Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 37

‘Ned,’ she said, as sure as she’d ever been of anything. Sweet, dreamy, easygoing Ned, by far the most handsome and laziest of the boys, adored by his teachers, petted by the girls, slow to move and respond, but with a smile and a kind word for everyone. It could only be Ned.
And sure enough, it was. Blown up by a mine on a road. They found out later from a man in the same platoon that he’d stopped to pick everyone some apples. So typical. So like him.
Everything in Lilian’s life came before and after the telegram.
It amazed her constantly, later, that something as ridiculous as worrying what another girl thought about her could ever have caused her pain; could ever have mattered, even for an instant. She would never again care what anyone else thought; what anyone else saw. Because when you knew what life really was, what pain and tragedy could do to a person, then all the pettiness fell away and no one could tell you what to do; not really. Because anyone could go, anyone could die, anytime. And it didn’t matter how good they were, how brave, how decent, how kind. Because Ned had been all of those things and it didn’t save him any more than it saved any of the bally rest of them.
‘Da,’ she said again, in a blur, and, not sure her legs would hold, found herself suddenly on the floor, hugging his legs, like she had done as a tiny child. And just as he had done then, without words, he put his hand on her hair, stroking it as her tears soaked through his trouser leg; stroking it over and over again, his confused brain moving in circles, trying to comprehend; trying to manage this piece of new information: that he had lost his darling, darling boy and he was never coming home.
Lilian and her father never spoke of her moving to the city again. By contrast, neither Terence, who took advantage of soldier’s tickets after the war and went back to college and became a successful accountant, nor Gordon, who moved to London and wheeled and dealed and eventually fathered four children, including his beloved youngest daughter Angela, could ever face living in Lipton again, with the constant echo of the boy who did not come home.
Lilian seemed to come back to herself.
‘Oh this,’ she said. ‘It’s Farmer Blowan’s daughter. Taking up with a Romany man. He wasn’t happy about that to start with, but he seems to have got over it now.’
Rosie watched, fascinated, as one of the children ran up to the coach with a huge knotted wreath of corn. The horses were stopped as the bride took it with grateful thanks, queen for a day, and handed it to her mother, who put it down with care. The little girl practically curtseyed and ran back to the side of the road, to be congratulated by her own mother.
‘A summer wedding,’ smiled Lilian.
‘She hardly looks old enough to be getting married,’ said Rosie, striving to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Watching the scene under blue skies … She would like something like this. Lilian shot her a look.
‘What about you?’ she asked her. ‘Are you and your chap going to tie the knot?’
‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘We like things just how they are, I think.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘When I’m not here looking after invalids …’
‘Oi!’
‘We have a lovely time. Not tied down … we’ve got our freedom.’
‘Oh yes? What do you do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘With all your lovely freedom. What do you do?’
‘Well, we go to the pub,’ said Rosie, feeling a bit uncomfortable. ‘And, you know. Out. To the cinema.’
Actually they hardly ever went to the cinema. Gerard thought most modern movies were rubbish, which was true, and Rosie didn’t like teenagers talking and texting and chucking stuff about, which seemed to be allowed these days, and made her feel really old.
‘But mostly we just like being at home and being together,’ she said, conscious again that staying in did not, on current form, seem to be the kind of thing Gerard liked to do at all, seeing as he’d hared off to his mother’s and was out on the lash every night.
‘You’ll meet him soon,’ said Rosie. ‘You’ll like him.’
She hoped this was true. Lilian didn’t seem to like a lot of people.
‘Hmm,’ said Lilian. ‘Well. Anyway. She’s twenty-two.’
‘What!’ said Rosie. ‘Wow.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Th … uhm, why does that matter?’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Lilian serenely. ‘Not at all.’
‘Twenty-two is ridiculously young to be getting married,’ said Rosie, thinking there wasn’t much point in explaining it to Lilian. It wasn’t as if she were likely to know anything about it.
‘Good luck!’ she called to the bride as she passed. Many of the children gazed at her with frank curiosity. Obviously there weren’t that many strangers in Lipton, especially not strangers fiddling about in a sweetshop.
Impetuously, Rosie turned back into the shop and grabbed a box of cherry lips that weren’t past their sell-by date, but certainly looked a bit bashed. Running back out, she threw handfuls of the sweets into the crowd, and watched the people laugh as the children dived and pounced on them, happy shrieks rending the air.
‘Thank you,’ mouthed the bride, and Rosie couldn’t help but smile back, as the coach moved on. Lilian was giving her an old-fashioned look but she steadfastly ignored it. ‘It’s marketing,’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. ‘That’s right, opening up again soon!’ she said bouncily out loud.
The party continued on, and Rosie watched them go, her thoughts far away, until she became aware of a presence at about waist height. She looked down, into a very serious face with an old-fashioned haircut and steel-rimmed spectacles.
‘I think you should know,’ said the small boy, ‘I didn’t get any sweets.’
‘Well, you weren’t fast enough then, were you?’ said Lilian. ‘You’ll know better next time.’
The boy and Rosie regarded each other.
‘I can’t bend down in case I lose my glasses,’ explained the boy carefully. ‘Well, Mummy thinks I lose them. Actually sometimes they are knocked off. On purpose. By bad boys.’
‘That sounds terrible,’ said Rosie, meaning it.
‘Yes,’ said the boy, accepting the fact of the world having bad people in it. ‘Yes, it is.’