"Student Union" by SJ Bottomley (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

these places, then one would have to assume that the likelihood of it was, that she wasn’t in. There was, even now, though, one last salvation. One last possible explanation. She could, after all that, still be in, but on a trek round the store, possibly putting an item that hadn’t been sold, back where it belonged. As she had been that day when she passed Stuart and I talking, said “Hi” to him and completely blanked me, while I had an Avril Lavigne CD in my basket. She had been taking something back to its proper home on that occasion and purely by chance, had bumped into us two, chatting away to each other. If, on any given day, this was the case, this was where she was, then I would either see her going back to her post or I might even pass her as she made her way back. It would go without saying that if we did brush shoulders as we headed in different directions, I would get nothing more than that wonderful glazed over look on her face. No acknowledgement, no “Hi Steven”, no nothing. But, then, I really wouldn’t have had it any other way. Anyway, those were all the options. If it turned out that none of those applied then there was a strong possibility that she was off duty. Okay, but, as I say, something wasn’t right, something was going on. Because, Dad and I entered the store and none of these things applied. She was there, but she wasn’t doing any of the above. No, for some very bizarre reason, I looked around and saw that she was on a till. And I don’t mean she was helping someone out with a problem. No, she was physically on a till, sat down, passing items through, underneath the laser scanner thing and smiling away and asking customers if they needed help with their packing as she went along. This was odd. I couldn’t recall the last time that I had seen her do anything like this. Because of the unfortunate and infuriating haze that I seem to have when it comes to trying to remember anything significant about Kathryn in the last couple of years, before I found myself falling in love with her again, as I think I pointed out in “Avril Lavigne”, I really can’t recall when it was that she moved over to doing what she did, seeing to the needs of the employees on the tills. I simply don’t know when this happened. I know that when we worked together, when the store got busy on Saturday afternoons or in the early evenings of certain weekdays, she would often be asked over the bing-bong to go on a till, while the rush was dealt with. Then, I think, I think, that at some point in time after this, after I had left, she left the fresh food department and moved over to the tills full time. Whether it was then that she switched to where she ended up or whether that came later is something, as I’ve said, that falls into that haze, I’m afraid. I couldn’t possibly say, one way or the other. The point is, however, that certainly since the re-infatuation occurred in April, certainly since then, up to this day, I hadn’t seen her sat at a till, checking people out. Not once. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t do it, of course. Simply that I hadn’t witnessed it. That’s what made what I was seeing now so very odd. My first thought was that it must have been busy, even though it was just gone three or something on a Thursday afternoon and it didn’t appear to be all that busy, from what I could see. But, it must just be busy, one or two might be on their lunch or break or whatever and she was covering for the loss of work for a short time, until they returned or it got quiet again or whatever. Then, she would go back to doing what she normally did. That was my natural train of thought as I searched for some kind of an explanation to what I was witnessing. Not that I was bothered by it in the slightest. Don’t forget, this was the new, non-paranoid me. Why would the sight of Kathryn sat on a till suddenly indicate to me that it was her last day and that she was leaving? It wouldn’t. At my suspicious best, at the very pinnacle of my Toni madness, I wouldn’t have been able to derive such an elaborate reasoning for Kathryn being where she was and doing what she was doing. As far as I was ever likely to tell, it was completely innocent and the explanation for it, if even there was one, was perfectly simple.
