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

This was when both Kathryn and Lavigne had brown hair. Then, by what must have been an amazing coincidence and nothing more, Lavigne came back with her “Girlfriend” single and in the video, she had blonde hair. Shortly afterwards, I go into Tesco and the amazing coincidence, Kathryn also had blonde hair. It couldn’t have been planned. That would have been unreal. Surely it was only me that saw the likeness. Surely nobody else made that connection between the two of them. It would appear, on the face of it, that maybe I wasn’t. Having not spoken to Kathryn for years now, I never found out but I did let myself entertain the thought that she might, just might have twigged that she looked a little bit like her and recognising this as well as that her doppelganger now had blonde hair, not brown, made the decision to change the colour of her hair as well. Whether it was done on purpose or not, I’m sure she’s the only one that could answer that. The point is that that was now the colour of her hair and from April, when the feelings for her started again, all the way through to that last day in September, her hair had stayed the same colour. I guess that she must have continued dying it throughout that period and that was the colour it was the last time that I had seen her. Now, however, it wasn’t. It was light brown again. A sort of chestnutty colour. Her natural colour. All the time that I had worked with her, it had been that colour and at some point during September and December, she had made the choice to go back to that. The dye had come out and it was brown. This, to me, didn’t make any difference whatsoever. Yes, it had been a blonde Kathryn that I had fallen in love with most recently but originally, she had been brown. Either way, as far as I could see, she was still absolutely gorgeous. Blonde or brown. It didn’t matter in the slightest. I couldn’t care if her hair was dark blue or any colour, I would still feel exactly the same way about her. I would still love her to death. I suppose you could ask if I was absolutely sure that it was her and not just someone, with brown hair, that looked a little bit like her. It was her, alright. As soon as I saw her, despite the fact that I was quite a way away from her, I could tell in an instant who it was. It was Kathryn. I’d recognise her anywhere. Something else that I thought was a bit odd, all of these thoughts going through my head in the matter of a millisecond or less, you understand. Another slightly funny thing, to my mind, was that she was working on a till. As I have already said, more than once, aside from her last day, when she had served us, at the same time as telling me that awful news; aside from then, she wore one of those headsets and her job was to respond to the flashing lights. One would assume, knowing this, that if she was to come back at any point, she would pick up from where she left off and resume the role that she had when she worked there. What I was seeing now would disagree with this theory slightly. I guess that there is a reasonable, plausible explanation for this. Since her departure in the autumn, the position that she had held and subsequently left, had been filled by someone else and so when she came back for Christmas, they already had enough people to do that particular job, Linzi included, obviously, but what they needed was people to man the tills. With the increase in the number of people shopping there prior to Christmas, the demand for open checkouts would also rise and the more people that they had in to do that job, the more tills they could open at any given time. This makes pretty good sense, I think. Back to the situation that was emerging and that I now found myself in, a question now arose. What was I to do?
