“You’re both called Charlie Jones?” Rosie looked back and forth between us.
“Yes,” we said in unison.
“And you both think you got offered this job?”
We confirmed this, once again in unison. I glared at Charlie—she kept taking all my lines.
Rosie looked totally stunned by this. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I only offered the job to one person—we only have the funds for one shop manager. I sent a letter…Does one of you have the job offer letter?”
We both reached for our phones in our back pockets, like two cowboys reaching for their guns.
I showed Rosie my photo of the letter. Other Charlie did the same.
I examined her screen. This is where things got very weird. It was the letter—theexactsame one. There was the same crossing-out on line two. I haveno ideahow she got hold of it.
Rosie reached for one of the maps for sale by the till and began to fan herself. “But neither of you has the original?” she asked.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to show the original. Who cares about originals these days?
“Did you send out two by accident?” Charlie suggested. “I guess we both applied with the same name, which maybe confused the system?”
“What system? The post?” I said. “That’s the exact letter I had. It looked exactly the same.”
“That’s not possible,” Charlie said. “Rosie? That’s not possible, right?”
“Could we have…sent two, somehow?” Rosie said faintly. “I handed the letter to my wife, Marly, to sort, I didn’t put it in the envelope myself…I can’t believe…You’rebothcalled Charlie Jones?”
Now we were getting somewhere. Human error—or interference—seemed plausible.
“Could your wife have made a copy of the letter, and sent it to two of us?” Other Charlie asked.
“Well, we do have a scanner…”
Of course they have a scanner here. The technological equivalent of a horse and carriage.
“But whywouldshe?” Other Charlie asked, looking at me. “Why would she send the job offer to two people with the same name?”
The genuine bafflement on her face gave me pause. She looked as confused as I felt.
“She might have forgotten she posted the first one?” Rosie hazarded. “And then did it again, but picked up the other Charlie Jones’s application, and used their address…”
We all stood around for a minute, wearing similarly dubious expressions.
“What do I do now?” Rosie asked, wide-eyed.
“Don’t you remember if the person you wanted for the job was a man or a woman?” Other Charlie asked.
“I didn’t know,” Rosie said. She was beginning to look slightly tearful. “I just know they were called Charlie Jones.”
“Well, which Charlie do you want to employ?” I asked.
“The one who…I don’t know!” Rosie said, her voice rising a pitch. “Youbothapplied? You both want to work here? Which of you wrote that lovely handwritten letter about how special Ormer seems?”
“Me,” I said immediately.
“That was me,” said Other Charlie.
No way. I was not buying this.
