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  Edison gave her his steady gaze. ‘No thank you,’ he said. ‘Embra rock please.’

  And he stoically handed over his pound coin. Rosie was just bending down to give him the bag when the door opened with its traditional ting, and Gerard walked in. For five seconds, Rosie found, blinking, that it was difficult to tell the difference between Edison’s six-year-old face and Gerard’s. Both had an expression of anticipatory joy. One was for the sweets and the other … Something surged in Rosie’s heart then. Gerard was looking delighted. But it wasn’t at her. He was scanning the shelves and the tins and bars with a cheerful, hungry look on his face.

  ‘Hello!’ said Rosie, as Edison tentatively bit into his first piece of pale pastel candy.

  ‘Hello!’ said Gerard cheerfully. ‘Wow, look at this place! You’ve got everything!’

  ‘And it’s lovely to see you, Rosie.’

  ‘And it’s lovely to … Have you got liquorice torpedoes?’

  ‘I have,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Wow. Can I have some?’

  ‘You can, for a pound.’

  Gerard stuck out his lip. ‘I don’t get free sweets?’

  ‘You can,’ came a high-pitched voice from the floor. ‘But you have to lose a tooth. And then, do you know what happens?’

  Gerard regarded the boy carefully. ‘Does a dragon come?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Noooo,’ said Edison, pleased he knew the answer.

  ‘Is it a goblin?’

  ‘Noooo!’

  ‘Is it a little mouse?’

  ‘It’s a fairy!’

  ‘No way! Excellent!’

  Rosie smiled. Gerard had always been good with kids. Well, he was one, so that helped. She reached up to the high shelf and got the liquorice torpedoes, bright little red sweets shaped like paracetamol. A real boy’s sweet. Classic Gerard.

  ‘A pound please,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘Or a tooth,’ added Edison.

  Gerard grimaced, then handed over a pound.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rosie. ‘We are, of course, a going concern.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Gerard. He looked, Rosie thought, a bit wobbly; he’d put on some weight and his jowls were beginning to show. Too much of his mum’s indulgent cooking, or takeaways, she imagined. Inside, she couldn’t help but be a bit annoyed. So, if she was still to find him fit and attractive, she had to moderate his diet? That didn’t seem very fair. Although to be strictly truthful, her own waistband had grown a bit tighter since she’d been in Lipton.

  ‘Run along, Edison,’ she said to the figure below. ‘I’m closing up the shop now.’

  Edison looked at her, his mouth full of pink and lemon gunky stuff, the gaping hole his bottom tooth had left acting like a conduit.

  ‘These,’ he said excitedly. ‘these are the best things ever. I mustn’t tell Reuben about them.’

  ‘No,’ said Rosie, with a sigh. She thought it was time to have a word with Reuben’s mother, whoever she was. Wasn’t nice for a child to be victimised like that.

  ‘Who’s Reuben?’ asked Gerard when Edison had gone, clanging the door happily behind him.

  ‘His little mate. Isn’t allowed any sweets. Edison’s a good soul, keeps it secret from him.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t he be a better soul if he shared them out?’

  ‘What, and have a marauding parent down here accusing me of child murder because white sugar was involved? No thank you.’

  They regarded one another.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ said Gerard.

  ‘I’ve missed you too,’ said Rosie, remembering back to those first chilly evenings. ‘Come here.’ She gave him a hug, smelled his familiar scent – aftershave, crisps – and smiled.

  ‘OK,’ said Gerard, greedily attacking his torpedoes. ‘What are you making for supper? I’m starving. Or sex first. Sex then supper? Or after supper? Or both? What about now? In the back room? I like the apron.’

  Rosie grinned. ‘No, darling! I’ve got to lock up and cash up. I’ll clean in the morning.’

  ‘Well, hurry up,’ said Gerard. ‘Come on. Can’t you do it all tomorrow? It’s not really your shop.’

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘But right now it’s my job. It won’t take long.’

  Gerard looked pouty. ‘But please. I’ve come all this way.’

  ‘And I’ll be ten minutes. Wait here, then we can go and I’ll introduce you to Lilian. Or you can take yourself off to the pub down the road and have a pint if you like and I’ll meet you in a minute.’

  Rosie hadn’t meant the last one seriously, but to her disgruntlement his face immediately perked up and he asked her for directions.

  ‘Can you eat there?’ he asked.

  Rosie nodded.

  ‘OK. Great. See you down there, yeah?’

  Rosie turned back towards the till and started putting things away.

  ‘I really won’t be long,’ she protested.

  ‘Great,’ said Gerard, leaving her to it. ‘I’ll order you a gin and tonic.’

  Rosie was so cross she dawdled doing the books, then nipped back next door to get changed.

  ‘Isn’t your young man coming?’ asked Lilian by the door. She had clearly dressed up and was wearing a lavender coat dress and matching lipstick.

  ‘Ooh, you look nice,’ said Rosie. She almost added, ‘Are you going somewhere?’ but thankfully stopped herself just in time.

  ‘Well, where is he?’

  ‘Uhm … he’s … I’m meeting him at the pub.’

  ‘At the pub?’ said Lilian, as if she’d said ‘at the brothel’.

  ‘Yes, it’s all right. Here, I have pie and beans for you, I’m just going to heat it up in the microwave.’

  With her first week’s profits, Rosie had bought Lilian a microwave. Even though she refused to go near it, Rosie felt better knowing it was there.

  ‘Sorry, I know it’s nothing fancy, but it’s delicious and full of calories.’

  ‘He’s at the pub?’ asked Lilian again as if she hadn’t heard her. ‘He didn’t come to say good evening?’

  Rosie tried to tell herself that Lilian was just an old fuddy-duddy caught up in old-fashioned ideas. That was it. She was old and set in her ways. But even so, doubt crept in. It was terribly rude, wasn’t it? Not to greet someone who was putting a roof over your head for the night? Classic Gerard.

  ‘He was really exhausted after driving up here,’ she said.

  ‘So he can’t stay off the sauce?’ said Lilian acidly.

  ‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ll … I’ll go meet him. We’ll see you later.’

  ‘I don’t like that pub,’ said Lilian. ‘Never set foot in it again.’

  ‘Again what?’ said Rosie, but Lilian didn’t answer. ‘Are you all right?’ asked Rosie, taking dinner out of the microwave, but Lilian waved her away.

  ‘You have fun,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  Lilian smiled. And for the first time, spontaneously, and without thinking about it, Rosie leaned over and kissed her great-aunt on the cheek before she left.

  The Red Lion was lively-looking on a Friday night. Rosie had never been in there before and felt tentative at the entrance, the busy noise spilling out on to the pavement with the warm light and the smokers. There was a filled water trough outside, and the sound of hearty male laughter. Rosie had noticed just how many men there were in the countryside – the farmboys, the vets, the tree surgeons, the chemists. This was probably why her female friends always complained about how difficult it was to find a man in the city. Because they’d all moved to the countryside, or never left it. It was true, Lipton was full of hunks; if you let them loose on London the women there would hold a parade. Whereas here they just carried on hoicking hay, undiscovered.

  Rosie checked her lipgloss, and slight sense of nerves, and pushed the door. Inside, the wallpaper was ancient and yellow, the fire burning to stave off the early autumnal chill; big oblong tables were posit
ioned willy-nilly around the room, with horse brasses on the walls. And there he sat, slightly awkward-looking, his boyish face and pink cheeks out of place among the tanned agricultural labourers, his shirt crumpled. In front of him was a nearly empty pint of cider and three empty crisp packets. This was her man, she thought. For the first time since she’d been so wrapped up in the giddiness of moving in together, planning their future, she looked at him, hard. Here he was. Not perfect. Well, she wasn’t perfect. And he was her bloke. Her face broke into a smile.

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Where’s that gin and tonic?’

  Two hours later, Rosie was well into the swing of things. Although Gerard did talk a little bit about what it was like to be back at his mum’s and how great it was and how he got a cooked breakfast every day, and he did suggest, after his third pint, perhaps a little too loudly, that they should nip into the bathrooms and have sex, particularly as, along with Jake and his friends, there was the vicar and Malik from the Spar within a few tables.

  ‘How do you know everyone already?’ said Gerard. Rosie considered telling him it was because she’d ruined Mr Isitt’s vegetable garden and as a consequence was considered by half the town to be sleeping with the other half, but she shrugged and simply said, ‘Oh, you know, small towns.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Gerard. ‘It’s weird. Did you say that guy runs the Spar?’

