Sally had had a mostly great afternoon. She’d taken what was left of Thandie’s twenty quid and gone to the arcade and played lots of games, including that one where you drop 2p coins onto a little shelf and try to make them all fall off the edge, like round copper lemmings, and the one where you try to pick up a cuddly toy with a mechanical claw. Sally enjoyed operating the claw – she briefly wondered whether she should get a job on a building site – and she played the game over and over until she finally managed to lift a toy and drop it down the chute. It was a little plush unicorn, worth far less than the amount of money she’d spent to get it. But she felt a pleasing sense of achievement, and an even more pleasing sense of having made someone very happy when she gave it away to a little boy, who she noticed was staring at it with yearning eyes. After she got bored with the arcade, she’d eaten a hot dog and drunk some fizzy pop, and then she’d stripped down to her underwear and lain on the beach for a while. Some people had stared at her but she didn’t care. What was the difference between bra and knickers and a bikini anyway? True, underwear could go saggy or see-through in the water, but she wasn’t planning to swim. She’d have had to leave her phone behind, and then she might miss it when Nelson Thomas called.
But Nelson Thomas didn’t call. The only person who kept calling and texting was Billy. ‘Where are you? We need to go.’ ‘I’m waiting for you at the station. HURRY.’ Sally was sick of being pushed around. So what if Billy wanted to go? What if she didn’t want to go? What if she liked this town? What if she wanted to stay? What if they got on the train and then Nelson Thomas called her but the reception was bad and she couldn’t hear what he was saying and he was trying to ask her out and even when finally he gave up on talking and sent her a text instead she had to write back saying that she couldn’t meet him for fish and chips because she was living in Inverness now? Did Billy think of that?
As the afternoon passed, two things began to dawn on Sally. One was that there was no reason that she had to do what Billy told her to do. She was so accustomed to Billy being the centre of her universe that it had never occurred to her that her universe might have another centre instead. Nelson Thomas, for example. Or even, the centre of her universe could be herself! Was that possible? Could Sally’s universe revolve around Sally? She’d never been good at physics, but she liked the sound of it: a Sally Universe, where she could live by the sea and keep all her own money and go to the arcade as often as she wanted.
The second thing that dawned on Sally, though, was that maybe Nelson Thomas wasn’t going to call her after all. This was a slower dawn than the first dawn, a sluggish winter dawn when you’re not sure whether the sun is going to make it past the clouds at all, but as Sally replayed every detail of their two conversations in her mind, she kept snagging on the moment that she’d told him that she and the other Sally had been made from the same hair. It was one thing to tell a handsome newsagent owner that you were cloned from William Shakespeare. It was quite another to reveal that you were made from a hair that your mother found on a bus. She was so used to knowing where she came from that she hadn’t thought about how it might freak out someone else, someone normal, like Nelson Thomas. Sally, who had been lying outstretched on the sand, soaking up as many sunrays as she could catch, now sat up and hugged her knees to her. Was it possible that this hair revelation had put Nelson Thomas off calling her?
Sally considered going back to the newsagent to explain, but what would she explain, exactly? It’s not as if she could tell him that it wasn’t true. She wished her mother was there to talk him through it. Her mother had a knack for making things sound clever and important and sensible. Her mother could sell a hair-clone, no problem. But her mother, thought Sally, was a long way away. (Sally was wrong. Her mother was currently as close to Sally as she had been in years, being told by a police officer that her case would be processed any minute now, so please shut up.) Maybe she should call her. Billy said never to call her. But Billy – Billy who had insisted that they should not be separated – wasn’t here now.
Sally picked up her phone and examined it, just in case she had put it on silent by mistake and Nelson Thomas had called without her noticing. She hadn’t, and he hadn’t. She looked up her mother’s number. Her finger hovered above it. Billy, she knew, would be outraged. He had vowed that they would only see their mother again once he had a play in the West End, to prove her wrong – although as Sally saw it, this would in fact prove their mother right. But Sally, while loyal, was beginning to question whether Billy was ever going to have a play in the West End, though this was certainly the West End’s loss. And what did any of that have to do with her anyway?
As she held her phone, her dial finger quivering with indecision, it suddenly rang and, in shock, Sally dropped it face down in the sand. Nelson Thomas, she thought. She picked it up with shaking hands and tried to brush the sand off it. But it was Billy, of course. She felt even angrier with Billy for not being Nelson. She let the phone ring itself to voicemail. Then she let the voicemail beep without checking it. Grudgingly, though, she did read the text message that followed.
