"Student Union" by SJ Bottomley (best e book reader .txt) đź“–
- Author: SJ Bottomley
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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
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