Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop (10 page)

“Just be clear. Say you're not going to move back in, you're not going to take on the estate, you're just going to borrow it for a bit.”

Stephen bit his lip.

“Come on, what's the alternative?”

Stephen shrugged.

“Maybe they would be better off in Carningford, without some maniac trying to run them over. Be a bit safer.”

He was facing the window, looking out over Rosie's shoulder.

“No,” said Rosie. “Don't be stupid, okay? It was a freak accident. It's not even in the papers anymore.”

Stephen shrugged.

“It happened. Maybe Lipton isn't the best place for them to be.”

“You can't believe that,” said Rosie, horrified. “You can't. You wouldn't leave Lipton to die.”

“That's being a bit overdramatic, don't you think?”

“A lorry crashed into the building,” she said. “There's a kid upstairs hovering between life and death. How dramatic do you want me to be? We need to fix it. And I want you . . . I want you to be where you belong. What are you going to do if they shut the school? You've always been a teacher.”

“You're the one who wants me to move back to Mummy's house. I guess that's where I belong.”

“Now you're being spoiled,” said Rosie crossly.

Stephen shrugged. “You asked me what I thought and I told you.”

“I didn't ask you what you thought,” said Rosie. “I asked you to help me.”

There was a pause.

“Look at me,” said Stephen. “I can't even help myself.”

Rosie slammed the huge pile of cards and letters down on his bed.

“Fine,” she said. “I'll do it by myself.”

“Are you being Saint Rosie again? You do just love those lost causes.”

Rosie stared at him and decided to leave before she said something she'd regret.

“Y
EAH
,
ANYWAY
,
SO
that went well,” said Rosie to a comatose Edison.

Hester and Arthur weren't upstairs—­perhaps they'd finally cracked and gone to get something to eat—­and the ward was quiet. Rosie sat down by Edison's bed and held his hand, and sniveled a bit. But she didn't change her mind.

Downstairs, Stephen glanced again at his watch, wondering how long he would have to wait for his painkillers, trying not to focus on the pain. He shouldn't have snapped at Rosie, but really, couldn't he catch his breath, just for a moment? He . . . couldn't let her see how shaken up he was. Not by the operation, that had been nothing, . . . but the whole thing had brought Africa right back to him, and he couldn't . . . he couldn't bear to feel that way again.

 

Chapter 8

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
, Saturday, was torture. Rosie was hard pressed at the shop, run off her feet. The Santa train had arrived, finally, and just as Tina had predicted, every family in town brought their children out to look at it tootle around the snowy little hillside on its merry way. Rosie liked seeing the happy faces of the children, such a contrast with their confused, pained looks of the week before. The adults, though, still bore traces of the fright they had all had.

“All right, all right,” she said, knowing how very strongly Lilian would disapprove, and coming out with a bucket of little wrapped bonbons. “One each for all being very brave and doing exactly what Mrs. Baptiste told you.”

The children converged on the bucket, chattering excitedly.

“Can I have one?” said Hye Evans, the other local doctor.

Rosie looked at him severely. “I don't know. Do you sit on the local council?”

“Of course,” said Hye. “I'm an alderman.”

“Are you going to close the school?”

“I'm afraid that's not something I can discuss with you,” said Hye, his pink face turning red.

“Well, no sweetie,” said Rosie. “Unless it would help?”

She watched as Hye stomped off. “I'm rubbish at corruption,” she noted gloomily.

She hadn't been able to get the fight with Stephen out of her head. He hadn't texted her or anything, which meant he was obviously still adamant that he was right. She could barely serve the flow of customers without checking her phone every two minutes, even though she couldn't get a signal, and her face was so glum that Moray actually laughed when he swung by for some sweet golf balls to take to his new doctor boyfriend in the next village over. He was being very secretive about him for some reason.

“Look at you, exactly the right kind of person to be in charge of a sweetshop. What happened, eat too many of the lime sours?”

Rosie explained while frantically rearranging fudge.

“I'm not sure what you're saying here,” said Moray, absentmindedly helping himself to one of the golf balls. “Are you trying to tell me that Stephen is a stubborn old git?”

“YES,” moaned Rosie.

“Oh my God, let me phone CNN,” said Moray. “Well, you knew this. Hang on—­ha! Did you think you'd be able to soften him up and change his mind? “

Rosie shrugged.

“No!”

“And make him do what you want? Ha! This isn't just about the school, is it? It's about your personal reputation as the only woman who can get Stephen to do something he doesn't want to do.”

“It is not,” said Rosie. “Except a bit.”

“Ahh,” said Moray. “Oh, you're so cute when you're cross. So, what are you going to do?”

“Wait for him to come around.”

“Got two years, have you?”

“Bollocks,” said Rosie. “He's not going to come around, is he? He just won't talk to his bloody mother.”

