Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop

by Jenny Colgan

  He briefly considered running into the house to have a shower and change, but no, the ring was burning a hole in his pocket. He couldn’t wait. It couldn’t. Plus, there were early-­morning churchgoers and dog walkers on the main street heading to first ser­vice, and he absolutely couldn’t handle their cheery greetings, not yet. He had something he had to do.

  He stuck the frankly complaining Land Rover into reverse and headed up toward Peak House.

  The snow had started again—­the snowiest winter in memory, muffling all sound and rendering the world such a strange place. It was going to be a day for huddling around the fire.

  He quickly flashed back again to Rosie’s hurt face when he announced he was going away. Suddenly a panic gripped him. What if she’d already left? What if she was on her way to Australia? What if she’d locked up the house and was on her way? No, surely Lilian would have told him. Of course she would. He was just being paranoid.

  Nonetheless, he urged the Land Rover onward up the snowy gradient. He took out his phone with shaking fingers, but not only was there no signal, there was no charge to phone anyone with even if there had been. He cursed loudly. But not as much as he cursed when he got to Peak House to find it, too, empty and shut up.

  THERE WAS NOTHING else for it. He was going to have to give up and go back to his bloody mother’s and wait it out there. Exhausted and disappointed, his exhilaration was fading, and he was halfway across the peaks, in the middle of nowhere, when he smelled burning. Shortly afterward, the Land Rover made a final protesting noise and stopped altogether, at which point Stephen remembered that in his hurtling rush to leave, he had forgotten to top up the oil before he’d started out for London, and that because he’d been in such a hurry to get there, he’d only grabbed a tweed overcoat, not a hat, gloves or anything else remotely useful in a blizzard. And this road between Peak House and Lipton Hall was used only by estate staff—­all of whom were on holiday today and tomorrow—­and Rosie’s family, and Christ only knew where they were. Dubai by now, quite probably.

  That was when Stephen turned Hester Felling-­Jackson into only Lipton’s second sweariest inhabitant of the last twenty-­four hours.

  Chapter 26

  IT WAS LIKE walking into a different house. For starters, the front door was flung wide open at the noise of their arrival. Pip had driven them over there first thing in the morning, Rosie, completely exhausted, huddled in the back, Mr. Dog and Meridian both on her lap to keep her warm. Hetty had been quite clear that she would like to see them before they all went to church together, and Angie had said, “when in Rome,” and the children were quite excited at the prospect of seeing all their new friends from the village, so that was fine.

  But more than that. Every light in the building blazed out, warm and cozy looking, something that normally only happened when Hetty had very high-­paying guests. She herself, dressed in what was presumably a seasonal red dress but looked also quite a lot like a horse blanket with a hole in it, plus some pearls, was standing in the doorway to meet them; the great black door also had a huge home-­made wreath hanging on it.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said, ushering them inside, kissing them all. “Come in, come in.”

  Inside, every fireplace was clean and blazing and lit. Angie had bought a ridiculous fake fur bobbly coat in Derby that made her look like a cowering wolf, but she found she had to take it off straightaway. Desleigh and Pip brought in mountains of presents from the back of the car. The children were incandescent with excitement, Kelly wearing a pretty red dress with smocking, Shane, amazingly, devoid of his Nintendo (although Rosie had a fair clue what was inside his tiny packages), and Meridian still in her Spiderman pajamas although with a large red sweater over the top of them and some tinsel around her neck as a concession to the season.

  Mrs. Laird fussed forward and collected the champagne they’d brought, and Rosie and Angie exchanged glances of relief that Hetty had kept her word and wasn’t cooking. Lilian turned up too at about the same time, dropped off from the home. Rosie gave her a shrewd look. She was expecting her to be grieving, thoughtful, distracted. Instead, she was as giggly as a puppy. Rosie was worried about her.

