"Student Union" - SJ Bottomley (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

it was too late now. I couldn’t take it back, I couldn’t un-ask it. I had no choice but to deal with the consequences of my actions. Besides, what I was about to hear was fascinating, to say the very least.
I may have been on a roll but this was nothing compared to the streak that the fountain of knowledge that I was stood opposite was experiencing. Looking back now, I should have asked her who she thought would be first in the race for the Premiership, the Grand National and the Boat Race, doubtless she would have give me the three winners and I could then make a killing at the bookies. Oh, and the lottery too, I guess. Seriously, though, she was on fire. Ask her anything and she’d give you the correct answer, as quick as that. In spite of the strangeness of what I had just asked, Trudi didn’t bat an eyelid. She continued, unperturbed. As though what I had asked had been as normal a question as all of the others that I had asked previously. To me, it wasn’t, but to her, obviously, it was. Realising that I had rather gotten away with one, I sighed with relief and turned my attention away from cacking myself and back onto the matter in hand. Listening to what she had to say. Her answer was remarkable and in a way, not at all what I wanted to hear. You’d think that on becoming aware that Kathryn had split up with her boyfriend, I would be ecstatic. That would be the expected reaction, I think. Being in love with her, as I was, this would be exactly what I would want to hear. Erm, wrong. Such a multitude of different and conflicting emotions were going through my head at this time. I was flicking from one feeling to the next and then to another and then back to where I had been to begin with, every five seconds and as a result, it was hard to know quite where I was at any given time. However, when Trudi said this to me, I knew exactly how I felt. There was no mistaking heartbreak. That clarified things as sharply and as quickly as anything. When I had asked what I asked, I was thinking along the lines of what was happening with them in terms of her being at university in Liverpool and him being, I presumed, still here in Salford, in Irlam or Cadishead. Never for a second was I trying to discover if they were still together or not. That wasn’t the object of the exercise, as it were. Anyway, having registered the question in her brain, Trudi answered by saying that Kathryn and Mike – that was his name after all – had split up. What? When? When did this happen? I was stunned. And probably looked like I was, too. Before I go on, I think that it’s important that I take a second or two to explain why this upset me. I guess that you are thinking along the same lines as I expected to be thinking, should I ever hear such a thing. Well, I wasn’t and here’s why. Despite it seeming as though dear Kathryn was in her own world, most of the time, I’d wager that she wasn’t. Either this was nothing more than an impression that she wanted to project for whatever reason or, more likely, she looked like this, acted like this, but was totally unaware that this was how she came across. Now, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. It isn’t. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. For God’s sake, aside from her being completely gorgeous also, this was the main reason that I loved her as much as I did. What she did, what she was able to do was...It’s hard to describe, actually, just how good it was. It was brilliant. Anyway, despite her looking like this, I don’t think she was. I think that she was perfectly in tune with her surroundings, I think that she was absolutely on the ball and knew what was going on equally as much as anybody else, if not more so probably. Therefore, as I said in “Two”, particularly after that Saturday evening in August, I am now certain that she knew how I felt about her. She may not have been able to say just how much I was in love with her, I don’t think the magnitude of my feelings for her was ever something that she was able to get her head around, or was even that concerned about, frankly. But, having seen that knowing smile that she gave to her colleague once she had seen me, that told me that she knew at that point, that I was attracted to her. So, she knew. What she also knew was that it was me, the person that she used to work with. This was why I was more than a little upset when Trudi told me that Kathryn had split up with her boyfriend. She and Mike are no longer together and she knows that I like her, alright, she can do one of two things, depending on how she feels about me. If she feels the same way, if she is attracted to me, as I am to her, then she can come up to me whenever she sees me in the store and ask me if I wanted to go for a drink with her or something. Or, if she isn’t attracted to me, she can do nothing. Which is exactly what she did. That was why I was upset and that was why I felt as though my heart was broken. While she had been with Mike, it didn’t matter how I felt about her or how she felt about me. As long as they were together, she and I would never be a couple. I knew that and to an extent, I was happy with it. Not delighted, not by any means, but happy enough, all the same. Now, to hear that, I knew that that wasn’t quite how it was, that things had changed and that Kathryn and her boyfriend had, at a particular point in time, split up. To hear this and know that she hadn’t felt compelled to come up to me and ask me how about it, that was difficult to take.
