Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 99

She didn’t have to say it. It was obvious. Honeysuckle House was far and away the nicest place they’d seen. And far and away the most expensive. And it was only affordable on Roy Blaine’s money. That was that.
The tour complete, Rosie and Lilian paused by the front door; on the left was a large and pleasant day room, without the enormous blaring televisions they’d seen elsewhere. Televisions were kept in rooms and used with headphones, Marie had explained carefully, for the comfort of all residents. Here they encouraged reading, talking, a daily crossword competition and board games, although if you wanted to stay in your room and watch television and eat Caramacs, that was also completely fine.
Inside were a small group of residents playing what looked like bridge, as well as, by the window, a woman sitting quietly. Her hair was bright white, and while very thin, the woman still wore it long, curled round the nape of her neck. She was dressed in a pale pink dress with a ruffle on the front, and she sat perfectly still, an abandoned magazine on the table in front of her.
Lilian froze.
Rosie immediately felt for her aunt’s left hand, begging Lilian to speak to her. But Lilian couldn’t hear her; she was many miles and many years away, her vision fixed.
‘Lil!’ shouted Rosie desperately. ‘Lilian!’
Finally Lilian seemed to come back to them. Marie was anxious that she should come and sit down in the office and be checked over by a doctor, but Lilian point-blank refused.
‘Let’s go,’ she said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Rosemary. Take me home. Now. Now.’
As they left, negotiating the ramp down the once-imposing steps, Rosie got another shock: leaving their car in their usual order, with her stomping up front and poor Peter trailing behind, were the Isitts. Peter stopped to say hello; Mrs Isitt marched straight past with barely a sniff in their direction.
‘There’s Mrs Isitt,’ said Rosie in surprise.
Lilian looked at her furiously. ‘Well aye,’ she said. ‘It would be.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Rosie.
‘Well, her mum’s in there,’ said Lilian, nodding back towards the house. At the window, the woman sitting there began to move as she saw her daughter.
‘Ida Delia Fontayne. She’s Dorothy Isitt’s mother.’
Tina shut up the shop. Rosie made macaroni cheese, the easiest, most comforting thing she could think of. Lilian had stared out of the window the entire way home and refused to discuss things. Rosie was determined to get it out of her. Macaroni cheese – and some violet creams for dessert – was the only method she knew.
She bent over carefully and lit the fire. Lilian was sitting back in her chair, but her fingers were wavering lightly on the arms, as if they wanted to say something. Rosie snuck glances at her. She looked like she was about to say something any minute, but didn’t know how to begin. Her mouth would open and close. Rosie concentrated on taking the dish out of the oven, then set it down with salad and a large glass of water. She’d have been tempted to take out the gin at this point, but she didn’t want to give away her tactics to Lilian. The only way, she knew, to hear the story was to pretend she didn’t want to.
Finally they were both sitting at the table. Lilian pushed her dinner round the plate and sighed like a grounded teenager. After five minutes of this, Rosie could take it no longer.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Who was that woman?’
Lilian heaved a great sigh. But she did, she realised, want to tell the story. And it was important that Rosie knew. That Rosie didn’t let things go by her like she had. It seemed to her that Rosie was at a crossroads. If Lilian could have had her time again, she wouldn’t have taken the same path. Not by a long chalk.
She sighed again. It was hard, to talk about this. Everyone who knew her – who had known her for a long time – knew the story. They would probably have been surprised to discover she ever thought of it at all; it was so very long ago, and she had been only a girl.
‘Once upon a time,’ she started, ‘there was a boy called Henry. And a girl called. Uhm. Me. And another girl. She was very pretty then. Very.’
‘So were you,’ said Rosie loyally, looking at the portraits of Lilian here and there.
‘Well, I think Henry thought so,’ said Lilian. ‘Although he was the only one.’
The fire blazed as the darkness crept around the tiny cottage and Lilian told Rosie about Henry, and how much she had loved him. And how she didn’t grab her chance while she had it.
‘What happened to him?’ asked Rosie quietly at the end, their tea cold.
Lilian shrugged.
‘Oh, the same thing that happened to all of them. All the good ones.’
Rosie turned the cup round in her hands.
‘It was in Italy,’ said Lilian. ‘They didn’t … there was nothing to send home. His dust is Italian now. Has been for a long time. He was such a boy of the soil, always in the fields …’ She smiled to remember it. ‘Always grubby. He was always a bit mucky. But in a good way, you know. Well, I liked it anyway.’
Rosie blinked several times and reached for her aunt’s hand.
‘Oh,’ said Lilian, ‘I know what you must think. That it was so very long ago. How can I still be thinking about it now? But it doesn’t feel long ago to me. It doesn’t feel long ago at all; it feels like yesterday.’
1944
Everyone heard it, they said, or knew someone who did. Ida Delia’s screams had filled the entire town, closely followed by Dorothy’s. ‘That bastard!’ she was rumoured to have shouted when the telegram arrived. ‘That bastard! How dare he?’
‘What was it like when he died?’ asked Rosie quietly.
Lilian looked at her quizzically, as if trying to sum up the best way for Rosie to take it in.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s like the most final thing you can ever imagine … Think of something ending, something happening that you couldn’t ever change.’
Rosie thought of Gerard and Yolande Harris but somehow that didn’t really bother her. Then she remembered taking her mother to the airport when she left for Australia, and the horrible stone she had felt in the pit of her stomach, even though she was a grown-up and not supposed to mind.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘And take away every possibility, every semblance of doubt that anything could be different.’