The Christmas Surprise (4 page)

They reopened for the post-school rush, Rosie slightly calmed down by Tina’s good sense about babies – and she should know, she’d had twins at twenty-five, had had to raise them on her own, and they were turning out fantastic.

‘Of course, the actual having of them isn’t that nice,’ said Tina, but Rosie made a dismissive gesture. That was at least eight months away. Plenty of time to worry about it later.

The sweetshop filled up with little faces beaming cheerfully as they made their choice from the vast array on the shelves that covered the walls of the shop, with its mullioned windows, its large glass jars, its golden bell, and the old adverts on the walls for Cadbury’s and Fry’s.

Today Ethan wanted flying saucers, and as he was the toughest kid in the school, everyone else immediately started to clamour for those too. The girls, including Tina’s daughter Emily, were going through a candy necklace phase, which made Tina grimace, as it
left red and orange saliva marks on absolutely everything, plus there was an odd thing going on amongst the elder girls where they would all buy one and then compete to be the last to eat it. Rosie made a mental note to stop stocking them; it wasn’t good for them. Maud the doctor’s receptionist popped in for chocolates, and when Rosie looked enquiringly at her – normally she bought them at the weekend so she could watch her reality voting shows with a box by her side – she made a face and said, ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s February and still full of snow. I’m sick of it. Chocolate will help. I’m hibernating until the sun comes out again. It’s like Narnia: always winter and never Christmas.’

Oddly, Rosie had got so used to the weather that she had barely noticed that snow had been falling for three months. She didn’t really expect it to finish before April anyway.

‘Oh Maud,’ she said.

‘It’s all right for you,’ said Maud. ‘All exciting, newly engaged, second winter in the countryside. Try your forty-eighth. All I want is to be on a yacht in the Caribbean. Is that seriously too much to ask?’

‘You could try asking Hye.’

There was a pause, then they both laughed uproariously at the idea of getting the greedy, selfish head of the practice to do anything as generous as that, even though the rural GPs all made a good living.

‘Thanks, Rosie,’ said Maud. ‘You’ve cheered me up already. I might even try and keep these till the weekend.’ She looked at them sadly. ‘Probably not, though.’

The freezing February air blew into the cosy shop as Maud left, and Rosie found herself counting up … September, maybe? She’d need to do the sums. But a lovely autumn baby, the leaves red and gold on the trees, the harvest sun beautiful, huge and heavy in the sky … She was lost in a reverie when she saw the small, thin figure standing in front of her, eyes blinking behind his glasses.

‘Ahem,’ said Edison. He was one of her steadiest customers, an extremely literal child with a hippy mother, Hester, who made him wear hand-stitched items and thus ensured his unpopularity at school. Hester’s New Age beliefs and dislike of refined sugar didn’t stop her from constantly asking Rosie to babysit. Rosie had also helped deliver Hester’s new baby, Marie, at Christmas.

Edison was walking by himself again, after spending time in a wheelchair following a dreadful accident before Christmas. Stephen had saved his life, but he had still been injured. All the attention during his recovery – particularly now, when he was walking, carefully, with a large and ornate stick – had done wonders for his confidence.

‘Hello, sir,’ said Rosie. ‘Have they stopped spoiling you to bits at school yet?’

Edison frowned. He wasn’t very good at being teased.

‘I don’t think I am tebbly spoiled,’ he said, pushing up his glasses. ‘I am most likely not to have tantrums mostly.’

Rosie couldn’t imagine Edison crying about anything.

‘I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘Are they being nice to you?’

Edison frowned.

‘They mostly say, “Edison, you can play football with us.” But I don’t play football now. And I didn’t play football before. Hester says ball games are just male greshun.’

‘Does she?’ said Rosie blandly. Her thoughts on Edison’s mother’s contemporary parenting style were always best kept to herself. ‘Well, maybe when you get rid of the stick you can play.’

Edison looked terrified.

‘But what if the ball hits me, Rosie, and breaks my glasses?’

‘You could just say “Ha ha, I don’t mind” and play on.’

‘But if I was hurt and there was blood?’

‘It’s only a ball, Edison.’

‘I’m scared of balls,’ said Edison gloomily. ‘Can I have some Edinburgh rock?’

Rosie pulled down the jar.

‘Are you sure,’ she asked, as she always did, ‘you don’t want to try something else?’

Edison looked confused.

‘But I know I like Edinburgh rock.’

‘Yes, but you might like something else even more.’

‘But that would be A RISK.’

Rosie smiled and shook him out his little bag.

‘Here you are. How’s Marie?’

His baby sister had been born on Christmas morning. Edison could not be talked out of calling her Marie, after Marie Curie, and now Rosie rather liked it. With a thrill of half panic, half excitement, she realised that Marie and her baby were going to be close in age.

