"Student Union", SJ Bottomley [free children's online books .TXT] 📗

June. Anyway, cue the strangest answer of them all. “Ah, yes” she said, triumphantly, “...but separately”. Excuse me? Say that again for me please. See, I misheard you, I thought that you just said that they went separately. The funny thing was that this was precisely what she’d said. I hadn’t misheard at all. They had gone separately. Me being silly old me...ignorant, silly old me, I should say; me being ignorant, silly old me, because I didn’t know, until about two minutes earlier, that Kathryn and Mike were no longer together; I had always assumed that they had gone together. Firstly, when I was told by...whoever it was that told me, I really can’t remember, infuriatingly...when I was told by whoever, that James and Gemma had gone to Glastonbury and I had then put two and two together and come to the correct conclusion that Kathryn had also gone; I also came to the incorrect conclusion that Mike had gone and it had been a happy little foursome. Then, twenty-four hours later, when I had it confirmed to me, by Richard, that Kathryn was where she was, I again assumed that Mike was with them. Not so, it would appear. So, what happened? How did it work? Obviously I’m being thick here, there’s something blindingly obvious that’s staring me in the face that I can’t see, isn’t there? You’re going to have to help me out here, I think. I mean, the image that I have in my mind, is one of Kathryn sharing a tent with Gemma and James, on top of a hill and then pitched about six feet away from them, is another tent, a smaller tent, with Mike in it, on his own. I also imagine a conversation that goes something like this. Mike – getting out of his tent, early one morning, and seeing Kathryn doing the same – “I was just going to the Pyramid Stage to see Arctic Monkeys. You coming?”, Kathryn- “Well, I was going to see B*Witched...”, Mike- “Alright then. Suit yourself”, Kathryn- “I will do, thanks”. This probably wasn’t quite the way that it happened, in reality, but I really can’t see how else it could have worked. I’m basing this, as you have probably already worked out, on the premise that the four of them would have applied for and got their tickets months and months in advance, while Kathryn and Mike were still together and then, once they had broken up, having both spent a ridiculous amount of their hard earned cash on them, neither of them was willing to give it up or sell it on, they were going to go and too bad if the other was there. Correct me if I’m wrong with this, but when you buy tickets for Glastonbury, what you’re buying, in essence, is a patch of land, a square or rectangle of a certain field within the confines of the Glastonbury site, the Glastonbury area and so, when you get there, you give it to the person at the gate and they say that you’re in field 1A or whatever. That’s how I think it works. I could well be wrong and I hold my hands up if this turns out to be the case. It could be that you buy a ticket and you’re allowed to stay wherever you want. If so, there isn’t an issue, is there? Kathryn could stay with Gemma and James and Mike could share a tent with his mates, if they were going as well. Say, for the sake of argument, that they were. That way they would be apart and free to enjoy the festival and the music and everything that came with these things, away from the burden of one another. Lovely...I don’t know, though. It’s all very odd, I think.
Trying to get my head around the logistics of this had, for the time being at least, taken my thought process off what it had been on before this new and very confusing revelation. Which was pleasing. I would take the time out to deal with that later. My squinting and scratching of forehead, though, was interrupted by what Trudi had to say next. This afternoon was turning into one that was full of surprises. As I believe I said earlier, I never knew Mike. Thankfully. I never met him, didn’t...still don’t know, what he looks like, what colour hair he’s got, whether he’s fat, thin, tall short, don’t know how old he is, don’t know anything about him. However, it turned out that apparently, I should. Because...Are you ready for this...he works at Tesco. And, apparently, he also worked there when I worked there. This was news to me. I never had any idea of this. But, according to Trudi, it was true. She was, for her part, shocked that I didn’t know him. But, I didn’t. Kathryn never had the decency to introduce us. That would have been fun, I think. Kathryn- “Steven, this is Mike, my boyfriend. Mike, this is Steven, you know, the loser that I was telling you about. The one that’s pathetically in love with me...”. Oh, yeah. I would have really enjoyed that(!). “Hi. How are you doing? Nice to meet you...”. Yeah. No, thanks. I’ll pass, if that’s okay with you. Once Trudi had finished explaining the circumstances of this arrangement to me, I told her that once I left, I fell out of the loop. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. I stopped knowing things about Kathryn. Whether I was in love with her or not, it didn’t matter either way. Even if I had, somehow, known that Mike worked in the same building as both Kathryn and myself, once I was no longer in that building, I had no possible way of knowing what was happening to Kathryn or anyone that she was involved with. Unless something physically changed with her, example- the changing of the colour of her hair, unless it was something like that, something tangible, something that I could see; it was impossible. Just impossible. You understand that I didn’t quite go into this depth with Trudi, I explained to her, simply, that I had fallen out of the loop. Which she nodded at, indicating that she knew what I was talking about. She then said that Kathryn was a nice girl, which I couldn’t help but agree with.