  In the main sitting room, there were smoked salmon fingers and pâté on toast points and champagne all ready to go, the most comfortable armchair ready for Lilian, and an enormous tree that stretched right to the ceiling. It was beautiful, and Meridian clapped her hands just at the sight of it. Rosie looked around, but of course she’d known straightaway. She hadn’t heard from him. He wasn’t here. Presumably whooping it up in London with his fancy friends. And just as well; she’d barely had the energy to drag herself under the shower and pull on an old dress. Two glasses of champagne and she rather thought she’d be out like a light.

  “Now, gifts first or church first?” said Hetty, and of course the children clamored for presents, so they were all allowed to open the packages under the tree while Angie took thousands of photographs. Kelly nearly cried at the beauty of her Snow White costume. Meridian shrieked with delight and recognition at the James Bond car and immediately started pulling off her Spiderman pajamas and demanding a smart suit and tie.

  “It is very good of you to do this,” said Rosie quietly to Hetty. She guessed it was Hetty’s way of saying sorry and, maybe—­the thought choked her—­goodbye.

  Hetty was watching the children excitedly rip at the paper under the sparkling lights of the tree, and her face had a slightly misty look to it.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Should do it more often, really. They’re not bad, these little blighters.”

  And as Shane shouted out his thank yous to his mother and father—­while gamely keeping the secret of Santa Claus safe from the little ones—­then sat down quietly to start killing space baddies in the corner, and Kelly performed a loud and impromptu rendition of “A Whole New World” and Meridian went patiently around to every single person, including the nice jolly catering ladies in the kitchen, explaining that James Bond’s car could shoot rockets, Rosie could only agree. Mr. Dog sat on her lap licking at the smoked salmon. He had forgone hanging out with his cousins for the warmth of the fireside and the prospect of treats.

  ‘You are really a very fat and lazy dog,” said Hetty to him affectionately.

  “He is not,” said Rosie stiffly, but she was smiling.

  “ALL RIGHT!” Angie was saying loudly, clapping her hands together. The children all ran in behind her, their faces full of mischief and glee, and slowly joined hands, and Pip and Desleigh joined them, unable to hide their smiles too.

  “For giving us the most wonderful, amazing snowy holiday ever, we have a special gift for our Auntie Rosie.”

  “IT’S—” started Meridian, but Shane clapped a hand over her mouth before she could go any further. Angie handed it over.

  “We miss you, precious girl,” said Angie and kissed her on the cheek.

  Rosie stared at the small parcel. Then she opened it up. Inside was an envelope, and inside that, a ticket. Open. For Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. One way.

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Oh,” she said. “But . . .”

  “Don’t panic,” said her mum. “You can use it as half of a holiday, anything you like, okay? We’re not kidnapping you.”

  “I know,” said Rosie. “I know.”

  But she couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over down her hand. Desleigh mistook it for gratitude and put her arm round her.

  “Don’t worry about it, yeah? Pip makes plenty of money, okay?”

  “Um, it’s not that,” Rosie tried to explain, but she couldn’t get it out right. She didn’t notice Lilian and Hetty exchanging worried looks.

  “I think . . . I think . . . Well, I think maybe I will come. Maybe.”

  “YAY!” shrieked Meridian. “AUNTIE ROSIE IS COMING! She’s sleeping in my bed,” she added.

 
“She is not,” said Kelly. “She’s sleeping in the spare room. Everyone knows that.”

  “I think she wants to sleep in my bed, DON’T YOU, Auntie Rosie?”

  “I think I will,” said Rosie, as the little girls gathered around her and cuddled her, and she let the tears flow and pretended it was from happiness after all.

  STEPHEN LOOKED THROUGH the car, but there wasn’t much useful. He cursed himself, so stupid. What was he thinking of? He could hear his father’s long-­gone, domineering tone in his ear once more. “Didn’t check the oil? Bally idiot.” Sighing, he turned up the collar of his overcoat and grasped his cane. The last thing he really wanted to do was to fall down out there. The car thermometer reported that it was two degrees below freezing. It would be ironic, he thought, if he ended up freezing to death on his own bloody land. He checked his phone again. Nothing. Bloody hell.