  Rosie smiled and nodded over at Malik, who was, it had to be said, quite sanguine about their opening, and had merely remarked that as long as she stayed out of booze, fags and lottery tickets they would get along fine. They occasionally made change for one another. They had a quick chat about how they expected to do on market day, and Rosie instantly regretted not getting an ice-cream fridge. Malik sold standard ice creams, so she could get in something special like Green & Black’s to appeal to older people instead … That would work well next summer, she thought. Then Jake came over to say hi, and gave Gerard such a blatant up-and-down look that Rosie found herself blushing.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Jake.

  ‘This is … this is Gerard,’ said Rosie. ‘Uhm, my, my boyfriend.’

  Gerard wiped some crisp dust off his fingers and didn’t get up.

  ‘Hello,’ he said amiably, ‘you’re a big fella.’

  Jake gave Rosie a questioning look. She ignored him.

  ‘There’s a lot of blokes here,’ said Gerard, glancing around the pub.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie, smiling goodbye to Jake, who didn’t seem to take the hint.

  ‘We need to go and do some more gardening,’ he said. Behind him, his friends were nudging each other.

  ‘What, now?’ said Rosie.

  Jake stuck out his bottom lip. Rosie suspected he probably found it quite easy to get women. She was just the new thing in town.

  ‘Soon,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Rosie. ‘Soon.’

  She took a long slug of her gin and tonic, waving politely to Hye, Maeve and Moray over in the far corner, already well into some bottles of wine. Typical doctor behaviour, she thought.

  ‘What is this, The Waltons?’ said Gerard, turning his head. ‘You’ve been here five minutes and you know half the town.’

  ‘Well, I run the local sweetshop,’ said Rosie. ‘Of course I’m going to meet a few people. And everyone knows Lilian.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘And I don’t know everyone, anyway. There’s loads of people I don’t know, like them for example.’

  Rosie gestured at a random couple by the window, then realised she’d seen the woman before. The woman saw her looking and got up and came over.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Edison’s mum.’

  ‘Oh, hello, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Well, even I’ve met Edison,’ said Gerard, throwing up his hands.

  ‘He liked his tooth-fairy bag,’ said Edison’s mother, stiffly. ‘I’ve tried to tell him it’s all just ridiculous superstition, but …’

  ‘Oh, it’s harmless,’ said Rosie.

  The woman sniffed.

  ‘Actually,’ said Rosie, ‘I did want to ask you something.’ She stood up. The woman had naturally grey hair even though she was quite young, and wire-rimmed spectacles. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up, and was very thin. Potentially, thought Rosie, she could look amazing. ‘Edison talks about his friend who isn’t allowed any sweets? I realise mothers do take quite a firm line on this kind of thing, but we sell fruit drops and raisins, and …’

  Edison’s mother smiled in a slightly superior kind of way.

  ‘Oh gosh, no,’ she said. ‘There is no Reuben!’

  Rosie squinted. Edison’s mother seemed to be implying that she, Rosie, was being rather stupid.

  ‘Reuben is his imaginary friend!’ said the woman cheerfully. ‘He’s terribly imaginative! It’s a sign of very high intelligence.’

  Rosie stifled the unkind thought that if his mother dyed her hair and bought Edison a pair of normal trainers then he might not have to make imaginary friends and could make a real one, but nonetheless she arranged her face into an expression of concern.

  ‘You know,’ confided his mother as if this were a badge of honour, ‘we’ve taken him to all these child psychologists and they just don’t know what to do with him.’

  ‘Loads of children have imaginary friends though, don’t they?’ said Rosie, stunned they would send such a small boy to see a shrink. ‘Maybe they think it’s perfectly normal.’

  Edison’s mum let out a little laugh. ‘Oh no, you would never call our Edison anything like normal! There’s nothing average about our Edison! You see, he’s particularly intelligent. So really it is something of a worry for us.’

  She didn’t look like it was a worry, thought Rosie. She looked absolutely delighted that she was turning her own child into the town weirdo.

  But she didn’t say anything, it was hardly her place – and, after all, who was to know whether one day, if she did have children (though Gerard had never shown the slightest indication in that direction), she might not be an overprotective basket case too. But she hoped not.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well, good luck. He’s welcome any time. And his “friend”.’

