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

all your stuff in it , like your camera and your computer, but when you ring your insurance company they don’t believe you because you are so obviously a nobber . In a Land Rover .’
    Rosie was so absorbed in bringing down curses on the head of the vanished driver, she hardly noticed when two lights appeared behind her, and another Land Rover skittered to a sudden, horrified stop.
    A late-middle-aged, very tall woman alighted.
    ‘What the hell are you doing in the middle of my road?’ she shouted.

    Rosie wiped the rain out of her eyes, and lowered the fist she suddenly realised had been angrily raised.
    ‘Uhm … well, I got lost.’
    ‘Where are your clothes?’ barked the woman, who was wearing a Barbour jacket and an enormous deerstalker hat. Her wellies were dark green and had a rubber tie at the top, Rosie noticed. No flowers at all.
    ‘Uhm, I got wet.’
    ‘You’re going to get hypothermia in about a second. Where are you going?’
    ‘Lipton.’
    ‘Well, you’re facing completely the wrong way … get out of my road!’
    Rosie jumped to one side, completely intimidated.
    The woman hurried back to the car, then looked up again. ‘You’re not … you’re not a vet by any chance?’
    Rosie shook her head. ‘No.’
    ‘No, of course not, what was I thinking, look at what you’re wearing …’ The woman shook her head. Rosie finally realised she was extremely distressed.
    ‘Why, what’s the matter?’
    ‘Bloody … bloody vet’s an hour away operating on a horse in the next valley. I’ll need to get to the next town over … It’s my dog …’
    Rosie peered into the back of the Land Rover, then clapped her hand to her mouth. Staring at her with wide, unblinking, terrified eyes was a large golden retriever. That wasn’t what caught her eye though. Sticking out of his abdomen – grotesquely, spreadeagling his paws away from it – was a huge coil of barbed wire.
    ‘Christ,’ said Rosie.
    ‘Quite,’ said the woman. ‘So, if you could get out of my road and out of my way—’
    Rosie shook her head. ‘How far is the next town?’
    ‘Forty miles.’
    ‘That’ll take too long,’ she said.
    ‘I know,’ said the woman. ‘That’s why we’re following the doctor. But I don’t know if he can manage on his own.’
    ‘The doctor ?’
    ‘Do you have any better ideas?’
    Rosie shook her head. The idea of a doctor trying to helpthe poor beast in the back … It was crazy. On the other hand, she definitely, definitely needed a lift back into town.
    ‘Uhm, I’m a nursing auxiliary,’ she said quickly, not stressing the ‘auxiliary’ part.
    ‘You’re a nurse?’
    ‘Auxiliary,’ said Rosie, quietly. The rain showed no sign of letting up. But she had held down heavy patients before, helped with catheters, held paws … well, hands.
    ‘I might be able to help,’ she said.
    The woman revved the engine.
    ‘Get in then,’ she said brusquely, and took off with a squelch of brakes in the mud before Rosie had even closed the door.
    Rosie patted the dog’s head. ‘There, there. You’re going to be all right. I just need to wash my hands, then we’ll make you feel all better, yes?’
    The dog whined slightly in response, his eyes glassy, which worried Rosie. She knew it was better when patients were bolshy; it meant they still had a bit of fight left in them.
    ‘Hurry up,’ she said, but the woman in front was already driving through the rain like a maniac.

    Back in the village, which turned out to be over a completely different hill from the one Rosie would have expected, the sky was dark and the streets were empty. The practice was locked up – there obviously wasn’t a surgery every day, and it had been closed that morning when Rosie passed by – but the white Land Rover that had sprayed her earlier was parked haphazardly up alongside the building, and a side door wasopen. It was peculiar, the surgery had obviously at one time been a rather grand house, and still had a fully