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

a pretty decent gauge of what kind of person she was and not least, how she spoke. How she spoke, when I knew her, was very much the same as how she acted, her personality in general. Being a laid back, relatively emotionless, on an even keel sort of person; all of this was reflected in her speech and the tone of her voice. Most of the time it was effortless and, this may appear to be a rather negative kind of thing for me to say...But, sometimes it was effortless and lacking purpose or passion. That sort of, “Yes, I’m having a conversation with you but, it’s taking up quite a bit of my energy and I’d rather not converse, if I didn’t have to” kind of mindset. Think about Georgina. Think about the energy and the enthusiasm that came out of every word that she said. If it was physically possible for her to talk to someone all day without stopping once, if she was capable of doing it, then I think she would do it. I really do. She was drunk on words and intoxicated everyone else around her whenever she spoke. Kathryn, not so. Seldom did she show the animation that was so inherent within Georgina. Seldom, very seldom, but not quite never. Now was one of those times. She was leaving, this was what she was doing and these were the reasons why she was doing it. From nowhere, Kathryn had found a goal, something that she wanted to attain, something that she wanted to achieve. This, despite what I was feeling inside, was extremely interesting to hear. When I had heard her initial response to Dad’s question, I had automatically assumed that her reasoning behind her imminent departure were that she had found another job with either better pay or a better position or both. Not so, it would seem. I know I keep going on about it, this will be the third time now, I think, but that day when I saw Kathryn coming home from university on the bus, she looked thoroughly miserable. More miserable than I could ever imagine such a calm and collected human being to be. She looked awful. And for someone so naturally physically attractive, so naturally beautiful, that took some doing. Things must have been not at all well with her that day. Therefore, after some tough decision making, she had decided to jack the whole university thing in. Because that had been the reason for her bad mood, university. Not anything else. Not anything in her personal life or her work life. Not her boyfriend or anything of that sort. I had never forgotten this. Never forgot that look on her face and her overall negative demeanour. Mostly because it was so very, very un-Kathryn like. So, now, to be hearing that she was leaving her job, not because she had found a better one, but because she had chosen to go back to university, I was shocked to say the least. Not that I don’t believe her to be bright enough to succeed in that kind of environment, not at all. Kathryn has to be one of the most intelligent people that I have ever met, have ever known and I am convinced that having gone down that path, she will now make the most of it and come out of it, at the end, with the kind of result that she wants and that she knows she can achieve. No, the reason I was shocked was because having already given it one go and not liked it, it seemed more than a little strange that she was planning to go back to it. Her head clearly hadn’t been in it when she had tried it four or five years ago and I couldn’t see what had changed in that time that made her now believe that she was ready. I suppose what she might say in response to that is that in that time, that four, five years, she has developed a maturity that was not present when she was...nineteen, she would have been. Wouldn't she? Yes, nineteen. When she had been nineteen, her priorities may well have been on other things. Earning money, getting ridiculously drunk on a Friday or Saturday or both, spending time with her boyfriend. Those kinds of things. Now, though, this could be a more mature Kathryn that I was listening to. A fitter, happier, more productive Kathryn. One that understood that, with a little hard work over the three or four year period of a university education, she was now able to improve on what she had in life. To, in the long run, make things better for herself. That could well have been the kind of thing that she was thinking. She was ready now to try again. To do something that, for reasons known only to her and maybe one or two others, she had stopped doing first time around.