“I would say,” said Moray, “that anything he can do for anyone, he would always do for you.”

Rosie half-­smiled.

“You're going to need more of those golf balls.”

“Oh, yes. So . . . ,” said Moray.

“So you're saying . . .”

“If you want to save the school . . .”

“Into the lion's den,” said Rosie unhappily. “Lady Lipton.”

“The council is taking the vote on Monday. They can have the buses out by Wednesday.”

“Dammit!” said Rosie. “Damn damn damn. Will you support me?”

“Hmm, what do you want me to do?” said Moray. “I'm not on the council. I could make several subtle poisons with which to dispose of Hye and no one would ever suspect a thing, but I think I would probably have done that already.”

“Just talk me up,” said Rosie. “Tell ­people.”

“I've been talking you up since you got here,” said Moray. “Then you go and let me down by wearing ridiculous clothes and pulling unlikely ­people. What's that?”

He spied a parcel by the till and grabbed at it. It was a tiny ruffled red coat with a tartan trim.

“You're not?” he said.

“Ssh,” said Rosie. “It's freezing outside.”

Moray continued staring at it in disbelief.

“If you seriously start dressing up your dog, you'll be dead in this town.”

E
ARLY
THE
NEXT
morning, after a long evening with still no word from Stephen apart from a depressing exchange of formal text messages in which they'd both ascertained that the other person was “all right” but with no further discussion of the matter in hand, Rosie woke up and decided enough was enough. And she was going to cycle. No snow was actually falling right at this moment, so it was as good a day as any: she was going stir crazy without any exercise.

She left her bike by the gates at Lipton Hall and started trudging up the snowy driveway. Mr. Dog had had his final injections, so she'd decided to take him out on a long run, albeit wearing the very snazzy new red dog jacket, in the full and angry knowledge that Stephen would find it absolutely appalling.

The big house looked ominous and dark ahead, its chimney stacks cold and empty, its windows blank. Rosie had only been here once before, the previous year, for the hunt ball. Then it had been all lit up and glittering, cleaned up for the occasion, a glamorous outpost of light and dressed-­up ­people getting drunk and dancing. Now, in the bleak snowy light it looked slightly sad; unloved and deserted.

Rosie had been in the country long enough to know that nobody opened their front door, you had to go round the back, but it didn't matter; as soon as he got close enough, Mr. Dog set up a delighted howling as three other dogs, clearly related to him in some way—­but much smarter—­came tearing out from the courtyard around the back and gave him a hero's welcome. All four of them rolled about together in the snow in delight. Rosie wasn't sure, but it looked as if Mr. Dog was trying to pull off his coat. None of the other dogs had coats.

“View halloo!” shouted Hetty, stalking around to the side gate. She was wearing, as usual, a bizarre collection of gardening clothes and ridiculously expensive cashmere that was full of holes.

“Um, hello,” said Rosie. She'd wanted to practice a speech, but she'd ended up so cross at Stephen that she hadn't had time, spending half the evening mentally continuing her argument with him instead. She took a deep icy breath to gather her thoughts.

“Have you got time for tea?”

Hetty scratched Mr. Dog's neck.

“Hello, you lovely chap. What is this awful travesty you've been wrapped in then? Is she trying to make you gay? Are you trying to make your dog GAY?”

Rosie screwed up her eyes and reminded herself to keep calm.

“I thought he might be cold,” she said.

“Nonsense!” said Hetty. “He's part lurcher, part . . .” She looked a bit doubtful. “Well, anyway. That's ridiculous. Next you'll be letting him sleep inside.”

Rosie didn't explain that she had to let him sleep inside, on her bed, otherwise she'd freeze to death.

“And have you got a name for him yet, huh? What about Monty? Monty's a fine name for a dog. Or Ludo.”

“Not yet,” said Rosie. “Mostly we just call him Mr. Dog.”

Hetty looked at her.

“Does Stephen call him that?”

“No,” admitted Rosie. Stephen called him the most lovely gorgeous boy in the whole wide world, but she didn't want to explain that to Hetty.

“Well, quite. The dog needs a name, it's undignified.”

Rosie noticed, however, that she was giving him a massive cuddle.

“Sorry, what did you want,
tea
?”She made it sound as if this were the most ridiculous demand she'd ever heard. Maybe it was, reflected Rosie.

“Hmph. Well we'll see if Mrs. Laird has anything.”

Rosie was led through the back way for the first time. She was surprised by how cozy it was. A little kitchen, dated but immaculate, led on to what had obviously once been the big kitchen—­it was a massive room with a huge table down the middle—­but that now functioned as the kitchen diner. There was ample room down at the other end for a faded little three-­piece floral suite and a small old-­fashioned television; a massive, terrifying-­looking Aga bathed the entire room in friendly warmth.