‘Help they’re coming’
Despite the warm evening, Sally felt a cold chill. ‘Help they’re coming’ could not be anything good. Her battery was low, and she’d been saving it for Nelson Thomas, but Billy was in trouble. She forgot Nelson in a blink. She dialled up her voicemail and listened to the messages he’d left her. The first few weren’t so different from the grumpy texts he’d sent about waiting at the station, but in the last one, he was obviously running, and terrified. ‘They’re going to lock me up,’ he’d said, but he didn’t say who, or why. All she knew from the message was that Bill was the only one who could help him, and she was the only one who could find Bill.
She put on her clothes as fast as she could. Her T-shirt was inside out and her jeans were full of sand but she didn’t care. She tried to run while putting her shoes on and ended up flat on her face on the beach. She pulled herself up, somehow got her shoes on and kept going.
She tore to the B&B, the only place that she knew Bill might have gone to, took the stairs two at a time, but when she got to the top, Bill’s – or Billy’s – room was empty, save the suitcase and the clothes and books piled up on the floor. She ran back down the stairs again, but her thoughts were racing even faster than she was. Where could she find Bill? How? What would happen to Billy if she didn’t find him?
Reaching the street, she paused, looking to the left and the right, trying to figure out where Bill might have gone. Suddenly she noticed a familiar figure standing on a doorstep a few houses down, talking to a man who shook his head and closed the door. A very familiar figure. It was her. Herself. That is to say, Other Sally.
‘Other Sally!’ she yelled. ‘Other Sally! It’s me! Sally! Real Sally!’
Other Sally turned to her and gasped. Sally wasn’t close enough to hear her gasp, but she knew that she must have, because Sally would have gasped if she’d been in Other Sally’s position. If it wasn’t a gasp it was a small cough. Her mouth was open anyway.
Quite out of breath by now, Sally ran over to her double, who was also running down the stairs and towards her. They stopped and stared at one another. The short, thickset legs that they both liked even though they weren’t long, skinny model legs because they made them feel strong and cute like a pony; the torso with one shoulder sloped slightly lower than the other which they didn’t like because it meant they got back pain if they slept in a funny position; the blonde hair, the same colour as that one from the bus seat, tucked back behind ears shaped like little pink shells which they both considered to be their best feature; the matching expressions of shock tinged with delight. Right now the only real difference in their appearances was that Sally had her T-shirt on inside out.
‘You’re me,’ said Sally.
‘I’m you,’ said Sal.
Then they both burst into huge smiles and hugged. ‘This is so cool!’ they said together.
‘OK,’ said Sally. ‘This is totally amazing and the best thing that’s ever happened in my life and I can’t wait to talk to you for hours and hours and hours and find out if you also get that weird pain in your left shoulder when you’ve eaten too much, because I’ve never met anybody else who does, but it’s going to have to wait because I got a message from my brother Billy saying he’s in trouble and he urgently needs our help.’
‘I knew Bill was telling the truth!’ said Sal. Then she stopped and her lips moved briefly while she figured something out. ‘Oh, wait, it was Other Bill who was telling the truth, but that’s the same as Bill telling the truth because Bill would have told the truth if it had been Bill.’
‘Exactly!’ said Sally.
‘But that means it’s Other Bill who’s in trouble, which means that I’m not going to find him because Real Bill’s the one who told me that he’s staying in a B&B, but Other Bill’s the one who ran away and he could be anywhere else right now. I’ve just knocked on the doors of seven B&Bs when I should have been anywhere else!’
‘That’s OK because Real Billy phoned me and told me that I need to find Other Billy, but he didn’t say why.’
‘It’s because Other Bill told the doctor that he’s a clone and the doctor thinks he’s mad and wants to lock him up and the only way that he can prove that he’s telling the truth is to find Real Bill, only I don’t know where Real Bill is, and Other Bill has run away.’
‘So we need to find them both,’ said Sally. ‘OK, Real Billy’s not at the B&B and is hiding somewhere, and Other Billy isn’t at the B&B either. Do you know where else Other Billy might be?’
‘I can think of somewhere,’ said Sal. She began to lead the way. ‘I do get the shoulder thing, by the way,’ she added.
‘I don’t know why Real Billy said it would be confusing if the clones got together,’ said Sally, following her. ‘It all seems totally straightforward to me.’