Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams Read Free

offered to walk her to her tube stop, then tentatively took her hand, she suddenly felt alive with possibility, excited that someone could be so clear about fancying her. She’d often found that kind of thing confusing before; crushing helplessly on men who were out of her league, ignoring chaps with whom she later realised she might have had a chance.
    Rosie often felt that she’d missed a meeting every other girl in the world had had, when they were about fourteen, in which they’d learned how the boyfriend-and-girlfriend thing actually worked. Maybe the PE teacher had taken everyone aside, like she did with the period-and-BO talk, and briefed them all thoroughly. This is how to tell who fancies you. This is how to talk to a guy you like without making a complete idiot of yourself. This is how to politely leave a one-night stand and find your way home. It was all a bit ofa mystery to Rosie, and everyone else seemed to find it so easy.
    Meeting Gerard at twenty-three seemed like the answer to her prayers – a real, proper boyfriend with a good job. At least it would get her mum off her back for once. And right from the start he’d been keen. She was a bit taken aback to learn he was twenty-eight and still lived with his mother, but hey, everyone knew how expensive London was. And she enjoyed, at least to begin with, having someone to look after; it made her feel grown-up to buy him shirts, and to cook. When, after two years, he suggested they get a place together, she’d been absolutely delighted.
    That had been six years ago. They’d bought a tiny grotty flat that they both felt too tired to do up. And since then, nothing. They were, if she was totally honest, in something of a rut, and perhaps a little separation might just … She felt disloyal for even thinking it. Even if her best friend Mike was always rolling his eyes. But still. It might just shake them up a little bit.

    The bus driver grunted. Rosie jumped up, reaching for her bag, and followed his beard, which he’d nodded in the direction of a tiny pinpoint of light, far away. Rosie realised this must be the village, and that they must be at the top of a big hill. Cripes, where were they, the Alps?

    That agency day, Rosie had been looking at the pepperoni pizza box and wondering for the thousandth time how shecould expand Gerard’s diet. She liked to cook but he complained that she didn’t make anything quite like his mum did, so they ate a lot of takeaways and ready meals. She was also thinking about her job.
    She had absolutely loved working in A&E as an auxiliary nurse. It was busy and exhausting and sometimes emotional, but she was never bored and always challenged; occasionally ground down by working at the sharp end of the NHS, but often inspired. She loved it. So of course they closed the unit. Only temporarily, then they were going to reopen it as something called a Minor Injuries Unit, and she was offered the chance either to stay on for that, which didn’t sound very exciting, or to relocate, which would mean a longer commute. She’d suggested to Gerard that they move, but he wanted to be close to his own hospital, which was fair enough. Even though an extra bedroom, maybe a little bit of outdoor space, might be … Gerard didn’t like change, though. She knew that about him.
    So, in the meantime, she was doing agency work, filling in for sick or absent auxiliaries wherever she was required, often at only minutes’ notice. It had a reputation of being easy money, but Rosie knew now that it was the opposite. It was a grind – everyone used the agency staff to do the absolutely crappiest jobs that they might ordinarily have had to do themselves – the travelling was murder, she often worked double shifts with no days off in between, and every day was like the first day at school, when everyone else knew where things were and how everything worked, and you were left scrabbling in their wake, desperately trying to catch up.
    Then, that day,