Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Read online

  “I did know that,” said Rosie, although she knew her elder niece Kelly referred to it as a foofoo. She supposed Hester’s way made more sense. Edison sighed sadly.

  “Are you going to have a baby?” he asked. “Out of your bagina?”

  Rosie nearly dropped some of the chocolate animals.

  “Well, if I ever do,” she said, “I promise you don’t have to watch.”

  “Good” said Edison. He glanced at the chocolate animals.

  “No,” said Rosie. “It’s too early. Edison, can I ask you a favor?”

  Edison frowned. “Do I have to go on a march?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  Rosie bent down. He was getting taller, she noticed, and needed a haircut. His glasses were smeared. She didn’t quite understand why not cleaning Edison’s glasses was against Hester’s principles, but she took them off him and set about with a wipe.

  “Now, did you know what’s happening at school today?”

  Edison shrugged.

  “Some kids will be mean to me because of my superior intlechew?”

  “Um, possibly,” said Rosie. “Learn to clean your own glasses, please.”

  She handed them back to him, and he blinked, looking surprised at how clear the world seemed.

  “No,” said Rosie. “You have a new teacher starting.”

  “Oh yes!” said Edison. “Mr. Lakeman. He hops. Does he hit ­people with his stick?”

  “Is that what you think?” said Rosie, appalled. “No. He has to use the stick to walk sometimes.”

  “It’s not a hitting stick?”

  “Edison, you have never been hit in your life. You have to stop worrying about things.”

  Edison’s brow furrowed.

  “It’s a very big stick.”

  “Can we forget about the stick, please? All I was going to say is, it’s his first day. Do you remember your first day at school?”

  “Every day is like my first day,” said Edison sadly.

  “Okay,” said Rosie. “Well, it’s Ste . . . Mr. Lakeman’s first day. So can you be very nice and kind to him, please?”

  “I’m always nice to teachers,” said Edison in surprise. “Even when they say, ‘PLEASE put your hand down, Edison, I think we’ve all heard enough now.’ ”

  He did a surprisingly accurate imitation of Mrs. Archer, Stephen’s predecessor. Rosie smiled.

  “Okay, good,” said Rosie. “He’s lucky to have you in his class.”

  There were only two classes at the little village school, under and over sevens, with around fifteen children in each class. The local council talked from time to time about busing them out to Carningford, the nearest town, but the village was dead set against it. The school house, next to the church, dated back to Victorian times and had a pitched roof with a bell, and two entrances with BOYS and GIRLS carved in stone, although they were never used. There was a hopscotch outline painted on the playground concrete and a Portakabin for music and art, i.e., for making gigantic amounts of noise and mess. Playtime could be heard all the way up the main street.

  Rosie compared it, sometimes wistfully, to the school she had gone to in London, which had had a high wire fence everywhere and a locking door and a tiny playground and hundreds of huge kids everywhere kicking out at other kids. Here the great hills cast shadows in the winter sunlight, and the children tore out at the end of the day in their blue sweatshirts, satchels flying, charging home to run about with the friends they’d known all their lives, on farms or big meadows. Rosie wished Edison realized what a lovely place it was to grow up.

  THE PHONE RANG in the shop. They had kept the original with the heavy old rotary dial. Lilian didn’t want to get rid of it, which meant, annoyingly, that whenever Rosie wanted to call someone, she always did it on her mobile phone for the speaker, and that was annoying because Lipton’s signal was erratic to say the least. In fact, she thought, it was probably Lilian now. Rosie had gotten her a mobile phone with enormous buttons that didn’t do anything except make phone calls. The shop was speed dial 1, and the price plan she was on allowed free local calls. This meant, in practice, that quite often Lilian would just call and leave her phone plugged in on speaker, occasionally chipping in with remarks on the business of the shop. Newcomers to the village found the disembodied voice rather alarming, particularly when it was recommending which licorice to buy or telling Rosie off for over-­ordering watermelon-­flavored candy that nobody liked. But everyone else was used to it; it was just Lilian, and most ­people had a friendly word for her as they came in and out.

