“I take it back, what I said about you being someone who always gets what you want,” she said. “I don’t think I was really talking about you, there, to be honest. I know being an addict is impossibly hard. Losing control of your own life like that. Andgetting sober…I appreciate you’re going through something tough. So I’m sorry.”
I wondered whether I should say I was sorry, too, for the kiss. But I found I wasn’t at all. So after a few minutes of silence, I said, “I’m sorry you got stranded on a very small rock in the Channel because of me.”
“Well, thanks. It wasn’t really your fault. And it was character building. I think you might’ve been right about the anxiety.”
Her neck was bared, her hair all pulled over the other shoulder. I wanted to press my lips against it. Get closer to her, getmoreof her. I wonder if you can become addicted to a person. I think maybe I could.
“There’s nothing wrong with having anxiety,” I told her, forcing my gaze away.
“That really does not feel true.”
“Right. No. I guess it’s not nice.”
“But then, according to you, neither am I.”
That made me laugh—her voice was so sardonic. It was pure, true Charlie, I think.
“Do you think, between the two of us, with all our baggage, we add up to about one competent farm shop manager?” Charlie asked.
The rain was actually getting a little lighter now. I could see the moon, a pale sliver above the cliffs.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” I said.
“Not if we carry on like this, though. At the moment, we redo almost everything the other person does. Yesterday you stayed thirty minutes to cash up when I’d already done it. What did you think I’d done, stolen a tenner?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Nobody can ever get the till to balance, and I don’t know what your game is.”
“There is no game, Jones,” Charlie said. All at once she sounded exhausted. “There’s just me, trying to live my own life, and a bunch of people who can’t add up trying to count the till. I don’t want to steal from the shop. I want it to do well. You want it to do well. We’ve got an advantage, with two of us, and we’re wasting it because we can’t trust each other to do anything right.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We should split our duties, for starters. And we should start communicating properly. We should have comanager meetings.”
I pointed out that we live together (a fact that she might be able to ignore but I absolutely cannot) and are together alotof the time, so meetings surely aren’t necessary.
“But we don’t talk,” she said. “Not like this. Not properly.”
I thought,If we talked like this every night, I wouldn’t stand a fucking chance.
She squeezed the sleeve of her hoodie, sending a little stream of water onto the concrete between us. I looked down at my sodden trainers. The walk home was going to be wet and cold even if the rain eased off.
“I really don’t know how we both ended up with this job, Jones. I can promise you that,” she said.
And I believed her. For the first time, I really did.
“Maybe it was…Rosie, then, and Marly?” I said, shaking my head even as I said it. “Could they have orchestrated the whole thing? Maybe they saw that there were two applicants with the same name and figured they could have two employees for the price of one?”
“That’s crazy,” Charlie said. “For starters, only two nutters would actually stay for the job for half pay.”
“Fair point.”
“There is something about them, though,” Charlie said. “Don’t you think they ask very personal questions for employers?”
My stomach bottomed out as I thought about what I’d shared with Marly that afternoon.
“Why would they want to know personal stuff about us?” I said.
“I really don’t know. But they did totally roll with it when we both turned up. They’ve not pushed to work out which of us they actually offered the job to, not even once.”