  It was torture getting out of the relative warmth of the car. Strong winds hurled themselves down from the peaks, thrusting flurries of snow into his face and down the back of his coat, which proved, as he had predicted, fine for hopping from cab to cab in London but was nothing like up to the job of seeing him through a snowy Derbyshire hillside; his polished old-­man brogues, which Rosie had always found hilarious, weren’t ideal either.

  He moved forward carefully but steadily with his stick, feeling like a complete idiot for getting himself into this situation in the first place. Totally his own fault. And the stupidity of it was that it really could be serious. If he slipped out here, fell off the road into a drift . . .

  It occurred to him yet again that if he’d joined the bloody army like his dad had wanted him to, he’d probably have all sorts of survival skills for this kind of situation.

  HETTY WENT UP to Lilian as the children scattered to open boxes and start putting toys together. Angie was standing by with about three hundred packets of emergency batteries and a packet of assorted screwdrivers.

  ‘Where’s Stephen?” said Lilian in a low voice. “I thought he was on his way here.”

  “I sent him to you,” said Hetty. “Well, we know he got that far. Did you put him off?”

  “I did my best,” said Lilian thoughtfully. “But in the end he was pretty adamant about it.”

  They both looked at Rosie, who was doing her absolute best to pretend she was fine and happy and helping Meridian put her Spiderman sticker book together.

  “I thought so too,” said Hetty sadly. “I tell you what, Lilian, I know he’s my son and everything, and I know his life hasn’t always been easy. But if he muffs this up again and goes all wobbly on us, I swear I will kill the bugger.”

  Lilian nodded sagely.

  “I know what you mean.”

  Hetty picked up the phone in the hallway and called him again, but there was no response.

  STEPHEN COULDN’T FEEL his bad leg. This wasn’t a good sign, not at all. Not just the cold—­his fingers were blue and numb, his teeth rattling uncontrollably in his head. But the fact that he couldn’t feel his leg meant that he didn’t know what harm was being done to it; there was already nerve damage. Still, it was unlikely that he was going to stumble upon a friendly local coffee shop in the next five miles. There was nothing to be done but carry on. He put his head down, wishing that he didn’t always seem to be heading straight into the wind. He tried to put his other hand in his pocket, but he needed it out for balance. Even with the sleeves of his sweater pulled right down, it was still perilously cold.

  “SO,” SAID HETTY, observing the scene before her. “Are we all going to church?”

  The children looked up at her enquiringly.

  “Not me,” said Lilian. “I’m Catholic.”

  “You are not Catholic!” said Hetty. “My father wouldn’t have had you in the house!”

  “Ah, prejudice,” said Lilian. “We are a long-­tormented race, us Catholics.”

  “You can’t go Catholic on a whim, for one,” said Hetty. “And you can’t go Catholic just because you hate the vicar.”

  “I do hate that vicar,” said Lilian.

  “Well, then you’ll be entering a holy state with hatred in your heart,” retorted Hetty, whose belief in the Church of England was as solid and unchanging as her belief in the gentry, the damage done to the country’s moral standards by decimalization, indoor toilets, central heating and the loss of national ser­vice, and the superiority of dogs to cats. God in his heaven, Liptons in Lipton Hall and everything from there cascading downward to sheep and the mice in the stables.

  “That’s all right,” said Lilian serenely. “I can say sorry at the last minute and it will all be fine.”

  Rosie didn’t feel like moving at all, much less saying hello to everybody in town, and was going to offer to stay with her great-­aunt, but her mother looked surprisingly interested.

  “Do you want to go?” Rosie asked.

  Angie shrugged. “Well . . . you know. Remember, this is where my dad grew up. This is the church he went to . . .”

  “He was always bunking off church,” said Lilian.

  “ . . . and the families he grew up with and the world he knew really well. So, I wouldn’t mind exactly.”

  “We want to go!” said Kelly, surprisingly.

  “Yeah, we want to see our friends from sledding,” said Shane. “And . . .”