It was about to get better...or worse. Depending on how you choose to look at it. So, at an unknown, point in time, the deed had been done and Kathryn was suddenly single again. For the first time in...Oh, God knows how long. Years, I’m guessing. Must be. She then handed in her notice at Tesco having decided that the time was right for her to make a second attempt at the whole university lark. How hard could it be, right? Fine. Packing up her stuff, she headed off for Liverpool in late September and started the first year of her sociology degree. Fine. But, what Trudi now went on to say was that her new boyfriend just so happened to be in the band that Kathryn and Gemma had gone to see the night before. Oh, no. Surely I was going to pass out in a minute. Not only had I been overlooked, which had been bad enough, now I was being told that Kathryn was with someone else and that this mysterious individual that she was now with, was in a band. Not that this last little nugget of truth matter one iota to me. I couldn’t care less what he did. He could have been in the space programme or the Prime Minister or a Premiership footballer or a homeless person living on the street for all that it mattered. The fact remained. She had broken up with this Mike character and was with someone else and that someone wasn’t me. I felt like crying. I really did. This was unreal. I had been pretty much in heaven five minutes ago and now, thanks in no small part to my big, overconfident mouth, I had since descended into some kind of surrealistic, Kathryn related nightmare. I wanted out. Right then. I’d had enough and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. This, from the very beginning, had been something of a delicate line that I had been treading. Trying, as I had been doing, to shape the conversation between Trudi and I in the direction that I wanted it to go in was great, a wonderful idea. But, only if what we were talking about went down well with my fragile and unstable mind. Alright, seldom had I felt upset or angry about Kathryn, almost never, as it happened. I wasn’t even that bothered about her leaving, once I had gotten over the shock that had come to me initially. Afterwards, I had been fairly calm and philosophical about the whole thing. This didn’t mean, however, that any more information that I may learn about her in the future would go down the same way as this had. Don’t forget, this was someone that I was hopelessly in love with. This, for better or worse, is an emotional thing that any individual in a similar position or situation has to deal with, not just me. To hear this, to be told that she and Mike had broken up and that since then, she had met and was going out with someone else...That was terrible.
Fortunately, or else Trudi would have twigged what was going on and why I was asking all these questions about Kathryn for definite; fortunately, I was wearing my pokerface. While on the inside, I was experiencing something very close to utter turmoil, from what she could see, I was perfectly fine. I was still doing my nodding dog routine and the old, “Oh, yes...Hmm...Oh, that’s interesting” kind of stuff and she was absolutely none the wiser, I don’t think, to exactly how awful and sick I was feeling. I literally was feeling sick. It was as though someone had kicked me in the stomach and the physical impact of the blow had left me winded and queasy. However, there was no time to stop and take a second or two out while I recovered and started to feel sorry for myself. Oh, no. Trudi was once again in unstoppable talking form and my memory had to be switched back on so that I could take in all of the stuff that she was coming out with. According to her, whenever it had ended between Kathryn and Mike and for whatever reason, it had ended very badly. I wouldn’t be surprised, frankly. Not that I know a single thing about being in a relationship, of course, I’m not going to start pretending that I do, I don’t and that’s that. However, what I do know is that if you’ve been with someone for that length of time, five, six, seven years, whatever it was; after that length of time, she must have been seriously in love with the guy and I doubt that she would have been able to brush off such a thing as a break up after that long. Even Kathryn, the world’s most unflappable person wouldn’t have the ability to keep herself calm and composed during and immediately after something like that. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling, probably mostly from the way that Trudi was talking; I got the feeling that it happened quite a while ago. I couldn’t say when, exactly, because I didn’t know...But, my point is this. My next question to Trudi was, “Well, didn’t she go to Glastonbury with him?”. Meaning that I was under the impression that from the way that she was talking, this break up had happened before the middle of