I had already agreed that it would be best if I didn’t go to Rachel’s checkout. This, though, was a lot different. This wasn’t just anybody, this was Kathryn McKenna. Kathryn McKenna! The woman of my dreams. Goddammit! There were, I thought, obvious benefits to going to her till to checkout. Alright, it might not have been me that was asking the questions that day, but if I hadn’t have chosen Kathryn’s till back in September then I wouldn’t have ever found out that she was leaving. And having not seen her in there for a while, for weeks, maybe even months, afterwards, I would be wondering when she would be coming back, if at all. Eventually, after a fairly long period of time, I would come to the realisation that it was most likely that she had left and had gone on to do something else. University or another job somewhere. I wouldn’t be able to say with any confidence which one of these it was. It had, looking at it that way, been a good thing, that we had gone to her till that day. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known. Not for sure. I might have even come to the conclusion that she had died or something ridiculous like that. Who knows? That’s what had happened when I had gone to her till last time. It had been a productive experience, if nothing else. Who could say that if I did the same now, it wouldn’t be equally if not more productive? That was one side of the coin. The other side, the side telling me not to go was saying things like how weird it would look. Yes, it would look weird. Very weird. As well as this, going back to the beginning of this, when I was talking about what I went through when I wrote “Avril Lavigne” and the desire that I had for some sort of closure. It was necessary in that instance for me to do what I did. Clearly, I wouldn’t have been able to finish that particular piece of work if I hadn’t done it. Things would have just gone on forever, I suspect. I would probably still be writing it now. That, the buying of that CD, signalled the end, signalled a suitable place for me to stop. Closure for this piece of work was never an issue. As far as I was concerned, I got that the day that Kathryn left. That was it. The end of everything. Nothing was going to happen from that moment on. I was confident that with the material that I had, I could form a beginning, a middle and an end and make a decent job of writing out my final thoughts on Kathryn. This theory, as grand and as wonderful as it was, was then shot down from upon high by that conversation with Trudi in November. Luckily, I wasn’t anywhere near finishing this by then and it would be quite simple and straight-forward for me to tack this on to the end. Not a problem. I was happy with that. It would give the work a bit more emphasis. A bit more oomph. Alright. Now, however, unable to take my eyes off her, I knew that there wasn’t a hope in hell of me dying with a sane mind if I didn’t include this little incident as well. I just wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I allowed myself to finish this without including what I was currently witnessing. That wouldn’t be possible. I would forever be nagged by this feeling in the back of my head that meant that I had missed something important out. This was important, it was significant. However, there was the danger that it could be too important. If you get my meaning. As it was, she was there, I had seen her and I was ready to walk on. Imagine, though, what would have happened if I had immediately decided that yep, I was going to do it. I was going to go to her till and see what happened. That, I firmly believe, would have been just a little bit too much. Okay, there’s no doubt in my mind that if I had done that, we wouldn’t have had the kind of conversation that she ended up having with Dad. Actually, I don’t think that we would have had any kind of conversation at all. With us doing the whole ignoring one another /total stranger routine over the past couple of years, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to me at all if the whole thing would have turned out to be done in total silence. Fair enough, she might well have gone through the usual routine of asking me if I wanted help with my packing and to put my PIN number in the card machine at the correct moment. All the usual stuff. But nothing special. Nothing special because it was me. Even so, it would still have been too much, I think. Why? Well, I think that if I had have done such a thing, afterwards, I would have been left with a barrage of ideas. A raft of things to write about. That’s what I mean when I say that it probably would have been too much. As it was, I had seen her, she was back for Christmas, and that, I figured, was enough for me to be getting on with. In the end, this was what decided it for me. It was quite a hard thing to do, but I decided against checking out at her till. Instead, I just walked on by and went looking for another one, a less interesting one.
However, pretty much as soon as I had passed her, I knew that I had to get another look at her before I left. Just a quick glance. I was going away in three days time, for the best part of the next three weeks. If she was here for the Christmas period, which it definitely seemed that she was, and no longer, then by the time that I got back at the beginning of the second week in January, she would, by then, I supposed, be back in Liverpool. The Christmas madness would be long over and as a result her services would probably no longer be necessary. As, I imagine, Rachel’s wouldn’t either. Both of them would be gone when I got back to this green and pleasant land and it would be impossible to determine if and when I saw either of them again. Kathryn in particular. Sure, she was here now, but would she be back in the summer? Of course, I didn’t know the answer to that. I may love her, but it doesn’t mean that I have the ability to read her mind, sadly. So, this really could be the last time that I ever saw her and if it was to turn out that way, I wasn’t satisfied with what I had seen. Yes, it was amazing, incredible, it wasn’t that. I was greedy, that was all. I wanted more. One more look would do it. Now that I knew she was there, I figured that I wouldn’t be overcome by shock. I would be able to enjoy it, savour it. Rather than having a million and one things going through me head while I whizzed passed her. I could take my time, go passed her and take one last look at her before she disappeared out of my life again. Possibly for good this time. I had to go round again in order to do this. This meant that