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

I had heard it with my own ears. It’s funny how in life, when you look back at the important moments that you go through at various stages, various points in time, all of them seem to take place in slow motion. This sounds totally cornball, I know; but, I think it’s true. “Life in slow motion”. How many times has that been said? How much of a cliché is that? Doesn’t make it any less right though, does it? There was a definite swing in emotions as she said those words. Yes, it was cringe-worthy watching Dad and Kathryn going through this completely stupid set conversation and I did feel sorry for her, that he was putting her through this. She must have been through this act many times before with many other people like my father, who think they are being funny when they aren’t. Alright, she may have looked okay, from the outside, but I’m sure she wasn’t feeling any less uncomfortable than I was. I don’t know. What might have made it even worse than it would have been otherwise for her was that I was there. Because we look fairly like each other, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to realise that Dad and I were father and son and on seeing me, she has to have come to the correct conclusion as to who he was. So, not only has she got to deal with what he is saying to her, asking her, should I say, she also had to deal with the fact that this mad individual is the father of someone that she used to know. That couldn’t have been easy, I don’t think. Kathryn, was though, as unflappable as ever. So, it wasn’t easy to watch, from my point of view, but deep down, I understood that it was nothing more than a bit of fun and I knew that after it, she may well be of the impression that my Dad was ever so slightly off his rocker, and if she did, you couldn’t really blame her, but it wasn’t all that disastrous. As I believe I have pointed out on at least one instance, so far, in this, Kathryn and I would never be together. Not unless something strange, something very, very strange happened and everything unexpectedly turned on its head. I knew that and I had accepted it. From that point of view, then, it wasn’t really all that relevant. It didn’t stop me from coming into the store, every so often, looking to see if she was in and then realising that she was, taking a moment or two out to take a step back and admire her for what she was. That is to say an extremely beautiful, funny and clever young woman. All that would remain. Nothing had changed. At least not for the moment.
Things were still moving in real time, at the proper speed. We hadn’t got to the freeze frame bit just yet. No doubt twigging instantaneously to what was going on and the “gag” that Dad was delivering, Kathryn smiled at him and answered his first question about whether she had been busy or not. I was stood at the end of the till, quite a distance from the two of them, carrier bag in hand, waiting for her to start scanning the stuff into the computer and then pushing on to the other conveyor belt so that it got to me and I could then start putting it into the bags and ultimately, back in the trolley. Watching this scenario unravel between the two of them, I decided that I know wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t good. It was about to get a whole lot worse, though. Having responded to the first of Dad’s two questions, Kathryn had to have been more than aware that it wasn’t going to stop there and that the second one was soon to follow. And already, I’m sure, she was planning what she was going to say to him. This was her moment now. It wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about me. It was her moment and we were all completely powerless to stop her. What she has in her armoury is the old curve ball. Because this is a routine and because both of them know that this is a routine, they also know what the stock answers are going to be, as well as the questions. “Have you been busy?”, “Yes/No”, “What time are you on ‘til?”, “Four/Six/Ten/Whatever”. Conversation over. The customer pays for their shopping and everyone lives happily ever after. Kathryn knows, even before he has asked the question about what time she is finishing, that Dad is expecting her to give a set time. That is the stock answer and that is what he always gets. As does anyone else who is daft enough to ask it. And, on a normal day, she would give it. Only, this isn’t a normal day. Anything but. And our Kathryn has something of a surprise up her sleeve. Something that she knows will make Dad go “Oh!” when he hears her say it. So, the second question is asked. Time began to slow down at this exact moment. Sadly and maddeningly, I can’t recall the precise words that she chose to use, as I can’t for her answer to the first question, that’s because I was busy having a heart attack...Or, maybe it was a heart break. Who knows? Whatever. I don’t remember word for word what she said, but I will never forget the basic gist of it. Apparently, and she decided not to go into detail about how this was worked out, but it was...Apparently, she was on an earlier or later shift than she would usually be on that day, a Thursday