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  And that was the end of that conversation.

  Chapter Three

  Licorish

  Modern language seems to think it can change things willy-nilly for no reason. Licorish is a perfectly adequate word that also manages to sum up onomatopoeically the consistency of a thick black sweet in your mouth. Liquorice is French, and we know where that ends up – in crème de marrons and macaroons and all sorts of other unpleasantnesses.

  The push for modernity in the sweet industry – or, as our vulgarian cousins would term it, ‘candy’ – has been entirely unnecessary since the very first refining of sugar. Sweets do not need dragging into the twenty-first century. Unlike the bastardisation of the humble crisp into more and more repulsive flavourings, a decent bonbon is timeless, a work of art, and few more so than the licorish, an endlessly pliable substance capable of forming whorls, twists, strings, cords and the like.

  For those for whom the dark, complex flavourings of the fruit of the liquorice root and aniseed flower are too overwhelming (not all sweet appreciators can be connoisseurs), it comes too in adulterated form, notably (see sub-section 41) the allsort, the bootlace and, possibly its crowning achievement for non-purists, the sherbet fountain.

  Lilian Hopkins hated staying up late. It gave her more pain than she could let on, and it made the day seem so terribly, terribly long – and it didn’t help her sleep any later in the morning. Her internal clock had been stuck at 6.30am for a very long time now. And they showed such rubbish on the television, which was in any case hard to see, no matter which pair of glasses she had on, so she normally listened to the radio at full blast – it was company – and read her magazines and wrote in her notebook with her elderly Parker and tried to ignore the aching in her hip until it was a reasonable hour to retire to bed and not think about how she was going to get through another day tomorrow.

  But tonight was different, of course. Tonight the girl was coming. She’d always had a soft spot for little Angie, her brother’s kid. She’d been so blonde and funny and spunky and full of life, and had ended up pregnant barely out of her teens, two babies, dad long gone, and she had rolled up her sleeves and got on with it. The two women had exchanged letters (Lilian always sent sweets) for years, and it was a sadness to both of them that Lilian hadn’t managed to get to know Angie’s children. She herself had never married, but it was hard to leave the shop, and she’d never learned to drive, and was quite frankly frightened of London, and between the kids being at school and Angie working and all of them trying to keep their heads above water, the dreams they’d had of Hopkins holidays up in the beautiful Derbyshire countryside had never quite materialised. And they grew up so fast.

  So to meet Rosie again after all this time … Well, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. A bit of a slacker, she suspected. Angie had said she was nursing-trained, so maybe she could help her out with everything. Since the operation … well, there was no getting around it, she was finding life very difficult. Anyway, she wasn’t sure this Rosie could help. She didn’t seem to be making much of a go of her own life. Perhaps she was a bit of a party brat. She hoped Rosie wasn’t expecting too much. After all the bright lights and noise of London, she was going to find Lipton very quiet indeed. She couldn’t think of a single thing to do with her, or even what you said to a young person. It had been a while. She looked at the clock. Another five minutes till the bus got in. She would say her hellos. And then perhaps this girl wouldn’t mind helping her to bed.

  You would have had to torture Lilian before she would let you know she’d been sleeping every night in her chair.

  1942

  If it hadn’t been for Ida Delia Fontayne, it seemed unlikely that Lilian would ever have given Henry a second thought. Although he had lingered … A young man, even an infuriating one, asking her to a dance wasn’t something that happened every day. Lilian was too thin for the current fashion; too pointy of nose and elbows and knees to be considered one of the village beauties, like Ida Delia Fontayne, whose thick blonde hair and round blue eyes and soft high bosoms drew the eyes of every man in the village up to Lord Lipton himself, it was rumoured; and didn’t Ida know it. Mind you, she’d been a general showbox since Miss Millet’s schoolyard, always in charge of the games, elbowing out shy, caustic, wiry-haired Lilian; fluttering her eyelashes at teachers, the vicar or anyone even passingly likely to show favour. They’d been best friends when they were little; Lilian’s father thought she was adorable and would let her have an extra piece or two of fudge, and Ida Delia caught on to the wisdom of this arrangement and started inviting Lilian to her birthday parties, or to play dominoes, or to summer hangouts round the swimming hole.