  “Hey,” said Rosie, casually. There was static on the line and somebody was yelling. Somebody yelling down the phone was not at all uncommon; it meant that her mother, Angie, was phoning from Australia, where she lived and looked after Rosie’s brother Pip’s three unruly children, who, as far as Rosie could ascertain, used any instance of Angie’s being distracted to attempt to slaughter each other with kitchen knives.

  “G’day,” said Angie, who had adopted an unaccountable Australian accent despite only having lived there for two years.

  “Hi, Mum,” said Rosie, glancing at her watch. “Isn’t it, like, ten P.M. there?’

  “Yup.”

  “Why are the children still up? You never let me and Pip stay up.”

  “Oh, you know . . .”

  “Have they been locking you in the linen cupboard again? Mum, you HAVE to get tough with them.”

  “It’s three against one,” said her mother. “And Desleigh thinks they’re just fine.”

  Rosie didn’t know her sister-­in-­law very well, just that she worked long hours and when she wasn’t working, she liked a lot of what she called “me-­time,” which seemed to involve Angie’s being left with the children on weekends while Desleigh had spa treatments.

  “So,” said her mother. “I was thinking. About Christmas?”

  “We can’t, Mum,” said Rosie sadly. She would love to go to Sydney to see her family, but they were limited to Stephen’s holidays, and the shop couldn’t run itself and they couldn’t really afford the tickets and . . .”

  “We’re coming!”

  Rosie swallowed hard.

  “You’re what?”

  “We’re coming. We’re all coming to have Christmas in Lipton. And to see you and Lilian!”

  “ALL of you?”

  “Yes!!”

  Rosie paused a mere millisecond as the huge and complex implications of doing this suddenly raced across her brain. Not a single sensible response presented itself, but all the myriad problems were completely overshadowed by her desperate desire to see her family.

  “That is a BRILLIANT idea,” she said.

  ROSIE SPENT THE rest of the morning serving customers in a daze and got the red and black kola cubes mixed up twice. She was desperate to see her mother; she had felt so abandoned when Angie had left the country. On the other hand, what where they going to do with Shane, Kelly and Meridian in Lipton? They were used to swimming pools and beach parties and amazing fish caught fresh from the sea . . . It was entirely possible that it would rain for three weeks solid like it had last Christmas and, when she thought about it, unless you liked wet-­weather hiking, or going to see the new Waitrose in Derby, there really wasn’t a massive amount going on. By which, she realized, she meant nothing going on. This was the country, it was quiet; her mother was always going on about all the amazing things Sydney had to offer, and the fabulous weather and . . .

  Rosie realized she was working herself up into a bit of a state when the door tinged and Lady Lipton walked in. She and Rosie had always had something of a tricky relationship, although Henrietta was a dear friend of Lilian’s and was, of course, Stephen’s mother, so Rosie always felt she should make more of an effort. Before Stephen had gone off to work in Africa, he had had a terrible row with his fathe
r. His mother had taken his father’s side. When Stephen was in a military hospital in Africa, his father had had a heart attack and died. Stephen’s relationship with his mother had been very up and down ever since.

  Today, Lady Lipton was looking even more imperious than normal.

  “Cough drops?” said Rosie promptly, even though she knew that Lady Lipton fed them to her dogs, which she shouldn’t really do. A flash of panic grabbed at her heart. What if Lady Lipton didn’t like Angie? Because Angie had absolutely no problem telling ­people exactly what she thought of them, and if she thought this woman wasn’t being nice to her, there was no telling what she would do. And, she thought with a sinking heart, how would Stephen behave? She loved him with every fiber of her being, but he wasn’t like her ex, Gerard, who liked to please and get along with everyone. Stephen’s family had been always been a bit wobbly, and joining in family games and meals with everyone would not be the kind of thing he would want to do at all. . . . Oh Lord.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Lady Lipton. “You look like someone’s just thrown up on your slippers. Are you pregnant?”

