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

along it, coming from your car to the big opening at the front, if you are so inclined, it does allow you to look in. And, as luck would have it, as far as I’m concerned, the bit that you can see, the bit that you can look in at is the checkout area. When Kathryn worked there, this is exactly what I used to do. Having parked and begun to make my way into the store, I would have a quick look to my left, through the glass facade, to see if my darling Kathryn was working or not. Sometimes I saw her and sometimes I didn’t, even if she was working. It wasn’t always a hundred percent accurate. Saying that, though, it was still good fun. It was also something that I stuck to once Kathryn had left. Force of habit, you might call it. Now I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, Linzi perhaps, but not with the same intensity that I was with Kathryn. On this particular evening, the Monday in December, I performed this usual act and to my amazement I saw...or thought I saw, someone that looked suspiciously like Rachel. With the view that I had of her, that is to say, me only able to see her left hand side and from quite far away; with this kind of view, I couldn’t be certain at all that it was her, but if I was to be shot, I would say that it was more likely to be her than not. If it was, if when I eventually got in there and got a better look, and it turned out that it was indeed her, then that, I figured, would be excellent. I hadn’t seen her since September, I think it was. I was halfway through writing what I wrote about her and she went and disappeared. Marvellous(!). What this did, however, was further fuel my theory that she was, at that point in time, in some sort of full time education, be it college, university or whatever it was. Working at the local supermarket for the duration of the summer, while she wasn’t studying for exams and didn’t have much else to do and then going back when the year started again in mid to late September, seemed like a quite logical strategy to adopt. Now, in December, if the girl that I had seen the side of was Rachel, then this would all but confirm it. Education finishing for the Christmas break and while she was out of action, as it were, she may as well earn a few quid, as she had done a couple of months or so previously.
Going through the security barriers with my trolley or basket, I was curious and excited now, to discover if my inkling had either been correct or complete nonsense. Because this person, Rachel or otherwise, was situated by one of the checkouts closest to the door, it wasn’t long before I found out. Funnily enough, I was right. It was her. First time for everything, I guess. She was, naturally, as beautiful as ever. This pleased me quite a lot, actually. I think it’s pretty much the same thing as it is with Linzi. It’s quite hard to explain without sounding strange or slightly unhinged. Attempting to justify this for you, I have to go back to what I was saying earlier in that it simply makes the whole concept of going shopping just that little bit better. I’m not in love with either. Not nearly as much as I was with Kathryn, not even slightly. But, if they make me feel good whenever I see them, then is this necessarily a bad thing? I wouldn’t say so. So, Rachel was there. Unfortunately, Linzi wasn’t. No matter, really. One out of the two wasn’t bad and considering that I wasn’t in the slightest bit expecting to see her, it was a very nice surprise. Right, with that little question answered, I carried on and started what I went there to do, some shopping. Even though it was early evening, with only eight days left to the big day, the place was expectedly heaving. It was so busy. I had had the misfortune to be in the same place two days earlier, on the Saturday morning and it was just biblically busy. That was at eleven on a Saturday morning, with not that long left to go before Christmas, so fair enough, I thought. Now, although not quite as jam packed as it was then, it was still probably ten times busier than it would be at the same time on a normal Monday night. What are you going to do? It doesn’t bother me, necessarily, when it’s busy, it’s just that it takes quite a bit longer to do what you need to do. Anyway, walking away from Rachel, I headed for the chocolate and sweets aisle because one of the things on my list was a couple of Toblerones. After some time, I found what I was looking for and carried on with my journey. There were still one or two things that I needed before I got out and with as much speed as I could muster, given the crowds, I systematically went round the store and picked up the rest of my remaining items. Purely because of the way things worked out, once I had got the last thing on the list, I found myself coming out of an aisle at the far end of the store, near the soft drinks. This meant that I would have to walk past some of the deserted tills down that end to get to one that I was able to pay at, one with a person manning it. Immediately, as soon as I saw that it was her, in fact, I had decided against going to Rachel’s till when the time came to pay up and go home. This was due to something that I went