  At first scrawny Lilian, with no mother and three big brothers and no knowledge of fashion or Hollywood film stars or lipstick, felt out of place and awkward. But as they grew older, Ida Delia took to Lilian’s sharp, funny tongue and clever ways with homework (handy for copying) and for a time they were close. Then adolescence had begun in earnest, like a winnowing of who the boys liked and who wasn’t going to quite make the grade. Lilian could tell, as Ida Delia announced loudly how embarrassing it was being measured up for a brassiere then getting the same bus home as the vicar, that their friendship might not survive the dawning interest from the lads of the town, and she had been entirely correct. Ida Delia had palled up with Felicity Hayward from the neighbouring farm, whose russet curls and bright green eyes made cows out of boys all the way to Hartingford, and left Lilian with Margaret, who didn’t always look directly at you. Margaret was fun enough, but Lilian hated the idea of friendship being traded as a commodity, and could neither forgive nor forget.

  Lilian liked to think that since she’d started working and living like a young lady, she was less bothered by the likes of Ida Delia Fontayne, or so she thought that summer until she saw her walk down the main street side by side with Henry Carr, laughing uproariously at one of his jokes. Lilian knew Henry wasn’t anything like as funny as that. Mind you, nobody was as funny as the way Ida was going on. She held up her shopping basket and smiled at them politely, but inside her guts were twisting furiously. So, you ask someone to a dance one day and then the next you’re up and down the high street with the town flirt. That was clearly how it worked. Lilian was amazed to find how annoyed she was about someone she didn’t even like. It was just bad manners, that was what was getting her riled.

  ‘Miss Hopkins,’ said Henry.

  ‘Hello, Henry,’ said Lilian, as coolly as she could muster.

  Ida obviously wanted to stop and show off her prize. ‘Henry and I were just heading the same way,’ she said, flicking back her elegantly permed hair that, as she never tired of telling everyone, she had to get done up in Derby at Gervase’s as nowhere else could quite get it right. ‘It’s a shame you missed the dance on Saturday – such fun!’

  She turned to Henry. ‘Lilian’s not really one for the dancing. Do you remember that school dance when she tripped over the squash table? I thought I’d die laughing.’

  Lilian waited for Henry to laugh cruelly along with Ida, but surprisingly he didn’t; he merely nodded and smiled, almost sympathetically. Well, she didn’t need his sympathy now. She hadn’t, she remembered, had it at the time.

  She’d been thirteen years old, just after she and Ida Delia had gone their separate ways, and it was the school’s summer dance. Her brothers – Terence, Ned and Gordon – had teased her ragged round the table. Well, Gordon had, he was always a bit of a rascal. Terence tried to tell him off, and tell her off for dressing loosely – Terence was a prig, always had been, thought he was in charge. Gordon, the youngest, little (he had been born early), always the joker, was carrying on about how Errol Flynn would be all over her when he saw that dress and Lilian had coloured and told them to shut their holes. It was only Neddy, sweet Ned, the middle brother, whom Lilian absolutely adored, blond and handsome, sweet and dreamy, who had told her not to worry, she looked absolutely beautiful. And he had made her feel like a pri
ncess, right up to the point where she had tripped over the stupid tablecloth in front of everyone and drenched herself with squash.

  Henry Carr had laughed every single bit as hard as Ida and her cronies and everyone else, as the juice had run down the old-fashioned dropped-waist dress someone had passed down to her. Ida, of course, had been taken to a dressmaker for the occasion and wore a neatly cut dress with a full skirt. It was a beautiful dress, and its pale blue colour had set Ida’s cream skin and wide eyes off perfectly.

  Lilian, in dated hand-me-downs, taller than nearly every other child her age, had felt awkward enough to begin with, even before she’d tripped over. Henry had been in the corner with the older boys, guffawing mightily.

  ‘I must get on,’ she murmured in the street, banishing the memory while feeling the colour rise once again in her cheeks, and Ida raised her eyebrows and waved gaily. Just once, Lilian glanced back at Henry, and was shocked to find him also looking after her. There was something in his nut-brown eyes that, for once, wasn’t mockery or teasing. Something that, however much she wanted to fight against it, suddenly seemed to make her heart jump and flutter on the wind.