  Sometimes, thought Rosie, living in a small village where everybody knew everybody’s business was not at all what it was cracked up to be, especially when that knowledge was wrong.

  “No,” said Rosie.

  “Oh, good’ said Lady Lipton, without indicating whether this was because she didn’t approve of her being with her darling boy. “Now, listen. Wonderful news! Bran’s had a litter!”

  “I thought he was a boy dog.”

  Lady Lipton looked at her scornfully.

  “He’s SIRED a litter.”

  “So, more cough drops then?”

  “And,” went on Lady Lipton, “I’m giving one to you and Stephen. As a Christmas present.”

  “I thought you couldn’t give dogs as Christmas presents,” said Rosie, shocked.

  “Yes, it’s political correctness gone mad,” said Lady Lipton, which was her stock response to literally anything on earth that wasn’t exactly how it had been when she was eleven years old. “Anyway, would you prefer a dog or a bitch?”

  “But we don’t have space for a dog!” said Rosie. “Or time to look after it . . . or . . .”

  Lady Lipton looked at her as if she were completely incapable of understanding how a person could not want a dog—­which was, indeed, exactly her state of mind. Her face clouded over. Rosie felt she’d said something akin to “I eat babies.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ll mention it to Stephen,” said Lady Lipton stiffly.

  Rosie ran out of steam.

  “Of course,” she said meekly, bagging up the cough drops.

  It wasn’t, she thought, as the door banged heavily behind her, that she didn’t like dogs; of course she did. But she’d grown up without any pets at all, not even a fish, as they didn’t really have anywhere to keep it, and the dogs she was familiar with were one or two really dangerous-­looking pit bulls on the estate, dogs whose owners swaggered up and down with them, letting them shit in the middle of the street, then eyeing passers-­by as if daring them to suggest they clean it up. And the idea of having their little house filled with a big dog—­Bran was undeniably a big dog—­who would make Lilian’s nice things dirty and put muddy paw prints everywhere and need endless walks and those cans of stinky food and . . . Rosie sighed. Oh, and three strange Australian children in the house. She had suddenly stopped looking forward to Christmas quite so much.

  SHE WAS SLIGHTLY cheered by her friend and colleague Tina, who arrived with six boxes of candy canes.

  “I thought we could hang them all around the doorframe,” said Tina. “Start to make the place look Christmassy”

  “Yes,” said Rosie. Then she frowned. “Wouldn’t that be basically inciting children to nick them?”

  “It’s Christmas,” said Tina. “I think we can probably lose a few to sticky fingers. Oh, and let’s get the super-­duper expensive chocs, the really crazy Belgian ones. In boxes.”

  “Why? Do ­people like those for Christmas?”

  “It’s not a question of like,” said Tina. “The nearest supermarket is an hour away and shuts early on Christmas Eve. If we stay open late right up to the very last minute, we’ll be able to sell every single piece of stock in the shop, no matter what we charge, to lazy ­people, or farmers who don’t get the chance to leave their farms before then. You see it every year. It’s what keeps the boutique afloat too.”

  “You’re an evil business genius,” said Rosie, leafing through the catalogue. “I don’t know why you stay with me instead of going on The Apprentice.”

  Tina smiled shyly and blushed a little bit.

  “Are you staying here for Christmas?” asked Rosie. Actually, it was a bit of a daft question around here; of course they were. It was different in London, where everyone was from their own different places and went home to their extended families. London emptied out at Christmas time, leaving the few stray locals born and bred, plus lots of ­people who didn’t celebrate it anyway. When Rosie told ­people shops and cafés in London were open on Christmas Day, they looked at her as if she were a heathen Martian.

  “Yes,” said Tina. “Jake’s coming over.”

  Jake was the handsome local farmhand Tina had fallen for last year. He was something of a well-­known rake about town who’d always liked the girls—­and they’d liked him back—­and no one was more surprised than Jake himself by how hard he’d fallen for Tina, a single mother of twins, in return.

