Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 51

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Not if some mean people are going to try and take your lollipop. You can offer up Reuben’s, if he wasn’t going to eat it anyway.’
Edison’s brow furrowed as he followed the ramifications of this. Finally, his brain ended up at a solution he liked, and he smiled and popped his head back up.
‘OK!’ he said. ‘Can I have strawberries and cream and Reuben would like lemon and lime. Or maybe Reuben would like blackcurrant. I hate blackcurrant. Maybe some people who are mean and take Reuben’s lollipop would then go bleargh bleargh yuck yuck we are going to be sick we hate blackcurrant so much.’
‘That could happen,’ said Rosie.
Edison nodded his head, and Rosie popped the sweets in a bag for him.
‘Congratulations!’ she said. ‘You are officially our first customer.’
Rosie propped the door open, to find several rubber-neckers, passers-by and curious children had gathered round.
‘I now pronounce this sweetshop … open!’ said Rosie, with a big smile.
In poured quite a river of people. Rosie looked among the little boys and girls to see if she could work out exactly which ones were making Edison’s life such a misery, but they all looked identically rosy-cheeked and adorable.
‘I’m going to get the biggest bag ever in the world and buy every sweet in this shop,’ announced one tow-headed chap.
‘Me too, I’m going to do that,’ said his friend. ‘Except mine will be the biggest bag in space and so it will be even bigger than yours, so there.’
‘I am going to bring all my birthday money, all the money I got, it’s a lot, it was ten pounds, yes and I am going to buy all the chocolate in the shop,’ said another.
‘You will not,’ said a mother’s voice, and when Rosie looked up she realised it was Maeve Skitcherd, the receptionist from the doctor’s surgery.
‘Hello!’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Maeve. ‘I couldn’t resist. When I was little Miss Lilian always used to have … I don’t suppose they even make them any more, I never see them anywhere …’
Rosie cocked her head, keeping her fingers crossed. This was the crux of it; this was where the shop could rise again. Not from the pennies and birthday money of the children, but from the memories and desires of the adults.
‘… I don’t suppose you have any mint creams?’
Rosie nearly punched the air with pleasure. They did. She had restocked as much of Lilian’s originals as she could track down.
‘Why yes,’ she said, ‘of course. Would you like a big bag or a small bag?’
Even though Rosie had been metric since she’d started out in nursing, she knew it wasn’t the right thing for a traditional sweetshop, so she was selling small, medium and large bags at one, two or three pounds. You could choose all of one kind or, for medium and large bags, mix up two or three scoops together.
‘Ooh, large,’ said Maeve, colouring with pleasure. ‘Or maybe small. No. Large.’
And while Lavender, her daughter, unwrapped her strawberry lolly, Rosie filled a large bag with Maeve’s mint creams. (Rosie made a mental note: when offered a fruit-based choice, children invariably plump for strawberry. A tiny thought behind that said that knowing this wouldn’t matter a bit when she sold the shop on to its new owners, but she suppressed it quickly.) Maeve couldn’t wait. She picked out a mint cream as soon as she’d handed over the cash, and sank her teeth into the large white disc.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, as the sharp taste flooded her mouth. ‘They haven’t changed a bit. Not a bit.’
She went pink. ‘I used to have a big bag of these on my way home from school every day. It was where all my pocket money went. Everyone else would have something different – alphabet sweets, and whichever name you spelled out would be the name of the boy you were going to marry. But I just stuck with these, I was completely addicted to them. Every day, for about a year. Then I just kind of forgot all about them. Alice Mandon had the alphabet sweets, Carly had the sugar mouse, she was always watching her weight … You know, I must find Carly and tell her about this place being open again. She loved it. We got back in touch, you know, on Facebook …’
Then she checked her watch. ‘Anyway, why am I telling you this? I’ll be late opening up the surgery, and Hye will be furious.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ boomed a voice behind her, and Maeve jumped, turning round.
‘So this is where you’re sending all the sugar addicts, is it, young lady?’ said Hye. He really did look like a country-doctor caricature, Rosie thought again, in his tweeds and his pink shirt.
‘Hmm. Got any red hots?’
Again, Rosie blessed her great-aunt for not throwing anything away, including her invoice records, as for the first time she used the stepladder – she hadn’t thought red hots would be in the least bit popular – to reach the higher shelves and put a bundle of the very strong cinnamon-tasting gobstoppers into a bag.
‘Terrify the children, these things,’ said Hye. ‘Stops them nicking ’em.’
Rosie had an immediate picture of him as a small boy with a fat bottom in short trousers.
‘Hope you like them,’ she said, smiling.
‘Hmm,’ said Hye. ‘I’m just glad you’re keeping away from the town dogs.’
Rosie tried to flip over the paper bag so it twisted at either side, but she hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, or the big old-fashioned till, which she tended to jar with her elbow at awkward moments. She did both of these things now as Hye watched her in a patronising way. Then he turned to leave, popping a large red sweet into his mouth reflectively.
‘That,’ he said, ‘that is not bad. Not bad at all.’
Rosie smiled, genuinely pleased. Hye pulled open the door, his crusty demeanour diminishing somewhat.
‘I think Moray is very grateful for your help with our little … business up at Peak House,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
And the bell dinged, and he was gone. What did he mean, ‘business’? How was Stephen a business? Why was he such an important patient?
But suddenly she found she barely had a moment to think about it, as the doorbell rang again. When the children melted away (one of them nicking one of her balloons – she wondered if this was the town troublemaker), the workers started passing by, some hovering outside to look at the window display. She had put out some of the most tempting and beautiful chocolates on the shadier side, and an arrangement of sugar mice and pigs playing on the other. Some people wandered in, and she greeted them all with a friendly smile. People requested the oddest things: rhubarb and custards, and pineapple chunks, barley sugar and eucalyptus; sweets that sometimes Rosie had never heard of but often, thanks to Lilian’s little book, she found she did have on her shelves, fresh and shining in the glass jars.