Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 96

They all came back into the cottage and Tina made tea and toast for Rosie, who was still torn between thinking how sweet a moment they’d had, and how quickly it had all gone horribly wrong. Moray brought the empty champagne bottle in from the car.
‘Don’t rinse it,’ he said. ‘It’ll be nice for your aunt to smell.’
Rosie nodded, now changed into her super-sensible big furry pyjamas. The tip of her nose was still red, and her mascara had run, but she felt much better with friends around her.
‘At least you never have to see him again,’ said Moray. ‘Whereas if I have to give him another fricking tetanus shot, I’ll tell him it’s the one that has to go right into the tip of his penis.’
‘Ha,’ said Rosie. Then, ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be here for much longer anyway, now he’s got all his posh townie mates back. He’ll be off with them.’
‘If he can get a job,’ said Tina. ‘Which he won’t, because he’s a useless fuckwit.’
He’s not, a part of Rosie was thinking. He’s a teacher.
‘Well, I am so glad I managed to let everyone convince me to go to the ball,’ she said. ‘But I think I want to get back to being Cinderella.’
‘Cinderella of the Sweeties,’ said Tina. ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ said Rosie. ‘You’ve already found your prince.’
Jake rolled his eyes. Tina giggled. But neither of them contradicted her.
Things are meant to look better in the morning, grumbled Rosie to herself, as she woke up to a world where the snow was already turning grey and melting, and the lane looked dreary. The hills loomed, seemingly closer than ever, but large clouds in the sky threatened more snow yet.
At breakfast, Lilian glanced at Rosie quickly and declined to ask. This was a mistake.
‘So has the news reached you?’ said Rosie, more sharply than she would have liked, mostly because she was nursing a horrible headache that had less to do with the champagne and more to do with reliving every second of the nightmare from the moment she’d woken up.
‘No,’ said Lilian pleasantly, and sipped her tea, complaining bitterly about the news in her Sunday Express. (When Rosie had suggested she changed her paper she had harrumphed and pointed out that she needed something to complain about, otherwise her life would be just too perfect.)
‘Well, good,’ said Rosie. ‘Never mind then.’
And they spent the day like that. Except Rosie couldn’t help it. She spent a lot of time up by the highest front window of the cottage. If she leaned her arm out at a dangerous angle, she could just about get a mobile phone signal. Once, the idea swept over her that CeeCee and her friends would drive by, see her arm and know immediately what she was doing and piss themselves all over again, and she broke out in a cold sweat, but she stayed where she was. All the while thinking, he wasn’t like them, was he? Was he?
Had she known it was the exact same position Lilian had sat in nearly seventy years before, she would have been horrified.
Just after four, she heard a bang downstairs. At first, she thought it might be the door, and Stephen striding manfully through it … Of course not. That was ridiculous, a completely stupid thought. Then, panic hit her and she couldn’t believe she’d been so selfish.
‘Lil!’ she yelled, charging down the stairs. ‘LIL!’
Lilian was lying there, thankfully conscious, but with her ankle at a strange angle.
‘What the hell … what on earth were you doing?’ she said.
Lilian blinked up at her, confused. ‘I … I …’ She looked down, to where she had urinated on the floor.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t worry about that for a second. Come on, let me get you to a chair.’
She weighed little more than a child, even after all of Rosie’s feeding up. She wasn’t putting on weight as she should, Rosie realised. She wasn’t … she wasn’t good enough for Lilian. She wasn’t doing it right.
Lilian was tearful.
‘I just … I just wanted to get to the bathroom.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Rosie. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘Because,’ said Lilian. ‘Because it is utterly ridiculous I can’t make it to my own bathroom.’
‘I know,’ said Rosie. ‘I know it’s ridiculous. Doesn’t make it any less true. I had the monitor upstairs.’
‘I hate … I hate being a stupid old woman,’ said Lilian, her face crumpling. ‘I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.’
‘I know,’ said Rosie. ‘I hate it too.’
‘I’m all covered in pee and I can’t garden and I can’t cook and I can’t run my shop and I can’t do anything. Anything,’ she said fiercely.
‘I’m here’ said Rosie. But they were empty words, and they both knew it.
‘You can’t stay here’ said Lilian. ‘I won’t let you.’
‘I don’t have much else going on,’ said Rosie, ruefully.
‘Don’t you ever say that,’ said Lilian. ‘Don’t you dare ever say that to me.’
Moray came, clutching his head and looking very under the weather. Rosie had cleaned up Lilian, and together they ascertained that it was a sprain rather than a break, but that she needed to be careful.
‘I need to be somewhere with soft walls,’ said Lilian, sulking. Rosie let her eat a packet of caramels for supper, while Moray handed her a leaflet.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘You know it’s time.’
‘But she’s so sharp in herself!’
Moray shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. Old age is an absolute bitch.’
‘Is that your professional opinion?’ said Rosie.
‘As a doctor, yes. I believe it is accepted fairly widely among the medical profession.’
‘An absolute bitch,’ said Rosie. ‘Yes.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Please let me clear this up once and for all: ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get’ is a quotation of the highest nonsense. Every box of chocolates comes with a handy and clear pictogram relating the shape of the chocolate to its flavour. Also a box of chocolates is always welcome and delicious. Life is in fact like a bag of Revels. You never know what you’re going to get, and half of it you won’t like.