  “So it’ll be us and my mum, you know, and Kent and Emily, and Jake’s mum and dad. It’ll be lovely and we’ll have a big lunch down at my mum and dad’s—­my mum does everything, she loves cooking for Christmas. All I have to do is watch the kids open their presents, get drunk and watch telly.”

  “That sounds BRILLIANT,” said Rosie, enviously. Then she explained what she was doing. “It is wonderful they’re coming,” she said. “I’m just a bit worried about what we’ll all do, where we’ll all fit . . .”

  “No, it’ll be great!” said Tina, who lived two streets away from her mother and wished they were closer.

  “I don’t know what Stephen wants though,” she added. “Plus, we’ll have to see his mother, and—­”

  “It’ll be fantastic!” said Tina. “It’s nice to have children at Christmas! Can’t you have it up at the big house?”

  “Hmm,” said Rosie. “I don’t think so. Shane and Meridian will have broken the lot by first kick.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” said Tina. “It’ll be fine.”

  “You think?”

  ROSIE MEANT TO tell Stephen straight away that night, but he looked so happy and full of himself that she made him tea in front of the fire instead.

  “How was it?”

  “Amazing!” he said. “They were great. So keen and nice and of course I know half of them. They all wanted to know what happened to my leg.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  “Of course I told them. What did you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rosie. “I might have been tempted to tell them I hurt it in an intergalactic space raid to make them impressed with me.”

  Stephen lifted his cup of tea.

  “That didn’t occur to me. Anyway, I told them so they won’t worry about it. And also, I wanted them to see the lengths some kids in this world have to go to to get an education. How lucky they are.”

  “No kid ever thinks they’re lucky,” mused Rosie.

  “Some adults do,” said Stephen, looking at her for a second until she smiled, her worries forgotten. She’d tell him later, she thought.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot!” said Stephen, his face lighting up. “Mother says we can have one of Bran’s pups when they come!”

  “I know,” said Rosie. “She told me.”

  Stephen loo
ked at her face.

  ‘This is amazing!” he said. “They’re worth a fortune, Bran’s pups. He’s a wonderful working dog.”

  “Where are we going to put a gigantic dog?” said Rosie, glancing around the cozy little room, the logs crackling in the fireplace, the light dancing in the old brasses.

  Stephen shrugged. “Well, it’ll just go where we go, won’t it? And it’s not like we’ll be here forever.”

  Rosie looked up in surprise.

  “Why, do you have a plan?”

  “No,” he said. “But, you know, it’s not ideal, is it?”

  “It’s lovely, and five seconds from our jobs,” said Rosie. “Seems pretty ideal to me.”

  “Yes, but that’s because you grew up in a box.”

  “You are SUCH a disgusting snob!” said Rosie.

  “I know,” said Stephen. “That’s why you love me and the dog so much.”

  Chapter 3

  ROSIE WAS GOOD friends with the village GP, Moray. On Friday she persuaded him to come with her to see Lilian. Stephen had already started planning the school concert.

  “He’s so into it,” said Rosie in wonder. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

  “That’s Stephen,” said Moray, who’d grown up with him. “Intense.”

  They both smiled. The snow had stayed on the ground, with more threatened, but for now, the Land Rover was managing over the undulating single-­lane roads through the hills. With the sun sparkling across the mountaintops, it was like being at the top of the Alps.

  “Well, it’s good,” said Rosie. “I like him happy.”

  “I would hope so,” said Moray, giving her a sideways look. “How are you? Not missing the smoke?”

  “Have you ever been to London at Christmas?”

  “Yes,” said Moray promptly. “Full of ­people wearing suits getting off with other ­people wearing suits at four o’clock in the afternoon completely pissed. Awful.”

  “No, it’s lovely!” said Rosie, surprised. “All the shops decorated, and the taxi lights and the Oxford Street displays . . . okay, it’s freezing, and the Oxford Street displays are all sponsored, and you can never get a taxi . . .”