Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 12
‘She wasn’t brave at all,’ said Henry.
‘And you weren’t watching her. And neither was that Gerda, fluttering her eyelashes at you. They’re stuck on, by the way.’
Henry looked confused.
‘Those eyelashes.’
‘Oh,’ said Henry, as the little girl reached up for a large red lollipop. ‘Really? And aren’t you going to ask her for her coupon?’
‘“Thank you, Miss Hopkins, for helping me with the child” is, I believe, the sentence you were grasping for there, Mr Carr.’
Charlie, the butler from the big house, threw himself round the wooden-framed door, closely followed by a sobbing Gerda. Lilian handed over the bandaged, happy infant, now proudly showing off her lollipop and babbling about her adventure to anyone who would listen, and they watched the party head off.
‘I hope she doesn’t lose her job,’ said Henry.
‘I hope she never looks after your children then,’ said Lilian, then regretted immediately, as so often, the sharpness of her tongue, as Henry looked wounded.
‘You’re not much for the second chances, are you, Miss Hopkins?’ he said, a little sadly.
Lilian swallowed hard, wondering if he was going to ask her to the next dance. Because, sure as eggs were eggs, she was going to say yes this time, and for once she wouldn’t care what the other girls in the village would say. She turned her face towards him, shining and full of expectation, but he had already picked up his cap and was heading for the door.
‘Thank you, Miss Hopkins,’ he said formally, and left Lilian open-mouthed, scouring the sink viciously, thinking that the Gerdas and the Idas of this world had all the fun, while she did all the damned work.
Rosie slept late the next morning and awoke, not to a chiming alarm clock or to buses wheezily groaning to a stop outside her window or, worst of all, to the clattering of bottles being emptied out from the nightclub next door at 4am. This was bad enough when it woke her; worst of all was when she’d been lying awake for so long wondering about the future that she heard the staff carting them out.
But here, the only sound was a faint rustling, and birdsong, a happy twittering somewhere nearby. The room, with its open curtains, was bathed in soft golden light and she sat up to take in her surroundings for the first time. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she breathed a sigh.
The room was plain and bare, but Rosie rather liked it like that. Whoever had converted it had done a beautiful job. It had a plain whitewashed wooden floor covered in thick patterned rugs, with two walls a pale blue and the other two papered in a tiny blue flower print. Her large, antique sleigh bed had white wooden cabinets on either side, both with candlesticks and white candles. A small wooden door led to a compact white ensuite bathroom, another to a built-in wardrobe, and there was a slightly incongruous baggy pink armchair in the corner of the room.
A dormer window looked over the front of the house. Jumping up and peering through it, Rosie saw it pointed towards a field full of sheep, the green gorse of the hills and, beyond, miles and miles of blue-washed sky. On the other side of the room, above the trapdoor, a single tiny window high in the wall looked over into Lilian’s back garden. It was exquisite, bordered by a picket fence, and neatly laid out, hollyhocks and wisteria predominating. It wasn’t large but it was extremely neat, with gravel paths meandering here and there between high-tied rose bushes and sharply clipped hedges. One corner was laid out with vegetables (Rosie wondered about this; Lilian didn’t seem to be eating any of them); one to herbs and, at the very end, where a small wooden gate led out on to yet another field, there were two huge apple trees growing intertwined to form a bower. Tiptoeing to lean out, Rosie thought she could hear the dreamy buzzing of summer bees.
Rosie had never been anywhere like this before. A garden like this, spilling into open land … well, of course, it just didn’t happen in the city, or certainly not in the parts of it she knew well. She took a deep breath, inhaled the scent of the garden, the dark green gorse smell of the hills, the underlying flavour of the earth. She felt as if something was missing; there was no thrum of traffic and motion and trains rumbling beneath the earth or planes cutting through the sky. Just this peace. Shaking her head, she washed and dressed, feeling, for the first time, a tiny hint of excited curiosity about what the day might bring.
