Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 65

‘We could go home,’ said Rosie quietly. After the adrenalin burst of the last hour, she suddenly found she was exhausted, emotional, and needed a quiet place to sit down and think about the events of the evening. It was very unfair to Gerard – it wasn’t his fault his weekend was getting ruined – but she didn’t really have the energy for one of his tantrums.
‘It’s only nine o’clock,’ whined Gerard.
‘We’ll get a bottle of wine,’ said Rosie. ‘And I’ll make you something in the house.’
‘Can you make scampi?’
‘Of course I can’t make scampi, Gerard.’
Moray was keeping his head down, but Rosie felt herself go pink at the thought of him overhearing this ridiculous conversation.
‘Can I call you tomorrow?’ she said as they were leaving. ‘Continue what … what we were talking about?’
‘Of course,’ said Moray.
‘What’s that?’ said Gerard as they were leaving. ‘What were you talking about? Me?’
‘No,’ said Rosie, in exasperation. She’d just helped perform a medical procedure, had clasped Stephen’s hand, been unjustifiably yelled at by his mother – she’d had enough. The last thing she needed right now was Gerard making it all about himself. Especially when she suspected there was a grain of truth in what he was saying.
OK, so she and Gerard didn’t have a massive spark in their relationship. Who did? Everyone got annoying sooner or later, right? And she was hardly the catch of the century: the wrong side of thirty, the wrong side of a size 10, the wrong side of a swiftly moving career.
‘No. About the boy … the man who was hurt. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Just village gossip, I expect.’
Gerard took on a more conciliatory tone. ‘Well, no point in finding out then, you’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.’
‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. There was a very good chippie open halfway up the high street; she’d take him there for fish and chips.
Out in the street the crowd had dispersed; Les was having a truly fantastic night. Out of the corner of her eye, halfway up the alley that led to the back of the pub, Rosie spied something. Going closer, she confirmed her suspicions as to exactly what it was.
‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ she breathed. It had to be four miles up to Peak House. Severely injured, bleeding out, with a steep gradient down the road. Stephen might be an awkward so-and-so, with all sorts of ludicrous family shenanigans going on. But anyone that sent themselves hurtling down a road in a standard-issue military hospital wheelchair most definitely had balls.
Rosie was half expecting Lilian to be asleep already. It was past her bedtime, but she’d underestimated the old lady’s curiosity, and there she was, in her chair, in a long winceyette nightie and matching, immaculate carpet slippers, her eyes bright as a bird’s. She looked Gerard up and down. Pink and smelling of cider and fish and chips, slightly sweating from the walk up the hill, Rosie had to admit that he didn’t look the most appealing prospect. Well, maybe his charm would kick in.
But Gerard looked down in the mouth; not his usual ebullient self at all. It was as if all the bounce had gone out of him.
‘Hello, Miss Hopkins,’ he murmured, like a child forced on to an auntie at a birthday party. ‘How are you?’
Lilian gave him a long look, then glanced quickly at Rosie. This made Rosie even crosser. It was none of Lilian’s bloody business. She knew nothing about it, nothing about how hard it was to find a man these days. So you didn’t get some prince? That was life.
‘It’s nice to be here,’ mumbled Gerard, the look on his face suggesting that being in an old lady’s home in the middle of nowhere was anything but. And Rosie, too, felt sudden embarrassment, which was ridiculous. She and Gerard lived together. There was a double bed upstairs. There was nothing to be ashamed of.
‘What were the sirens for?’ demanded Lilian, as Rosie went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and forestall the awkward moment when she and Gerard had to go upstairs together. She hoped Lilian would keep up the selective deafness.
‘Uhm, it was Stephen Lakeman. His leg took a turn for the worse.’
‘Oh, Hetty’s boy. He is no end of trouble.’
Rosie marched out of the kitchen waving the sieve.
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was Hetty’s son? Why does no one tell me anything? Her name is Lipton!’
Lilian shrugged. ‘I assumed you knew. Not much of a son he’s been anyway. And she’s Lady Lipton, that’s her title. Lakeman is her name.’
‘Right,’ said Rosie. ‘This is ridiculous. Once and for all, I have to know.’
Gerard sighed. ‘I’ll just sit down over here, shall I?’
Rosie came out bearing a tray and sat next to her great-aunt.
‘How?’ she said. ‘How could Lady Lipton just abandon him like that?’
‘And how,’ said Lilian simply, ‘could you ever believe that she hadn’t tried to help?’
‘It was Felix’s fault of course,’ said Lilian, thoughtfully sinking her teeth into a ginger biscuit she’d softened carefully in the steam from the teapot. ‘Stephen’s father,’ she added. ‘He was obsessed with his regiment and everything to do with the military. He’d been quite the thing in his day. Liked to get his uniform out for weddings and parties; any celebration, there would be Felix, polishing his medals. And so when they had a boy after Jessica, he was over the moon. Had that boy drilling before he was five, little uniforms and everything.’
Jessica, it transpired, had joined the diplomatic corps – years of practice growing up – and now worked in Malaysia. Rosie tried to picture Stephen as a small boy. He would have been, she imagined, a particularly grave one.
‘So he didn’t want to join the army?’
‘He did not,’ said Lilian. ‘Of course it’s common as coppers, children who don’t want to do what you want them to do. Look at your granpa Gordon.’
Rosie smiled. ‘He didn’t even sound like you.’
‘Of course he didn’t. Couldn’t put enough space between here and London. Wanted to leave it all behind. That’s why we never saw you.’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I wish we had.’
Lilian could not entirely hide her smile.