ‘What?’ said Rosie, unable to believe what she’d just heard.

  But Stephen didn’t repeat himself. Instead, he hauled himself up and, as fast as he could manage, which wasn’t very fast, started pushing his way through the hordes of people dancing, right across the dance floor to the door.

  The spell of the dance broken, all Rosie could do was stand there, staring after him, mouth open in fury.

  There were mumblings nearby, but not for long, as the band played on and people restarted the dance. It was not, Rosie reflected, probably any surprise to the people in this village to see Stephen Lakeman have a big sulk about something. It was to her though.

  She stormed across the dance floor after him. CeeCee was there, walking unsteadily back from the bathroom. She was running her tongue around her teeth and her eyes were glazed.

  ‘Hey, you seen Lippy?’ she asked Rosie, but Rosie didn’t bother to answer. Outside the snow was thick and still buffeting it down, but Rosie didn’t feel a thing. Without thinking twice, seeing one car roar away into the distance, she jumped into Moray’s Land Rover. As usual he’d left the keys in the ignition. Regardless of the weather, or how much she’d had to drink, she turned the key.

  She was going to tell him a thing or two. About rudeness, and how just having a bit of a gammy leg was no excuse for behaving like a total arsehole, and how what he really needed was therapy.

  It was utterly freezing when she got out of the car. Rosie pushed open the door to Peak House without knocking; she knew it wouldn’t be locked. He was sitting upright in the chair, stick to one side. She could see his jaw twitching with the tension. His eyes darted to her when she walked in, but he gave no other signal that he was aware of her presence in the room. The lamp on the table shone on to his profile.

  Rosie stopped short. She thought, suddenly, of how many times she had waited for things to happen in her life; how she had waited for a man to grab her, then settled for Gerard; how she had waited for a job to consume her, then settled for agency work. Before the sweetshop. Waiting for life wasn’t enough any longer. Anything she wanted now, she was going to take with both hands. Was going to grab for herself. And, if she was being totally honest, she didn’t want to tell him a thing or two. She didn’t want to say a single word. That, she realised, wasn’t why she was here.

  Rosie stepped forward into the dim light, towards him. He was gazing into the fire, hand clutching an empty whisky glass.

  ‘Stephen,’ she said. He didn’t answer. Until she decided to take another step forward, she wasn’t 100 per cent sure if she wanted to kiss him or slap him. For some reason she didn’t understand, she found herself thinking of Lilian.

  She took the next step forward.

  ‘What the fuck was that you said?’

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was feeling stupid and useless and jealous. It was dumb. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But … but.’ Jealous?

  Rosie decided, right then, that she didn’t want to talk any more.

  Fortified by the champagne, she was almost unable to believe she was being so bold.

  Almost.

  Without saying a word, she knelt before him and carefully, decisively, unzipped his black trousers. He didn’t move a muscle to stop her. Agonisingly slowly, she manoeuvred them downwards. He was wearing Calvin Klein briefs, but she ignored those for now, and carefully, without pulling, drew as much of his trousers as she could down his left leg.

  The light from the lamp shone upon the white and puckered skin, the scar disappearing down his long leg into the shadows. The leg was plainly paler and thinner than the other one, and the long seam was hairless and shiny.

  Yet it was not at all repellent. It was cleanly healed; simply a mark on the man, nothing more, nothing less. If she was to love this man, she would love all of him, and that was that.

  Slowly, she lowered her head and, gently but firmly, kissed the very top of the scar, halfway up the warm inside of his thigh; once, twice.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then, above her, she heard a very low groan, and then a long exhalation. She kissed the scar once more, then rose up. Stephen’s eyes were closed now, his expression completely unreadable.

  Rosie felt her heart pound, felt the adrenalin course through her body; her tongue, inexplicably, was suddenly too large for her mouth. Was he trying to think of a polite way to tell her to get the hell out? Had she mistaken genuine pique for angry passion? Had she just made a terrible, terrible error? She blinked rapidly as she tried to read his expression – but ran out of time.