Downstairs there was no sign of her great-aunt. Rosie peeped into the bedroom, but the old lady was fine, just fast asleep. Sleep and good food; what Lilian needed more than anything, Rosie surmised. She could work on the second one.
She crept back upstairs and called her mother.
‘Angie?’
‘Aw yih?’
‘Mum! Stop that, you’re not Australian.’
‘Darling, I have a natural facility for accents. I just pick them up. Are you there?’
‘Of course I’m here. What did you think, I was going to say I was coming then fly to the US?’
‘No need to be so touchy! Were you always so touchy?’
Rosie took a deep breath and managed to avoid saying anything sarcastic about being plucked out of your life and sent to the back of beyond to babysit a grumpy geriatric because everyone else was too busy having barbecues by the swimming pool and drinking beer from a little bottle and saying yih.
‘Never mind,’ she said.
‘Did Gerard drive you up and settle you in?’ said Angie, in a conciliatory tone which unfortunately failed in its goal.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I got the bus. I didn’t mind,’ she lied.
Angie didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘Well, OK!’ she added finally. ‘Why don’t you go out and explore?’
Rosie had been considering staying in bed till Lilian got up, hiding with her book and enjoying a rare lie-in on her own that wasn’t punctuated by the sound of Gerard playing Grand Theft Auto at ear-shattering volume, but her mum was insistent.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Lipton’s nice, I used to spend a lot of time there as a child. Get your bearings. Introduce yourself.’
Rosie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not “introducing myself”.’
‘It’s a village, they’ll expect it. They’ll find out who you are anyway, everyone gossips non-stop.’
‘Well, they’ll have nothing to gossip about with me.’
But she decided to follow her mother’s instructions anyway; there wasn’t a sound from downstairs. She wondered, thinking about the tidily made and unused-looking bed, exactly how much sleep Lilian had been getting lately, and figured she’d better leave her to it. Plus, she was absolutely starving and didn’t want to stomp around the tiny doll’s-house kitchen.
‘And you weren’t watching her. And neither was that Gerda, fluttering her eyelashes at you. They’re stuck on, by the way.’
Henry looked confused.
‘Those eyelashes.’
‘Oh,’ said Henry, as the little girl reached up for a large red lollipop. ‘Really? And aren’t you going to ask her for her coupon?’
‘“Thank you, Miss Hopkins, for helping me with the child” is, I believe, the sentence you were grasping for there, Mr Carr.’
Charlie, the butler from the big house, threw himself round the wooden-framed door, closely followed by a sobbing Gerda. Lilian handed over the bandaged, happy infant, now proudly showing off her lollipop and babbling about her adventure to anyone who would listen, and they watched the party head off.
‘I hope she doesn’t lose her job,’ said Henry.
‘I hope she never looks after your children then,’ said Lilian, then regretted immediately, as so often, the sharpness of her tongue, as Henry looked wounded.
‘You’re not much for the second chances, are you, Miss Hopkins?’ he said, a little sadly.
Lilian swallowed hard, wondering if he was going to ask her to the next dance. Because, sure as eggs were eggs, she was going to say yes this time, and for once she wouldn’t care what the other girls in the village would say. She turned her face towards him, shining and full of expectation, but he had already picked up his cap and was heading for the door.
‘Thank you, Miss Hopkins,’ he said formally, and left Lilian open-mouthed, scouring the sink viciously, thinking that the Gerdas and the Idas of this world had all the fun, while she did all the damned work.
Rosie slept late the next morning and awoke, not to a chiming alarm clock or to buses wheezily groaning to a stop outside her window or, worst of all, to the clattering of bottles being emptied out from the nightclub next door at 4am. This was bad enough when it woke her; worst of all was when she’d been lying awake for so long wondering about the future that she heard the staff carting them out.
But here, the only sound was a faint rustling, and birdsong, a happy twittering somewhere nearby. The room, with its open curtains, was bathed in soft golden light and she sat up to take in her surroundings for the first time. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she breathed a sigh.