into briefly in the essay that I wrote about her. Allow me to indulge myself while I again, leave the main story for a moment or so. During the period that Rachel was there in summer, I visited her twice. The first time happened completely by chance, while the second was slightly more planned. As I mentioned in the piece, that second time hadn’t been as good as the first. The explanation for this is something that defies and confuses me still to this day. I thought, knowing that she was now back, presumably just for the Christmas period and no longer, at least not until the following summer; I thought that it was probably best if I avoided her, if that was possible. I was happy with the way things were, happy with how I felt about her and my mindset with her in general. I saw no reason to rock the boat by doing what I had done in the past. Just leave it as it was and go to someone else. There was plenty to choose from, especially seeing as how it was so busy at that particular time. As far as I could tell, the experience, if I did chose to do, could just as easily be negative as it could be positive. No point in taking that chance, I didn’t think. So, with my mind not focusing on anything in particular, drifting away from the situation if anything, I started to walk past the tills. First the empty ones at the end and slowly getting towards the busier ones, the ones that were in use. Naturally, I was looking solely for the one that appeared to be the least busy. Other than that, I had no preference. It could have been a little green man from Mars that I got served by. It didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me. As I looked in that direction, though, away from the aisles were my eyes had been diverted momentarily; as I looked towards the tills, I was greeted by a sight that I thought was about as likely as seeing a Martian sat there, passing barcodes under the laser. And at the same time my heart skipped a little beat...
Well, not so much a little beat, quite a big beat, actually. A massive one. There she was. What else can I say? It was her! It was only Kathryn McKenna! Someone that I was absolutely convinced that I would never see again. She was sat at a till, one of the ones towards the far end where I was, one of the last populated ones and sure enough, she was checking people out. Also, it has to be said, with the skill, calmness and precision that must only come from doing that particular job for a considerable length of time, I would have thought. What in the name of all that was holy was going on? She was supposed to be at university. She was supposed to be living in Liverpool. She was supposed to be as far away from Tesco and therefore, as far away from me, as possible. But, she wasn’t. She wasn’t any of those things. She was there! About ten feet in front of me, getting on with her job and blissfully unaware that she had an idiot staring at her, legs shaking, with his mouth open and a look on his face that suggested he’d just seen something amazing. The problem was, that’s exactly what he had seen. Because it was amazing. Unbelievable. Clearly, the same thing that had happened with Rachel, had also happened with Kathryn. She had started at university in late September, left her job to do so, and had worked straight through to a couple of weeks or so before Christmas. Then, she had left her digs, come back to Manchester, to Irlam and was working at Tesco through Christmas while she presumably stayed with her parents or her friends or whoever. Right away, as I was still walking, walking closer towards her, my mind was working. It was out of it’s idle state and was all of a sudden, sharply focused. And, for some reason, it was concentrating on something totally unimportant. I was wondering about the way this kind of thing worked. I’m guessing that in order to leave her job, Kathryn would have had to have handed in her notice. She would have said something like, “Look, I really love my job but I feel that the time is right now for me to do something different. I’m leaving so that I can go back to university...” or whatever. Fine. She would then have gone to university and done that for three months. Also, fine. But then what happened? Was there some kind of pre-arranged agreement with the powers that be that allowed her to do that but also gave her the opportunity, if she wanted, to come back for a couple of weeks at Christmas and help out with the rush? Or, was it compulsory? She had to come back, no matter what...Or, was it simply that on her return, she rang them up on the off chance and said, “Hey, any jobs going?”. I’ve no idea. I doubt that it would be compulsory. Once she had left, she had left and that was that. Surely. As for which of the other two it was, answers on a postcard for that one, please. This is, I suppose, irrelevant. What was important was that she was there and that I was seeing her again. This was excellent.
Something to note, though. As I got increasingly closer to her, I noticed something. Kathryn always looked like Avril Lavigne, I thought. As I think I said earlier, this wasn’t something that suddenly came to me when I fell in love with her that second time. I’d thought that pretty much from the start.