“Oh, it's lovely in here,” said Rosie spontaneously.

“Hello, Rosie,” said Mrs. Laird, who bought a pound of orange creams every Saturday night to watch her shows with and wouldn't have confessed in a million years that, contrary to all the town gossip about the London upstart, she thought Rosie was the best thing ever to happen to Stephen. She'd been the one who'd tried to look after him when he got back from Africa in such a state, and like everyone else, she'd failed until this girl had come along.

“I've just made some mince pies, would you like one?”

“Yes!” said Rosie. “It has been so long since someone offered me anything to eat, I can't tell you. I'm ravenous. Do you have lots?”

Mrs. Laird set out the tea things. On the rough-­hewn old kitchen table, the sight of an incongruously perfect, utterly beautiful gold-­rimmed fine china tea ser­vice, complete with milkmaid jar, a plate of lemon slices, and sterling sugar silver tongs seemed very strange, but neither Hetty nor Mrs. Laird seemed to notice a thing.

“It is lovely here,” said Rosie, looking through the massive sash windows at the lazily falling snow. The dogs had followed them in and sniffed their way around the mince pies before being shoved out again to frolic in the snow.

“You should try upstairs,” said Lady Lipton. “That'll put hair on your chest.”

She set down her tea cup.

“So. Is this a social call?”

“Um.” Rosie was halfway through a magnificent mince pie. She tried to swallow it as quickly as possible without coughing up too many crumbs.

“Um, kind of.”

Hetty sighed.

“Spit it out then”

“The school,” said Rosie.

“Never used it.”

“Didn't you go there?”

Hetty looked at her incredulously.

“Of course not. I had a governess. Gerda Skitcherd. Do you remember her, Mrs. Laird?”

Mrs. Laird nodded. “First woman in town to get a divorce.”

“That's right! Poor little Maeve.”

“The receptionist at the doctor's?” asked Rosie in amazement.

“Oh yes,” said Hetty. “That's right. Well, it turned out for the best then.”

“She's lovely.”

“She is, but SUCH a scandal.”

They enjoyed their mince pies in a slightly more leisurely way after that, trying to bond over gossip, even if it was forty years old.

“So, the school,” prodded Rosie gently.

“Yes. When are they going to fix it?”

“Well. That's the thing. They don't want to fix it.”

“What do you mean, they don't want to fix it?”

“They want to bus all the children out of the village. Take them all to Carningford.”

“Oh, that's dreadful,” said Mrs. Laird, who had two grandchildren at the school. “Poor mites. They need their school.”

“And if the school goes . . .” said Rosie.

“Well, the town will go,” said Lady Lipton. “It's a dreadful shame.”

“Yes,” said Rosie. “Yes, it is. Which is why I was thinking . . .”

Lady Lipton made an enquiring face. Suddenly it seemed to Rosie that she was suggesting the most ridiculous idea ever.

“Um, I was thinking . . .”

“Yes? Spit it out, dear.”

“Um, maybe we could have the school here.” The last bit came out in a bit of a mumbled rush.

“The what?”

“The school. Just until they get it fixed, have it here.”

“In this kitchen?”

“No, but in this building.”

Lady Lipton looked around in horror.

“I mean, you've got the space, and . . . it wouldn't be for long. We could make the council fix it . . . tell them we don't need their buses . . .”

“But you can't just turn a house into a school,” said Lady Lipton. “This place is protected.”

“Yes, but for special measures . . . or they could be your guests. Just as a temporary measure. We'd only need two rooms.”

“But what about the cleaning? And the toilets? Children throw up almost constantly in my experience. And the heating?”

“Well, the funds that aren't being used to heat the school right now would have to come to you,” said Rosie. “We'd just need to talk to the council.”

“And you think Blaine will go for that, do you?”

“You're on the council though,” said Rosie quietly. “And I think if anyone could talk other ­people into things, it would be you.”

“Would it?” said Hetty, a small smile playing around her mouth. “Looks like it's also something you like trying your hand at. But honestly, Rosemary, it's just not practical.”

“Of course it's not practical” said Rosie. “Practical would be sending in some builders to fix the school. THAT would be practical. If the bloody council would actually do it.”

“You know we're responsible for more than just Lipton,” said Hetty.

“Yes,” said Rosie stubbornly. “But this is the place you really care about.”

“Ofsted won't allow it,” said Lady Lipton.

“Ofsted wouldn't deny you anything, not after all the press. It's for two weeks.” Rosie played her trump card. “And Stephen gets out tomorrow. . . . He'll be here. Every day. ”

Her voice faltered a little as she said it.

Lady Lipton paused, then started in again.

“It would be torturous,” said Lady Lipton. “The noise. It would upset the dogs. And it would be too much work.”

Mrs. Laird was cleaning up the cups and saucers.