it was, because it turned out that this was her last day and the company had decided beforehand that because of that, that shift was the one that she had to work. I had come to the firm conclusion that it was best if I didn’t worry about the future when it came to Kathryn and that I would live solely for the moment. I had done all that worrying and fretting about Toni and when it came to it, it had all been for nothing, I had left before she did. I could have got all bent out of shape about the same thing with Kathryn and I hadn’t done. That was my initial concern, my initial reaction. Before anything else had time to get through to my nervous system, I was berating myself for my lack of concern over the situation. Not that it would have done any good of course. What Kathryn did was up to her and completely independent and unaffected by anything that I could have said or done. It didn’t matter, though. I had to blame something, I had to be angry at something and right away, it was that fact that I got angry about. This was, I think, looking back, quite refreshing. What I mean by this is that in the past, if this instance had have occurred a couple of years ago, say, my first thought would not have been about me, it would have been about her. How could she possibly do this to me? Did she not know how I felt and how I would react to this news? Oh, she was so selfish, doing this...and on and on. That sort of theme. What I like, thinking about it now, later on, after the event, is that there was no way that I could have planned what I could have thought had I found myself in that kind of situation. As I mentioned earlier, I had worked out that if Kathryn were to leave at some point in the future, and it was bound to happen eventually, then it was very, exceptionally likely that she would depart without my knowledge. And, as I said, it would be some time, days, weeks, months, whatever it might turn out to be, before I finally worked out what had happened. I didn’t consider, never in a million years did I consider that not only would I be there, in the store on her last day; but, on top of that, I would be one of the last people that she served and what is most important of all, she would actually tell me herself, I would be physically able to hear it from Kathryn herself, not through some insignificant third party, that she was leaving. Because I couldn’t possibly predict that I would find myself hearing this, as I was doing now, then I couldn’t also predict what I would be thinking at that time, if by some small miracle, it did turn out that way. Well, it had turned out that way, the small miracle had happened and all I was thinking was how annoyed I was at me, not her, me for being such a damned fool in not losing sleep and not worrying myself sick that she could soon be leaving. It felt like she had slipped through the net or under the radar or something like that. That’s what it felt like. If I had paid more attention then, somehow, this might not have happened, she might not have decided to do this and she might not have been leaving her job. This, as I said, was a complete fallacy.
But, she couldn’t leave it there. She couldn’t tell Dad that she was leaving and then turned to him and said, “Well, thankyou for shopping at Tesco and have a nice day...”. That would be downright unfair! I didn’t deserve that. Not after loving her for all those years. Okay, some of all those years, with a bit of a gap in the middle. Still, though, I thought it only right that I got something of an explanation. Thankfully, she was up for giving us one. Earlier, I referred to this as her “moment”. I think she saw it as that to. She could very easily have told us that she was soon to be off and nothing else, she didn’t have to divulge anymore, no matter how much I was begging her to, but she did. It felt, at the time, as though she was talking to me almost directly and not Dad. Despite the fact that it was obviously him that she was having the conversation with. Up to now, I had stayed completely silent and that would be the way that it would remain, throughout. However, I still thought that it was more me than him, that she was addressing. Since then, I have changed my view on this. I was completely caught up in the moment, not really knowing where I was or what was going on. I, as I’m sure you can understand and appreciate, have thought a lot about this conversation and what she said in the time that has passed and it was almost as though whatever she was saying and whoever she was saying it to; it was almost as though she was angry. This is probably a little hard to believe and it’s hard for me to take in, I must admit. Kathryn and anger are two things that don’t sound as though they belong together, at all, and here I am saying exactly that. I don’t know. I’m not sure. Perhaps “anger” isn’t the right word, perhaps that’s not really what I mean. It could have been defiance or confidence or something else...Thinking about it now, I don’t really know what to call it. Whatever it was, it didn’t quite fit. I know, or, I like to think that I know Kathryn fairly well by now. I believe that the period of time that I worked with her was long enough for me to get