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

the line.
Walking as slowly as I could without being spotted as doing something strange, either from Kathryn herself or anyone else, I got closer and closer to her and then in the end, I had to pass her by and continue going in the direction that I was heading. I was severely tempted to look over my shoulder to see the back of her, but I just about managed to stop myself from doing that. It took a lot of power and concentration, all of the power and concentration that I had, in fact, but I achieved it. The last view that I had of Kathryn was the head on one that I had received as I walked towards her. Still with her in the front of my mind, it was now important that I carried on with what I was doing, left her behind, paid for what I wanted to buy and then get out and go home. I wasn’t upset or on the verge of being upset. It wasn’t about that. Quite the contrary, actually. More than anything, I was enormously happy to see her again, as I had been at the beginning. However, I knew that this was now a chance to consign her to the past for good. In a way, if I had have gone with my instincts, given in to them and looked back at her as I had so wanted to, then that would have signified that it maybe wasn’t the end. The way I had done it, though, I think, told me. Convinced me that it was. I hope that that makes sense to you and that you understand what it is that I am trying to say. Anyway, that’s what I did and I was looking now for the least busy checkout. I found one, a moment or two later and got in the queue. The temptation to look at her was still there as I stood and waited, but I combated this by deliberately facing the other direction and trying to think of something, anything to get my mind off Kathryn as quickly as I could. This wasn’t easy, but I did my best and after what seemed in the end like an eternity, it got to my turn to be seen and I went through. Leaving Kathryn behind, I think, for good this time.
A couple of days later, I left everything behind and went to France for two and a half weeks to spend Christmas with the family. I didn’t know what to expect when it came to thinking about her and how I would feel when I did so. In essence, nothing was different now from what had gone on in September. When I got back, she would be gone again and I would be back where I was before Christmas. Not that this was necessarily, a bad thing. So, from that way of looking at the situation, if it hadn’t bothered me that much first time, and it hadn’t, then it was likely that it wouldn’t matter that much to me now, either. However, there was one slight change. Seeing her again, I don’t know...I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe I had forgotten her, in spite of what I wrote above. You see, something that I have failed to divulge to you, up to this point, and this has probably been a mistake and I apologise for that; is that since Kathryn’s departure, someone else has been more on my mind than she has. This might well come as a shock to you, because it certainly came as a shock to me when I realised exactly what was happening, but in the time after Kathryn went back to university, it wasn’t her that I was think about the most, it was Georgina. Cue the dramatic music, I think. Because this is something that I want to go into in “The Aftermath And The Photograph” in due course, I will only skim over the major details here and address the matter in more depth in that one. This was strange. The best way that I can explain it is this. Immediately after the wedding and the days that came after it, I was completely buzzing. Of course I was, this was the single greatest thing that had ever happened to me. Then, over a relatively short period of time, Beth came back into the picture for a little while until eventually, I reached Kathryn. And then, because things weren’t developing in the ways that I wished them to develop with both Georgina and Beth, Kathryn kind of took over and in the end, she became my number one. I hadn’t seen Georgina since March and I hadn’t heard anything from her since not longer after that, maybe mid-April or somewhere around there. As for Beth, well after what seemed initially like a good start, things kind of ground to a halt with her. So, by a process of elimination, for want of a better way of putting it, with those two gradually disappearing from the picture, I was left with Kathryn. This was completely fine by me. I had no problem at all with it. This was how I spent the summer. With Georgina forgotten about since Easter and Beth, the same from about mid-June, I was free to spend the whole summer thinking about Kathryn. She was so much easier to love than either of them, anyway. Mostly because I saw her much more frequently. With Georgina two hundred plus miles away in London or wherever she might be now and me no longer going to the meetings with Beth, due to my unforeseen change of department, Kathryn was the one that I was around the most. And, as I say, this went on for the entirety of the summer. Aside from a brief interruption from Hannah, the months from June through to the middle of September were spent focusing on and thinking