We Were Trainees Together in Our Local Library

She left on the Friday, to be married on the Saturday, but did she? Imagine the shock of seeing her years later outside another library in Adelaide

I was straight out of school, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, so in the interim I got a job as a trainee librarian at our local library.

It’s where we two first met. She was only a couple of years older than I was at the time. She probably still is!

Although she was a bit different, I figured, all the world is queer save thee and me, so I ignored her idiosyncrasies as best I could. I was sure I had my own set!

She could have been pretty if she’d taken a bit more care with herself, but it was obvious she was not vanity-driven, like most of us. Not vanity-driven, seemingly not driven at all, if I am honest!

So we got along okay. We traveled together to University once a week, an hour’s drive on the bus, so we had time to chat about all sorts of things, if she felt so inclined.

I found out she wasn’t as boring as I’d mentally painted her, but neither was she bubbly and extroverted. But for the short trip, we managed to talk about wild things like boyfriends.

She had one.

That’s all I knew. She had a boyfriend. No details were ever proffered.

Then one day she announced to the staff that she was getting married on the following Saturday. Thanks for the warning!

You could have knocked us all down with a feather.

We asked all sorts of questions:

• church wedding? Nope!
• registry office? Yep!
• big wedding? Nope.
• when? She gave us a time.
• where? She told us.
• would she mind if we turned up? Not at all!

And so we planned. We were going to turn up, do some silly, innocuous but memorable things, and be a significant part of the uninvited onlookers.

It’s a long time ago, so don’t even ask what we’d planned for fun, but we did all turn up, to be told that the wedding had taken place three hours previously.

We looked at each other, totally dumbfounded, asking questions like:

• did we get this wrong? Nope!
• what time did each of us think? We figured out we couldn’t all be wrong.
• was there a covert reason why she’d told us in the first place? We had no idea.

But when Monday morning came, we figured she had tricked us. Little did we know by how much.

She never showed up for work again.

That’s right. She just didn’t show up, she didn’t answer phone calls, she offered no explanation, simply disappearing over the distant yonder leaving us all to speculate.

In time we forgot about her. Life, with all its busyness, goes on.

The next year I left to study full-time teaching. and she was summarily forgotten.

Five years later I left Scotland to live in Australia, only for two years…that was the plan…but plans are not necessarily meant to be adhered to. Are they?

One day I was coming out of the local library when, there she was, standing on the library steps on the other side of the world!

“Anna!”I involuntarily called. “Anna!”

She looked across and I knew it was her. Even if I had been questioning myself, I instantly was without doubt. She had a distinct, not unattractive mole high on her left cheek. That mole had not gone away.

It took her a few seconds to register who I was, after which she made a bolt for it, never looking back, and I stood there immobilized, regretting my missed opportunity but accepting that, there was at least some consistency in her puzzling behaviour.

This story in and of itself is not exactly riveting.

But what is amazing is that two young girls who had once worked together, could so easily have come together on the other side of the world, to share stories, to reminisce, to laugh at past trickery, or just to say an amazed hello.

But that was not to be.

She obviously had secrets that she had no intention of sharing, no matter our unrequited serendipitous coming together.

So…I never saw her again.

But bet your bottom dollar I looked. I was always on the lookout. I even went to the library more often, but no Anna appeared.

If I wanted to, I could make up all sorts of stories about all that was behind this, the tricking of us into turning up for a wedding that we were clearly meant to miss, about her not having the decency to offer a reason to her employers about why she could no longer work there, but really, what would be the point?

I will forever be baffled…baffled by her odd behaviour, baffled that, in a country where I was the new kid on the block, she couldn’t toss things aside and reminisce.

I’d found someone I had once known and worked with, someone whose accent and culture I could relate to and craved, yet something was getting in the way. What something did she need to hide?

It took me some time to stop thinking about her.

I was lonely and homesick at the time, and this serendipitous coming together could have eased the pain of missing so many people from home, of being culturally out on a limb.

Naturally, as my friendship group widened and I found my tribe, I thought little of the incident.

But this occurrence taught me this. With eyes wide open for the element of surprise, so many great things could happen for me.

And they did.

They continue to happen and surprise me.

Eyes wide open. That’s the way.

Imagine all the things that could be happening for you too, close events that quietly pass us by, so near, yet somehow we don’t see them, or we’re simply not ready.

If they can happen for me, they can for you too. