Please, Help Yourself [Narrated]

I wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not really.
Not with those grades.

October, 1979.
Brinsford Lodge, Wolverhampton Polytechnic.
B.Sc in Combined Studies—which sounded less like a qualification, more like a confession.
Computer Science and Economics: the sensible face I put on something more tangled.

If I’m honest, I’d sabotaged myself just enough to make staying seem reasonable.
After my mum’s death the year before, the idea of leaving my dad on his own—it felt too sharp, too soon.
Maybe I’d take a year off.
Maybe I wouldn’t go at all.

That summer, I tried to loosen the grip.
Foundry work instead of shelf-stacking.
Hard, tedious, well-paid.
Something heavier than tins.
Something hot enough to make the next goodbye feel survivable.

The reps who came by Dad’s store had their own way of saying farewell.
Chocolate biscuits. Instant soups. Luxury samples smuggled from their boots like contraband affection.
By the time he dropped me off, my wardrobe looked like a fallout shelter curated by someone with a very sweet tooth.

Then came Kate.

“Kate… Kate from Kent,” she said, with the faintest pause between the Kates—like the second one needed its own runway.

There were no other Kates.

Just her.

I didn’t think much of it at first.
Short, sensible hair. Newsreader glasses. Paddington Bear–style duffel coat.
Not unkind. Just built like someone who’d packed a thermos for life.

Brinsford Lodge wasn’t a campus.
It was a place history hadn’t moved on from.
A wartime hostel, then a teacher training college, then a holding pen for political exiles.
The walls knew things. The plumbing remembered.

My room was in K Block—long and narrow, like someone had unrolled a caravan and called it higher education.
A single bed. A scratchy chair. A desk that wobbled.
And a tin of luxury biscuits tucked in the wardrobe like treasure.

That weekend, I DJed the disco.
Old habit.
I had the vinyl. The lights.
The need to keep the room moving—because stillness let too much catch up.

When I played one of my favorites—The Specials, The Cure, XTC—I’d sprint onto the dancefloor and stay for every second.
Then dash back, heart thudding, just in time to cue the next track.
Not elegant. But mine. A loophole. A reminder I was part of the party, not just its mechanic.

That night, Kate watched me.
Not flirtatiously. Not confused. Just… curious.
Like I’d become her favorite glitch.

After the last record faded—Echo Beach, probably—I packed up in silence.
She was at the door. Still there.
No discussion. She fell into step beside me.

She talked the whole way back to K Block.
Not to me—at. A stream of low-pressure chatter about crisps, dorm lighting, someone named Sebastian who may or may not have owned a boat.

I invited her in.
Politeness, mostly.
Sat her on the bed. Opened the biscuit tin—the holy grail of my stash.
“Help yourself,” I said. Then left to make coffee.

The kettle was occupied.
Someone already standing guard over it like it might float away.
I waited. Refilled. Waited again.

By the time I returned, Kate had made steady progress.

A small pile of crumpled foil wrappers beside her.
Gold, red, blue.
She’d picked the ones I would have.
The hazelnut whirls. The dark chocolate ridged fingers.
The layered ones with the wavy top.

She had excellent taste.

We drank our coffee. She kept talking. I kept sweating—remnants of disco and nerves.

I stood to change.
Not a performance—just necessity.
Surely, this was her cue to leave.

She didn’t.

Her eyes tracked me like a wildlife documentary narrator might:
The male returns to his den, shedding his outer shell.
Munch, munch, blink. Munch.

It wasn’t fear, exactly.
But it was something breath-held and dumbfounded.
A weird kind of standoff I hadn’t trained for.

Eventually, maybe when the good ones were gone, she said,
“I should probably be going.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is getting late.”
I was halfway to the door before the sentence ended.

She rose, wiped her fingers delicately on a napkin I hadn’t offered, and left.

I bolted the door.
Stood in the biscuit-scented quiet.
What was that?
Not a question. A verdict.

A week later, Kevin decided our corridor needed a party.
Twelve rooms. Six on each side. Shared kitchen. One long, echoey hall.

He knocked on doors. Handed out cans.
Asked me to turn up the music.

Kevin stood in his doorway, directly opposite Paul’s.
We were chatting—music playing, laughter pinging down the corridor—when someone asked about Kate… Kate from Kent.

I started telling the story.
Dash-dancing. Coffee. Biscuits.

Paul’s door creaked open almost immediately.
He grinned at me, leaned against the frame like a man settling in for the next episode of something very entertaining.
“Go on,” he said. “Don’t leave out the good bits.”

So I didn’t.
I gave it all—her quiet fixation, the biscuit massacre, her unblinking stare as I changed my shirt.
I thought Paul was laughing just at the story.
Then he stepped aside.

And there she was.

Kate… Kate from Kent.

On his bed.
Eating his biscuits.
Red-faced. Silent. Caught mid-munch.

She didn’t say anything.

Neither did I.

I didn’t apologize.
I just turned.
Stepped backward into my room.
Shut the door.
Bolted it.

Head under pillow.
Walls still echoing with Paul’s laughter.

It took a few weeks for me to face her.

I mumbled something over jacket potatoes in the dining hall.
She waved it off.
Said she’d already moved on.

She’d seen the funny side long before I could.

Maybe that was her magic.
Not the voice. Not the polish.

The pause.
That tiny breath between Kates.

Room for absurdity.
Room for forgiveness.
Room for someone off-beat, off-rhythm, still learning how to cue the next track.

Room for someone like me.