  Rosie thought about Gerard as the bus lumbered on. He’d always been around, but she’d only really noticed him after Mum took off. He’d always had a friendly word for the nurses on his rounds, but they’d mostly just humoured him; his round cheery face and chubby cheeks made him more ‘aww’ material than the latest hunk in Radiology.

  After Rosie had gone with her mum to Heathrow that dank, miserable November Monday morning with an insane amount of luggage and kissed her goodbye, and her mum had asked her one more time if she wouldn’t consider joining her and Pip in the sunshine, she had almost – almost – wavered and changed her mind. But she was halfway through her training and had settled in, and was making her own life now. It didn’t stop her feeling completely and utterly alone, though. She seldom saw her dad, and it tended not to be a great experience when she did. He tried his best but, as he explained when drunk, family life wasn’t for him. Why Rosie was meant to find this useful she had no idea.

  When the cherubic-faced Gerard had popped up on Monday morning as she checked on Mrs Grandle’s fluid levels and asked her if she was all right, he wasn’t to know that he was the first person to ask. Her best friend Mike was on lates so she hadn’t dared phone him. And Gerard, a kindly soul, was genuinely concerned when pretty, bubbly Rosie burst into floods of unexpected tears.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ he had said as she explained. ‘It’s all right. Come and have a coffee on break. Cor,’ he said with some force, ‘I don’t know how I could cope without my mother.’

  This remark had proved to be somewhat prescient.

  But his kindness and sense of fun had helped things along. He had introduced her to silliness and enabled her to rediscover her love of sweet things; he had the dietary habits of a let-loose five-year-old. They had fun eating pick-and-mix at the movies, and every Friday she would find a treat in her locker – a walnut whip, or a little bag of rock. It was cute, even if it hadn’t done much for her waistline.

  ‘Is that it?’ Mike had said, a bit snippily, frankly, when they were discussing Gerard in the pub. Hospitals were small places, without secrets, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. ‘I just thought he’d asked out everyone else and they’d all said no.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Rosie had protested. ‘He’s really nice when you get to know him.’

  He was funny, and kind, and seemed keen. The idea of someone she already knew, with a steady job, rather than someone she bounced off of on nights out, was beginning to appeal – after all, she wasn’t getting any younger. She explained this to Mike, who rolled his eyes and continued to talk about Giuseppe, who made his life a living hell, but it was worth it because of their unbelievable passion.

  ‘What about when that dies down though?’ protested Rosie. Passion wasn’t everything. The last time she’d felt unbelievable passion, it was for a drummer in a failed rock band who’d given her scabies.

  ‘I’ll just provoke a fight,’ said Mike, getting up to fetch another bottle of wine.

  ‘But don’t you yearn for the nice, quiet, simple things in life? Someone to come home to every night? Being settled?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Well, maybe a rest is as good as a change,’ said Rosie, pouring out the wine. ‘Maybe I’d like things just to be nice and calm for a while, no one yelling their head off about moving to Australia.’

  And they had been nice and calm – perhaps a little too nice and calm, but Rosie put that to the back of her mind. Not earth-shattering. Not fast-moving. There were no massively romantic declarations; no ring. But then, Mike and Giuseppe got through a fortune in crockery. And nothing much had changed in eight years. Until now.

  The first thing Rosie noticed about Lipton was that it was possibly the quietest place she had ever been. The main street of the village was completely deserted even though it wasn’t long after eight o’clock. There were only a few street lamps, old-fashioned lanterns that lit up a pub, a large square stone house that looked like it might be the doctor’s surgery, a post office and a couple of small businesses Rosie couldn’t identify. Over the tops of the opposite buildings, blocking out the stars, loomed the great dark shapes of the Pennines, over which she’d just pootled in the bus. A huge fat harvest moon sat low in the sky, silvering the landscape. Somewhere, far away, Rosie could just make out the hoot of an owl.