Once this particular topic had been covered off, by the two of us; finally, the discussion on Kathryn, which had been going on for God only knows how long now, came to an end. I was relieved. Fair enough, I had wanted so desperately to talk about Kathryn when I had got there and it was my own fault that we had done this and done it to the extent that we had. I could have easily have stopped it at any time. But, I hadn’t. And I had suffered the consequences of my adventure. We had got onto parts of Kathryn’s life, things about her, that I had no right knowing. What business was it of mine to know who she was or wasn’t romantically entangled with at the present moment? I hadn’t spoken to her in years, not even let on to her, I didn’t deserve to know so much about her life. In truth, then, I got what was coming to me. I was asking for trouble, I was asking for heartbreak and that’s exactly what I got. I shouldn’t have gone as far as I did. I know that now and I appreciate it. I was glad, then, when Trudi skilfully drew the chat back towards James and Gemma. She asked me about my house and how things were going with it, if I was enjoying living on my own and that kind of thing. Mundane, definitely, but not nearly as exciting as the life and loves of Kathryn McKenna, but also, safer and much less painful. I replied positively, saying that it was good and that I loved it. I loved the freedom, being able to do things when I wanted, being able to eat when I wanted, go to bed when I wanted, to watch what I wanted and all the rest of it. It was brilliant, I said. This was all true. It is brilliant and I do love living on my own. Thinking about this, it suddenly occurred to me that James still lived with his parents. Being only a year younger than me, not even that, I don’t think, surely it was about time that he considered moving out. Especially seeing as how he had been with Gemma for quite a while now, it must be coming up to four years or something like that. So, I asked her. In response, she told me that the two of them had been looking to do that a couple of months earlier, they had been seriously considering doing it and had gone as far as getting an offer of a mortgage on a property. The problem was that the bank/building society that had given them the offer had been Northern Rock and days...It was literally days, I think, before they were to sign on the dotted line, of course, the company folded. Not great news for them, I shouldn’t think, while they wait on a mortgage. Luckily, I suppose, they got out before everything happened. I guess that it would have been a lot worse if they had signed their lives away and then it had gone under. I wouldn’t envy anyone in that situation. Certainly not. After this debacle, quite understandably, they lost confidence in the housing market as a whole and other lenders and subsequently, shelved the idea. They were, though, looking to rent instead. You can’t blame them, I suppose.
Now seemed like a pretty good time to attempt to make my getaway. The talk of Kathryn was over and we were back onto the wonderful subject of James and Gemma. I didn’t know if I had the strength to keep myself standing, while my body fought the urge to fall asleep. How embarrassing that would have been to suddenly fall to the floor and start snoring, in front of an ex-neighbour. I would have to do something to avoid that happening. So, I made a polite, and not altogether untrue, excuse of having to get back to carry on helping Dad with whatever he was doing now. Surely there was still some carpet that needed rolling up or a set of cupboards that required taking out to the garage for safe keeping while Dad continued his decorative rampage through the house. Something must need doing somewhere, I thought. After a final, brief chat about something and nothing, plans for Christmas, probably, Trudi led me to the door and I left, waving goodbye to her as I walked out of the drive and back in the direction of Mum and Dad’s house, licking my emotional wounds as I went. I guess the moral of this story is beware of wishing for your heart’s true desire, lest you end by getting it. Having said that, I was still pleased that it had happened. Alright, I had heard some bad things, some not very nice things; but, I had also learnt a lot too. I now knew that Kathryn was enjoying herself which was pleasing and I knew as well, after many years of wondering, not only was Kathryn’s boyfriend, now ex-boyfriend, called Mike, but on top of this, that she had dropped out of Salford University, as I had always suspected. From this aspect, from the aspect of it giving me the opportunity to talk to someone who knows Kathryn reasonably well and to get one or two bits of information from her, it was pleasing and I’m glad, now, that it happened. Even if it hadn’t been so pleasing to hear at the time. One thing