Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams by Jenny Colgan Page B

was a decent sort, and he’d like her to meet a decent chap. Before the war took ’em all, he thought glumly, and drained his glass .
    Feeling warm and jolly, and just about over the hair incident, Lilian and Margaret rattled off on their bicycles towards the village hall, Lilian’s heart thumping in her chest, her cheeks flushed without the need of make-up, eyes sparkling. The late-summer air was warm for once, clear and gentle, the stars just starting to come out overhead. Even missing a hank of hair, Lilian felt as close as she ever had to beautiful .

    Rosie was determined to start the next day afresh. She smiled at her aunt, who was coming to the table and trying not to look over-curious about the porridge with wild honey, full cream and fresh blueberries Rosie had made for her.
    ‘Lilian,’ she said, ‘did you ever take legal advice about your book?’
    Lilian looked shifty. ‘I can’t talk about that,’ she said, pursing her lips, and sat herself down. ‘What’s this?’
    ‘It’s to …’ Rosie nearly said ‘fatten you up’ before realising that was unlikely to go down well.
    ‘It’s the fashion breakfast,’ she said. ‘It’s what the models eat.’
    Lilian sniffed. Today she was wearing a cerise shift dress with a bright red scarf tied at the neck. It could have looked a bit peculiar, but with her silver hair nicely done at the back, it was actually rather chic.
    ‘Where did you get the cream?’ said Lilian.
    ‘Uhm, the Spar,’ said Rosie.
    ‘Well, don’t. The Isitts have a perfectly good dairy farm down the road. Just don’t get put off …’
    ‘Put off by what?’
    ‘Never mind,’ said Lilian. ‘That’s where you go. It’s two miles out the village, turn left, down the hill. Can’t miss it. Milk too. Take the empty bottles back.’
    ‘You want me to walk two miles with empty milk bottles?’
    Lilian raised her eyebrows. ‘No, of course not. You can take the bike.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, there’s a problem with that.’
    Lilian made her step out into the bright golden morning. Rosie didn’t trust it, though, and was leaving nothing to chance. Although the shops in the village seemed only to sell those waxed jackets, they’d come to look increasingly attractive in the light of how her H&M shearling was bearing up, i.e., not at all. Plus she was, as she reflected, absolutely brassic. She followed her great-aunt out behind the little cottage and into the dreamy garden.
    ‘In there,’ said Lilian, indicating a small shed. Just the walk round into the garden had puffed her out.
    ‘Seriously?’
    Lilian nodded her head towards the door, and Rosie finally did as she was bid, heaving and straining just to open the rusty bolts.
    Inside was a huge black metal spider of a thing, a ton weight. Rosie popped her head back out.
    ‘You’re not serious,’ she yelled.
    ‘Are you here to help me or not?’
    Rosie hauled it out. It was the size of a small tank. She leaned it against the wall. They both stared at it.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked, finally.
    Lilian looked at her in consternation. ‘That’s my bike! I’m going to let you use it. It’s not that I can’t because of my hip or anything, it’s just that I don’t want to.’
    The bike was very old, solid, with a huge basket on the front. It looked like something the witch rode in The Wizard of Oz .
    ‘Yes, well, I can’t ride a bike.’
    Lilian’s substantial eyebrows shot up. ‘You can’t ?’
    Rosie metaphorically backpedalled furiously. ‘Well, of course I can … I mean, I did when I was younger. Obviously.’
    Her mother had occasionally taken her and Pip to the park and sat having a flask of tea and a fag while they wheeled their second-hand bikes around, then dumped them to play on the climbing frames. Rosie wasn’t sure this really counted.
    You couldn’t ride a bike on the roads where she had grown up – well, some kids were allowed, but not them – and you couldn’t ride them to school or