I was experiencing so many differing emotions currently, whilst also trying not to look bothered in the slightest by what I was hearing. Due to this, I can’t really say if what I am about to tell you is accurate or if I have since made it up. I think it is, though. What I want to describe is what I believe was a feeling of relief. She had told us that the reason that she was leaving was to go to university. She hadn’t said “again”, she hadn’t explained to Dad that this would be the second time around for her; so, I knew that and he didn’t. Anyway, that is what she had said to him. This, as I wrote above, contradicts what I had assumed would be her reasoning of finding another job. Now, please bear with me as I go off the trial slightly. If I did genuinely feel relief, then this has to have been from the fact that it was further education and not a new job that she was leaving for. Why? Well, in my Steven-centred mind, where everything revolves around me, the whole world and everything in it, Kathryn included, I was thinking that there was a possibility that she may well be doing what she was doing because of me. In “Two”, I went into detail about how at a particular point in time, I became sure that Kathryn knew how I felt about her, knew that I was in love with her. Let’s suppose for a second that this is true. She was under the impression, and rightly so, you have to say; she was under the impression that I liked her. Alright. There are one or two ways that she can deal with this. Firstly, she can ignore it. She can ignore me, as she had been doing for the last few years, ignore what she suspected I felt towards her and ignore the thought that she might also have which told her that I could do something stupid. She might well assume that unless I actually walk up to her while she is working and profess my undying love for her, then it doesn’t really matter, one way or another, how I feel. She obviously isn’t in love with me, doesn’t feel the same way towards me, so she isn’t exactly thankful, overly delighted with this discovery that she has made. She could do this. Or, she could take it differently. She might think, “Oh, my God! That weird bloke, who’s always in here and always looking at me, staring at me, is actually in love with me. I can’t do this. I can’t stay here and watch him, watching me, knowing what’s probably going on in that dirty, little mind of his. I have to get out of this place. As quickly as possible...”. What I’m saying is that the fact that she had explained that why she was leaving was down to her going to university, suggested to me that she wasn’t unhappy with the job that she was in. There wasn’t a problem with where she worked, what she was doing or the people that were around her. Her problem was that she wanted to improve her education, improve her prospects for the future and it wasn’t feasible for her to do this and keep her full time job at Tesco, too. She wasn’t even able to change her full time job to a part time one and do that and university at the same time. This would suggest, I think, that she must be going away to study. This, as we were about to find out, was exactly right. All this information. It was so unlike Kathryn. Anger, enthusiasm, purpose, call it what you want, it was intriguing to see. Not only did she tell us that she was leaving to go to university. She also went further and said that she was going to Liverpool to study, I don’t know whether it was Liverpool University itself or John Moore’s. Perhaps she wasn’t that enthusiastic. But, still, that was where she was going, geographically and, she went on to say, that what she would be reading would be sociology. Hmm. You know, I never considered what Kathryn might read if she went to university. Even when I saw her looking so sad on the bus and coming to the conclusion that it was what she was doing that was making her feel like that; even then, I never stopped to think exactly what it was that she might be studying. Kathryn being Catholic, you see, and me otherwise, naturally, we went to different schools. Different primary schools, different high schools, different colleges. I think I’ve mentioned this before but Kathryn went to school and was in or around the same kind of years as my cousin Rebecca and Sarah. Rebecca’s sister Ruth would have been some years in front of all of them and so probably wouldn’t have known Kathryn. But, I’m sure that both Rebecca and Sarah do. Anyway, not going to school with Kathryn and only coming to know her after this part of both of our lives, I would never have been able to tell you what she was good at at school and what she wasn’t good at. What subjects she excelled in and which she found more difficult. I had thought, noticing that she was very clever; when I did think about it, I had thought that she must have been good at everything. A useful “all-rounder”, I think they call them nowadays. So, if I had have been put on the spot by someone wanting to know what course Kathryn might take if she went to university, I wouldn’t have been able to say. Therefore, I couldn’t comment on whether I think that she is making the right decision doing what she has chosen to do. I don’t know. It’s as simple as that. Knowing Kathryn, though, there is more going on in that head of hers than meets the eye and more than I often give her credit for, so if I’m sure of anything, it’s that on choosing sociology, she has done so not in an instant, she hasn’t done the first thing that has come to her head. This can’t have been any sort of spontaneous decision, it has to have been planned quite rigorously. I really do believe that she has sat down, knowing that she wants to give university a second go and has thought long and hard about what she wants to do when she gets there, what subject is best suited to her and the answer that she has eventually come up with is sociology and she has then put into motion the process that would result in her doing that.
Dad might have noticed that something was wrong with me as we left Kathryn for the last time and walked out of the store and