about Kathryn much more than any other individual. Then, she left. This put a real spanner in the works. Who could I think about now? I didn’t ask for it to happen and deep down I didn’t really want it to happen, for that matter, either. But, it did and I was stuck with it. There was nothing I could do. With Kathryn gone, all of a sudden and without any kind of warning, Georgina popped back into my head. Immediately, I knew that this could only be bad news. It didn’t do well to obsess about your cousin at the best of times but after we had kissed, this became doubly horrific. Alright, I knew that I had to be obsessed by someone, that was the nature of things, the nature of my life and me as an individual, but why did it have to be her? Anyone but her. That was how it was, however, and I was completely powerless to feel or think anything else. As much as I would have liked to, believe me. I still thought about Kathryn, occasionally...Well, more than occasionally, actually, quite a lot, if I’m to be totally honest. Still, it wasn’t quite as much as I was thinking about Georgina. Aside from it not making any sense, because it had been over, really, ever since the morning after the night before, even if I hadn’t been aware of that at the time; aside from this, aside from it not making a single bit of sense, it was also really, really annoying. Plus, to make it yet more infuriating and just generally difficult to live with, I soon found that this wasn’t going to go away. I had hoped so much that it would simply be a flash in the pan. I had lost Kathryn and this was just me asserting some kind of damage limitation. She, Kathryn, had gone and it hurt, but I could console myself with the thought of what I had shared with Georgina. Even if, ultimately, it had been amazingly short lived. This rehash of old times, I was praying, would be equally as short lived. Only, it turned out to be anything but. It went on and on, day after day, month after month. Then, quite unexpectedly, Kathryn turned up in Tesco, a week before Christmas and just like that, she was very much back in my thoughts. So, which way would it go? Would I spend my Christmas thinking about Kathryn or would I spend it thinking about Georgina? I knew which of these I wanted and which I didn’t want, but I was unsure which way it would go.
It went the way of Georgina. Don’t ask me why this was, because I won’t be able to explain it to you. I’ve long since given up trying to work out why I might feel one way, when I should probably and want to feel the other. To me, it didn’t make any sense. But, there you have it, I suppose. I thought that having seen Kathryn again, she would re-enter my head and over the two, two and a half weeks that I would be away for, and in that time, because of this, I would forget about Georgina. I had wanted this because, obviously, Christmas is a time for family, a time for seeing and being with the people that you love and in particular, members of your family. I’m not usually one for Christmas, I can never seem to get what all the fuss is about and why people tend to make such a big deal out of what is only one day out of the whole year. Yes, I enjoy the time off and I enjoy being with my family but, apart from that, I could take it or leave it really. This year, however, it was a little bit different. Although I love all the members of my family dearly, every single one of them, when I talk about Christmas being a time for family, in previous years, this has more or less meant, to me at least, more my immediate family, rather than anything overly extended. My Mum, Dad, brother and also grandparents, whenever and wherever possible. In the past, that has been enough for me. The December just gone, though, I was thinking slightly further afield. I wondered how nice it would be for all of the relatives on my Dad’s side to get together over the Christmas period. The reasoning behind this is, I hope, fairly obvious to work out. I had had such a good time at the wedding. Not solely with Georgina, but with everybody. It had been brilliant. I loved it. To me, it indicated that on the extremely rare occasions that this happens, that we have a full house at a family event; it can actually be a good thing and good fun can be had by all those present at the time. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that had enjoyed myself over the course of that day and night. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s such a bloody shame that that kind of thing almost never happens. No matter how nice I considered another family reunion to be, it probably wasn’t going to happen. More chance of hell freezing over than that kind of thing being set up, I reckon. So, with it not happening, all this did was further highlight to me how much I actually missed Georgina. Because, let’s not be silly about this. If the impossible did happen, while I would be pleased to see everyone again, my prime concern would be her. Of course it would. I would be a filthy, rotten liar if I tried to convince anyone otherwise. Again, this is something that I would prefer to go into more detail about in the actual essay on Georgina and not this one. Suffice to say then, that for