  He held up a gift Rosie hadn’t seen. An old, but well-­polished sled. It was Stephen’s, of course. Rosie looked over at Hetty. She shrugged.

  “He can use it when he visits. It needs a boy.”

  “Well,” said Rosie, impressed. “Okay then”

  She heaved herself out of the armchair. Anything to distract herself, to get through this interminable day. Once she had waved them off tomorrow . . . then she could go home, and go upstairs to the little bedroom in the attic, and sob her heart out. She only had to hold on till then.

  “I shall take Buzz Lightyear,” said Meridian, holding up a much-­cherished new toy. “He LOVES church.”

  “He probably does,” said Rosie.

  FROM OVER THE long side of the fell, Stephen, slightly disoriented, thought he heard the sound of cars starting up. Panicking, he felt sure in his exhaustion that they were gone, that he had missed his last chance to see Rosie before she left forever. He started, ludicrously, to try running across the snow and ice. This landed him with nothing better for his pains than a tumble straight into a snowdrift, piled high, which soaked him through.

  The cars were not coming this way. The noise disappeared. For a second, Stephen thought about staying there, pulling the snowdrift over him like a blanket and finally getting some sleep. He seemed to be out of the wind down here; it was more comfortable than he could have imagined . . .

  His frozen fingers fumbled against the breast pocket of his coat, and he felt there the tight, sharp outline of the little box. He had to go on.

  DESPITE THE VICAR’S doing his best not to mention God at all in his sermon, Rosie couldn’t help enjoying it a little, even in her misery. Shane and Kelly seemed to have made an amazing number of friends in the short time they’d been here. Kent and Emily were both in their Sunday best, beaming at her, Emily incredibly like her mother and clutching a huge doll with limpid blinking eyes, Kent wearing a tie, Jake’s hand on his shoulder. Tina was smiling her head off too; they did look like a family in an advertisement.

  “Hey,” said Rosie, as Tina gave her a hug, concerned about how awful she looked. “Did you hear about Hester?”

  “Oh yes,” said Tina. “It’s quite the news of the town. Is it really true she’s called Marie Christmas?”

  “I think I may have to have a word with Edison about this before they make it to the registrar,” said Rosie. She saw Moray at the side door.

  “I didn’t have you for a God botherer,” she said, kissing him.

  “Oh, the Reverend goes to such ludicrous lengths to
make it inclusive that I feel obliged to humor him,” said Moray, rolling his eyes. “Plus I can diagnose some poorly folk without getting called out, AND—”

  One of the upper land farmers came over cheerily.

  “Moray. Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Thanks for all your help with the old piles.”

  “Not at all,” said Moray, lying through his teeth as always. “I didn’t even remember what you came in for.”

  “I can’t believe they still fall for that,” said Rosie, but she smiled appreciatively at the bottle of sloe gin that had just been handed over.

  “Where are you having lunch?” she said.

  Moray smiled shyly.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Well, it may just be that a certain young house officer in Carningford . . .”

  “It’s on again? Fantastic.”

  “Christmas brings out that side of ­people. But anyway, he’s Jewish, so I don’t even have to eat another Christmas dinner! We’re having Chinese food! Oh, thank you so much,” he said, accepting a large bottle of champagne from a tiny old lady.

  “Prolapse,” he whispered loudly to Rosie.

  “You can’t say that in church,” she scolded. Moray always cheered her up.

  “Can I say, once you’ve found a Jewish man, you won’t go back?” said Moray mischievously, till Rosie kicked him on the shins.

  “Ow! No sloe gin for you. Or . . .”

  He glanced at the label.

  “Petrus. OOH, very nice, thanks so much, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “Amazing,” said Rosie and went back to where Hetty was sitting (in the front pew, of course) and joined in the opening carol, “Good King Wenceslas,” skipping only slightly on the line about the feast of Stephen.

  Sire, the night is darker now,

  And the wind grows stronger;

  Fails my heart, I know not how;

  I can go no longer.