  Stephen’s eyes snapped open, and before she could respond, he grabbed her upper arms with his strong hands and pulled her towards him, kissing her fiercely and fearlessly. The clumsiness of their position – he already had his trousers halfway down – meant Rosie threw caution to the wind, lifted up the silken layers of her skirt and clambered on to the chair, both of them still kissing passionately. Instantly, as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, she could feel that her instincts had been the correct ones.

  ‘Christ,’ said Stephen, exhaling into her hair. ‘Christ. It’s been … it’s been so long.’

  ‘Well, it is now,’ said Rosie, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Sssh. Ssh.’

  Stephen held her face between his hands and gazed fiercely into her eyes. ‘And so hard,’ he said finally, a spark of mischief flickering across his face. They stared at each other for a second longer, then suddenly he was unzipping her bodice, with the fumbling excitement of a man coming back to life; and she was pulling up his white shirt, desperate to put her hands and mouth on the flat stomach and muscled chest she’d been dreaming of.

  Neither wanted to mention whether he would be capable of moving them both to the bed; Rosie didn’t want to move too much, in case it caused him pain; so instead they stayed exactly where they were, grinding close together; pressed tightly into the high-backed chair, the dim light in the kitchen, the snow falling silently on the remote house, the fire blazing, then eventually dying, as the heat from two bodies rose and fell and rose again. The motion was made more delicious by its necessary slowness; it went on so intensely and so long that finally Stephen could stand it no longer and, all thoughts of pain forgotten, he pulled down hard on her shoulders, pressing her tightly into him until she felt they were one person; until he bellowed, loudly and suddenly, and, almost without warning, her back arched and she lost herself in him. When she came to herself, she found to her astonishment that she was crying.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sour cherries are an awkward taste. One would want to keep an eye on the child with a fondness for these sweets. Harsh and chemical, they spill their secrets gradually.

  Later, Rosie could never remember how long they had stayed, afterwards, her curled up, both of them staring into the fire.

  ‘I thought you thought I was a prick,’ whispered Stephen into her hair.

  ‘To be fair,’ said Rosie, ‘that was only after you’d been a complete prick.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Did you think I was a total whinger?’

  ‘Noooo,’ lied Rosie. She looked up into his face. ‘You are the first total whinger I have ever fancied, you know.’

  ‘Uhm, good.’

  Rosie squirmed and wondered where her knickers were.

  ‘I have to ask though,’ she said. ‘That night in the pub.’

  ‘Where you were completely trollied.’

  ‘For the first time in about sixty-five years!’ said Rosie. ‘I’m a very cheap date. Don’t say it.’

  Instead, Stephen gave her a kiss, which started getting a little out of control, until he winced. ‘Maybe we could … move?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie.
‘But first … why did you tell that lanky blonde girl I was your nurse?’

  Stephen bit his lip. ‘Honestly?’

  Rosie nodded. ‘Yes! You made me feel like some awful below-stairs … Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘Because I didn’t know where I stood with you,’ said Stephen. ‘Well, I did. You were always giving me grief for this and that and telling me off for things.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosie, stung. ‘I was trying to help.’

  Stephen stared deep into her eyes.

  ‘You think you weren’t helping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I thought … I thought I was just a kind of project for you. Professional boundaries and all that.’

  ‘Is that why you never phoned me or asked me out for a coffee or anything?’ said Rosie, still slightly disgruntled.

  ‘Can’t we just say I’m out of practice?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Rosie, still pink. ‘What about all those people who are suddenly hanging around all the time?’

  ‘Well, word went round that I was back … The jag grapevine moves pretty fast,’

  ‘Where were they before?’

  Stephen looked uncomfortable. ‘This is a lot of questions. I thought we were going to bed.’

  Rosie tried to bite down her concern. It wasn’t attractive, she reminded herself, to show off her insecurities. She looked at his gorgeous, stern head and lean, pale physique and decided to count her blessings instead.