‘Noisy,’ said Edison shortly. ‘And I wanted to play Lego with her, and everyone said, “OH EDISON, NO.”’ His face looked pinched and sad. ‘You know she can hold things! I thought she could hold my Lego Chima!’

Rosie smiled.

‘But what does she do with the things?’

Edison thought about it.

‘She puts them in her mouth.’

‘There you are,’ said Rosie. ‘You can see that might be a problem.’

‘But Lego isn’t nice in your mouth.’

‘Well you know that,’ said Rosie. ‘She doesn’t, she’s only a baby, she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she
needs a big brother to show her that Lego is bad.’

‘Oh,’ said Edison. ‘I could teach her all of that stuff.’

He wandered thoughtfully out of the shop as Rosie moved over to serve some of the more indecisive children. She yelled after him, ‘But don’t give her any Edinburgh rock!’

Edison rolled his eyes at her. He was definitely growing up, she thought.

After they’d shut up shop, Rosie couldn’t settle till Stephen came home. Often he was in before her, with huge stacks of marking, but he had some gruesome Ofsted meeting tonight he couldn’t miss. She made a chicken pie, but couldn’t concentrate and put weird ingredients in it. Mr Dog hopped around and she didn’t tell him to stop jumping up. She lit the fire, but her hands were shaking. She spent a lot of time examining herself in the mirror in the bathroom. How could she not have noticed the swelling in her breasts, the new blue veins that had appeared under her pale skin? Her stomach was the same as ever – i.e. not quite as flat as she would like it to be – but her thick dark curly hair seemed to have extra bounce in it for some reason, and wasn’t growing as quickly as it usually did, and she realised that that was because her body was diverting all its resources to nourishing the life within her.

She was still in the bathroom, slightly stunned, when Stephen turned up, with his heavy, slightly uneven tread – a result of being blown up by a landmine in Africa while working for Médecins Sans Frontières – and his emphatic greeting for Mr Dog.

‘Does having a baby make you burn food?’ he called. ‘I had no idea. Where ARE you?’

‘I’m in here,’ she managed weakly. Stephen banged open the bathroom door.

‘Have you spent all day in dodgy bathrooms?’

As soon as they saw each other, though, all banter and bravado was gone, and they simply stared at one another.

‘Crumbs,’ said Stephen, looking at her in the mirror, a hint of wickedness about his normally serious steely blue eyes.

‘Innit,’ said Rosie, looking back at him.

‘You know, we couldn’t even name a dog,’ said Stephen.

‘Lord, I hadn’t even thought of that.’

And laughing with their secret, the special thing of their very own, in the little cosy cottage under the big frosted sky, they fell into one another’s arms.

Lilian Hopkins was sitting smugly in the day room, with a petition. The petition was to stop the football being shown on the TV downstairs. The four men in the old people’s home were displeased.

Her frenemy, Ida Delia, who had been married to Lilian’s first love before he had been presumed lost in the war, stood behind her, for once on the same side. Both women had made an enormous point of being in mourning for Henry Carr, wearing black every day. Rosie teased Lilian and said it was turning her into a Spanish
condesa
, which troubled Lilian not at all. Continuing with her conversion to Catholicism, she had added a mantilla, which Rosie was quite shocked at. But she had to admit it was rather dashing, with Lilian’s slash of red lipstick and pale face.

‘Also, I might take up smoking,’ Lilian said, at which Rosie really got annoyed. ‘I’m just trying to hasten being back with my Henry again, and I’ve heard it’s nice.’

‘It’s not nice, it’s foul,’ said Rosie.

‘Well, all right, perhaps just some heroin.’

‘If all the sugar you exist on hasn’t killed you’ – Rosie obviously approved wholeheartedly of sweets as a treat, but Lilian’s commitment to them as a full-time diet caused some tension between them – ‘then I can’t imagine a bit of heroin is going to do it.’

‘Excellent,’ said Lilian. ‘Get me some heroin. Ask Moray.’

‘Moray doesn’t know how to get
heroin
.’

Lilian looked at her over the tops of her glasses, as if disappointed at Rosie’s naivety.

‘He’s a doctor!’ she said. ‘When I was a girl, all you could get was morphine. When Ebidiah Lumb got his arm chopped off in the thresher …’

Rosie looked at her.

‘Yes, well things are very different now.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Lilian. ‘That old miser Hye never throws anything away.’

Rosie thought of the dispensary at the surgery, which she’d had cause to visit once or twice, and figured there was probably something in that.

‘Well anyway. I’m still not getting you any heroin.’

‘After all I’ve done for you,’ said Lilian.

‘Lilian, I have something to tell you …’