  After Paddington, with its brash neon and sirens and fast-food joints and late-night trains and street-thronging hordes, Rosie felt as if she’d been picked up and set down again a hundred years in the past. She turned round slowly and picked up her big suitcase, almost scared to make a sound. There seemed to be no lights on in the buildings at all. It was rather unnerving.

  Rosie had printed out a map from Google that showed her aunt’s house, and it quickly became clear from the size of the place that she wouldn’t have far to go.

  The cottage was absolutely tiny, like something out of a fairy tale. It really did have a thatched roof with a dormer window, and smoke coming out of the chimney; it looked like someone ought to be sculpting it on to a plate or lighting it up to use as a tacky Christmas decoration.

  ‘Hello?’ Rosie yelled nervously.

  ‘All right, all right,’ came a cross voice. ‘I’m not deaf.’

  There was a pause, then a shuffling noise, and then, after some wrestling with the doorknob, Lilian opened the door.

  The two women regarded each other. Rosie had been expecting a very old lady; Lilian had been old when she had been a child. Instead, in the murky light, she was greeted by a bowed but still slender figure, with a severely cut bob, wearing what seemed to be a maroon chiffon dress and full make-up.

  Lilian in return had been expecting a young girl, not this curly-haired, rather weighed-down-looking fully grown woman with bags under her pale grey eyes. She remembered little Rosie as a pretty, sparky thing, always putting her dollies to bed and tucking them in and staring at her bag, shyly, too polite and nervous to ask if she had any goodies within.

  ‘Hello,’ said Rosie.

  Lilian eyed up Rosie’s shoes. They were flat and clumpy and covered in mud. She wondered if she could ask her to take them off. But that really would be getting off on the wrong foot.

  ‘You’d better come in then,’ she said.

  Rosie followed her over the threshold, noticing as she did so the pained stiffness in her aunt’s movements. Inside, the room smelled beautiful, of a warm, flowery beeswax. Through another beamed doorway was a little sitting room, toasty warm with a wood-burning stove flickering away merrily in the grate. The mantelpiece was entirely covered in framed photos, many old, but without a fleck of dust. Rosie surmised they were of Lilian herself, and she had clearly been something of a glamour puss in her younger years. Rosie admired a beautiful fifties shot of her, framed in black and white.

  ‘Is this you?’ she asked.


  ‘No,’ said Lilian. ‘I’m creepily obsessed with someone who looks a bit like me.’ Rosie glanced at her to figure out if this was a joke. Lilian’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘So,’ said Rosie, looking around. The living room was tiny. Her enormous, mucky bag seemed to be cluttering the whole place up. Lilian sat herself down carefully in her armchair, as if her bones were made of glass.

  ‘Thanks for having me to stay!’ said Rosie cheerfully, as if she was a house guest and not someone with her heart set on getting in, completing an unpleasant job and getting out as quickly as possible.

  Lilian sniffed loudly. ‘I dare say you don’t want to be here any more than I want you here.’

  Lilian spoke in a posh accent with a touch of the local flattened vowels. She sounded very different from Rosie and her mother. Angie’s dad, Lilian’s big brother, had left Derbyshire long ago to make his fortune in the smoke. It hadn’t quite worked out like that in the end. It occurred to Rosie, sitting herself down on an immaculate floral sofa, that maybe they were the downwardly mobile end of the family.

  ‘No, I’m thrilled,’ Rosie lied, squirming at her aunt’s rudeness. ‘It’s like a holiday in the country.’

  ‘What, forcing me out of my home?’

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Mum just said maybe you needed a bit of help,’ said Rosie, gently.

  Lilian sniffed. Rosie took this, correctly, to mean that Lilian did indeed need help but couldn’t bear to admit it.

  ‘Well, the local doctors are no sodding use.’

  ‘How did you break your hip?’

  ‘Practising for the ice-dancing finals.’

  Suddenly Rosie felt tired. It had been a long day, and she and Gerard had been up late the night before. When Gerard had said he was going to be busy in the coming weeks, a tiny worm in Rosie’s head questioned once again why he didn’t just come up for the weekends. She wasn’t in Swaziland. Why did she always have to make all the moves?