  Edison’s mother smiled. ‘Oh, it’s so nice to have someone a little broad-minded around town,’ she said, loudly, and Rosie smiled her goodbyes as politely as she could and sat down again.

  ‘So,’ said Gerard, ‘what about selling the shop then? Have you got it on the market? Have you had any viewings? What are you selling it for?’

  ‘Uhm,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, you know, I’ve been very busy getting it up and running.’

  ‘Getting it up and running?’ said Gerard. ‘You’ve been here four weeks. It was only meant to be for six. You’ve got a career waiting for you.’

  For the first time, oddly, Rosie found the idea of going back to a big hospital – which she normally found buzzy, and exciting, and endlessly interesting, so unlike here, she supposed – unappealing. Instead of being anxious to get back and frustrated with the pace of things here, she found herself in no hurry at all.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I know, you’re right.’

  ‘Well, if you know I’m right, why don’t you just do it?’ grumbled Gerard. ‘Don’t just nod your head and say yeah yeah yeah.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. ‘No, I will, definitely.’

  ‘Because I don’t want to keep living at my mum’s.’

  ‘You don’t have to live at your mum’s!’ said Rosie suddenly in exasperation. ‘Why don’t you live in our home like a normal adult human being?’

  ‘What, ha, and do my own laundry and buy my own food when I can get it all done for me for free?’ scoffed Gerard. ‘Yeah, right, that sounds like a great idea, Rosie. Yes, brilliant.’

  ‘But don’t you enjoy your independence?’

  Gerard shrugged. ‘Why should I? My mum didn’t move to Australia.’

  ‘Oh, that is very unfair,’ said Rosie, incredibly
annoyed that, suddenly, and outwith her control, they seemed to be skidding towards a fight. She was also conscious that, around her, people were watching them. This was a definite disadvantage, she thought, of knowing everyone in the town. It felt a bit like being famous; all sorts of people were looking at them, judging her, she knew, judging Gerard. How dare they! On the other hand, if Gerard had made more of an effort to say hello to people, come and said hi to her great-aunt; turned up with a huge bouquet of flowers, or a small bouquet of petrol station flowers, or … well. That didn’t matter.

  ‘Shall we get out of here?’

  ‘Where else is there?’ asked Gerard, slightly bitterly, looking at his pint. It was a fair point. There was a fancy hotel up the road that they used for weddings and conventions but Rosie had never been there and didn’t know what it was like on the weekends.

  ‘Well, we could try …’ Rosie looked around and took a deep breath. She was going to make an effort. They could try again. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we have another drink?’

  Gerard smiled, his pique forgotten.

  ‘Pint of Magners please! And some crisps! Then I’m going to have the scampi! Can I have the scampi?’

  Rosie wondered for a second if he’d always been so young. Well, it was endearing, of course. He was cute, everyone thought that. It was just … well, Jake wouldn’t bother asking her if he could have scampi. Moray wouldn’t eat it. And Stephen … well. Anyway.

  ‘I don’t mind what you have,’ she said, sounding slightly sharper than she’d intended. ‘Eat what you like.’

  ‘It’s just I thought, crisps and chips …’

  ‘Yes, they’re a terrible combination.’

  His face fell.

  ‘But if you want them, have them.’

  Gerard bit his lip. ‘I won’t enjoy them now you’ve said that.’

  ‘Well, have something else.’

  ‘But I really like scampi.’

  ‘Well, have that and I’ll eat the chips.’

  Gerard’s face relaxed. ‘OK!’

  Rosie went to the bar, ordering herself a salad – after all the high-calorie meals with Lilian and the two of Gerard’s chips she’d probably manage to claim before he wolfed them all – and, turning, looked at him, his head buried in the crisp packet as he tried to get out the last few grains of salt. She smiled, half-heartedly. It was odd to see him out of his normal environment. At the hospital, with his white coat on, he was important, authoritative. Nobody needed to know that he still got his mother to iron it because Rosie a) refused and b) once when she offered on a Sunday night, ‘did it wrong’. Carefully, she picked up the two glasses. What a difference in her, though, from just a few weeks ago. She hadn’t been unhappy before, had she? She hadn’t. There wasn’t anything missing. Well, perhaps she’d been a little bit fed up over her job. There was that. And perhaps moving in with Gerard hadn’t been the dream she’d hoped it would be. There was definitely that.