Sally had a lime and soda in the pub, plus two packets of cheese and onion crisps and some dry roasted peanuts. She had enough money for a burger and fries or the curry of the day, but she wanted to make sure that she saved some of it for Billy. It was his friend who had given it to her after all.
Don’t get separated, Billy had said, so she knew she should wait for him in the pub, but time passed and Billy didn’t come back, and she was feeling worse and worse about what he had told her about, about her hair-sister. In the end she put what was left of the £20 in her pocket and left the pub, trying not to be tempted back by the tantalising aroma of chicken in a basket being eaten by a grey-haired woman by the door.
Thomas’s News was just as she had left it, bar the newspaper display outside being a bit more scant of newspapers. As she pushed the door open and went inside, she noticed, even more than she had before, what a lovely place it was. There were so many little details she hadn’t picked up on, like the curlicues around the edge of the ‘OPEN / CLOSED’ sign on the door, or that the scoop next to the rack of pick and mix was made of polished stainless steel, not plastic, and that the paper bags hanging beside it were all neat and crisp with sharp edges and pink-and-white stripes.
She wondered whether Nelson Thomas would recognise her, she probably hadn’t made much of an impression on him, but as soon as she walked in he looked up from the sudoku he was doing and smiled that smile.
‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you back until Monday morning.’
‘Hello, Nelson,’ she said. There was something delicious about his name, even though she didn’t feel that she had the right to say it.
‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘You look a bit down.’
‘I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake,’ said Sally. She felt so ashamed she couldn’t even look him in the eye. ‘When I came in earlier, you asked me if I was Billy’s sister and I said yes. And that’s why you gave me the job. I didn’t realise that there was another Sally and another Billy, and that the Billy that you spoke to was the other Billy, and that the Sally you should have given the job to was the other Sally.’
‘Well, it’s very nice of you to come and tell me that,’ said Nelson. ‘But I don’t know this other Sally. She hasn’t been in to see me. You have, and I like you, and I want you to have the job.’
‘You like me?’ said Sally. She looked up – not as far as his eyes, but as far as his beautiful gleaming forearms.
‘Yes,’ said Nelson.
‘Oh.’ Sally felt her face go slightly hot, and she hoped that Nelson didn’t notice. ‘But the thing is, you were never supposed to meet me at all, you were only ever supposed to meet the other Sally. So if you think you like me, maybe it’s her that you really like. And it’s nice of you to say that I can have the job anyway, but it wouldn’t be fair. It’s her job. I can’t steal it from her. I’m sure she’ll come in to see you soon, and then everything will be as it should be.’
‘Well, if that’s the way you want it,’ said Nelson.
‘It’s not the way that I want it, but it’s the way that’s right.’
There was a silence. Sally let herself look up a little more, and she saw that Nelson was looking at her, with an expression of quiet admiration. Not that she recognised it as such, being unfamiliar with what an expression of quiet admiration looked like. She knew that it was a good expression though.
‘Maybe,’ said Nelson, ‘you could leave me your phone number, just in case this other Sally doesn’t come. Or … in case I wanted to call you.’
Now Sally looked him in the eyes. She smiled. He handed her a pad of paper and a pen that were beside the phone on the counter and she wrote down her number and ‘Sally’ and then in brackets ‘the first one’.
‘So maybe I’ll call you later,’ said Nelson.
‘Great,’ said Sally. She could feel her heart beating hard in a way that she liked.
She was halfway to the door when she turned and added, ‘By the way, I should probably mention, the other Sally looks exactly like me. In case that’s confusing.’
Nelson frowned.
‘We were made from the same hair,’ Sally explained. ‘OK! Bye then!’
She left the shop feeling happy and excited.