The room was plain and bare, but Rosie rather liked it like that. Whoever had converted it had done a beautiful job. It had a plain whitewashed wooden floor covered in thick patterned rugs, with two walls a pale blue and the other two papered in a tiny blue flower print. Her large, antique sleigh bed had white wooden cabinets on either side, both with candlesticks and white candles. A small wooden door led to a compact white ensuite bathroom, another to a built-in wardrobe, and there was a slightly incongruous baggy pink armchair in the corner of the room.
A dormer window looked over the front of the house. Jumping up and peering through it, Rosie saw it pointed towards a field full of sheep, the green gorse of the hills and, beyond, miles and miles of blue-washed sky. On the other side of the room, above the trapdoor, a single tiny window high in the wall looked over into Lilian’s back garden. It was exquisite, bordered by a picket fence, and neatly laid out, hollyhocks and wisteria predominating. It wasn’t large but it was extremely neat, with gravel paths meandering here and there between high-tied rose bushes and sharply clipped hedges. One corner was laid out with vegetables (Rosie wondered about this; Lilian didn’t seem to be eating any of them); one to herbs and, at the very end, where a small wooden gate led out on to yet another field, there were two huge apple trees growing intertwined to form a bower. Tiptoeing to lean out, Rosie thought she could hear the dreamy buzzing of summer bees.
Rosie had never been anywhere like this before. A garden like this, spilling into open land … well, of course, it just didn’t happen in the city, or certainly not in the parts of it she knew well. She took a deep breath, inhaled the scent of the garden, the dark green gorse smell of the hills, the underlying flavour of the earth. She felt as if something was missing; there was no thrum of traffic and motion and trains rumbling beneath the earth or planes cutting through the sky. Just this peace. Shaking her head, she washed and dressed, feeling, for the first time, a tiny hint of excited curiosity about what the day might bring.
Downstairs there was no sign of her great-aunt. Rosie peeped into the bedroom, but the old lady was fine, just fast asleep. Sleep and good food; what Lilian needed more than anything, Rosie surmised. She could work on the second one.
She crept back upstairs and called her mother.
‘Angie?’
‘Aw yih?’
‘Mum! Stop that, you’re not Australian.’
‘Darling, I have a natural facility for accents. I just pick them up. Are you there?’
‘Of course I’m here. What did you think, I was going to say I was coming then fly to the US?’
‘No need to be so touchy! Were you always so touchy?’
Rosie took a deep breath and managed to avoid saying anything sarcastic about being plucked out of your life and sent to the back of beyond to babysit a grumpy geriatric because everyone else was too busy having barbecues by the swimming pool and drinking beer from a little bottle and saying yih.
‘Never mind,’ she said.
‘Did Gerard drive you up and settle you in?’ said Angie, in a conciliatory tone which unfortunately failed in its goal.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I got the bus. I didn’t mind,’ she lied.
Angie didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘Well, OK!’ she added finally. ‘Why don’t you go out and explore?’
Rosie had been considering staying in bed till Lilian got up, hiding with her book and enjoying a rare lie-in on her own that wasn’t punctuated by the sound of Gerard playing Grand Theft Auto at ear-shattering volume, but her mum was insistent.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Lipton’s nice, I used to spend a lot of time there as a child. Get your bearings. Introduce yourself.’
Rosie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not “introducing myself”.’
‘It’s a village, they’ll expect it. They’ll find out who you are anyway, everyone gossips non-stop.’
‘Well, they’ll have nothing to gossip about with me.’
But she decided to follow her mother’s instructions anyway; there wasn’t a sound from downstairs. She wondered, thinking about the tidily made and unused-looking bed, exactly how much sleep Lilian had been getting lately, and figured she’d better leave her to it. Plus, she was absolutely starving and didn’t want to stomp around the tiny doll’s-house kitchen.