This wasn’t the only strange thing, though. Leaving the wonderful and beautiful sight of Kathryn behind was never easy, but I was reassured by the fact that I knew that I would see her again when we came to checkout. By then, of course, I was fully confident, that things would have returned to normal and everything would be calm on peaceful. Reluctantly leaving her behind, then, we walked further into the store. With items on the list not being in any kind of order, we knew that we would have to go from one place to another and then, most likely, back to where we started, to get everything that we had been asked to get. And with no set plan of attack, we sort of aimlessly meandered our way in and walked up the aisle that was directly ahead of us. This was taking us, not to the food, where we really needed to go, but more towards the non-food stuff and in particular, the electronic and white goods section. Irons, kettles, that sort of thing. If we carried on in the direction that we were going then that would be our eventual destination. As I did this, with Dad walking beside me and my mind still very much on Kathryn and what I had just seen, I looked to my right, down one of the aisles that we were passing and I saw an absolute raft of Tesco people. There was a load of them. Oh, at least thirty, maybe more, all packed into this one aisle. They didn’t seem to be doing very much. All stood around, some with clipboards in hand, some talking, some walking slowly up and down. And from what I could tell, it was a good mix of both management and normal worker. The aisle that they were down was the one that had been recently transformed into the Halloween aisle, in preparation for that event, which was still a good six weeks or so away. And even though it was quite a wide aisle, much wider than a normal one, it appeared to struggle to fit all of the bodies within it. But, still, there they were. Looking as though they were all waiting there for something to happen. I didn’t care how daft it sounded now, something was going on. I was convinced of that. Add this bizarre sight to the equally strange one that I had seen Kathryn in and you can maybe understand why I was seriously considering that some kind of conspiracy was afoot. As for what that conspiracy might possibly be, well, that was anyone’s guess. Leaving the group of people behind, still in the Halloween section and us now moving on to another part of the store, my mind was boggling with what could be going on. It had to be something. It had to be. But, I’d be amazed if anything that I could come up with would turn out to be even remotely accurate. The best that I could think was that there might be some kind of visit about to take place in the very near future. That might explain why that one aisle was full of Tesco employees. Some important visitor or visitors could soon be arriving and those stood there were coming up with a plan of action, when they turned up. They could be addressing the finishing touches of who would be doing what and where everyone was going to be at given times. Planned, of course, in an attempt to make the store look as good and as positive as possible. The alternative, which I also came up with as Dad and I began to get further and further away from where the ruckus was, was that it was the preparation for a stock take. All those clipboards, all those people. It was a possibility, I suppose, if albeit an unlikely one. But, the question was, if it was either of these things, what did it have to do with Kathryn and the fact that she was on a till? This was the conclusion that I had come to...and quite quickly too. That these two strange events, somehow and for some reason, were linked. That what Kathryn was up to was in some way, due to what those other people were planning.
Whatever it was that was happening, it was nothing to do with us and now that we had moved on to do our shopping, I could now forget about it. Except, I couldn’t. I don’t know why, there was no rational, logical explanation for me to think like this. Conspiracy theories were no longer what I was about and when it came to Kathryn, especially, I had decided not to go along that road this time. Despite this, though, I couldn’t help myself. It’s hard for me to say what I was thinking, really, while we walked round the store, getting the things that we needed, going from one part of the shop to another. It was a fairly big shop that we were doing, most likely their weekly one and it took us a fair while to get all the way round. In this time, we had not been back to the till area, we had stayed more towards the back of the supermarket and so, I wasn’t aware, one way or another, whether Kathryn was still where she had been when we had walked in or if she had returned to her normal role. I could only guess which of these it would be when we were finally ready to checkout. Even though I was sure that something was up and that, as unlikely as it might seem, Kathryn was involved in whatever was going on, I was also sure that when the time came, she would be behind the desk again and everything would be alright.
Once we were done, once we had got everything that they needed, we did make our way to the checkouts. As I said, by now, in the half an hour or however long it had been, that had passed since we had first arrived in the store, I was confident that Kathryn would be where she always was. But, she wasn’t. She was still sat on the till and still very much looking as though she was checking people out. I don’t know what it was in my head that made me walk over to her till, but it was something and that was exactly what I did. Seconds before I had laid my eyes on Kathryn again, Dad had instructed me to go to a till and start going through while he went back for something that he had, up to that moment, forgotten. So, whilst registering what I was seeing and once more believing it to be somewhat odd, almost without even thinking, I went directly to the till that Kathryn was stationed at and immediately started putting the items that were in the trolley onto the conveyor belt, in preparation for Kathryn scanning them through. It was now that I did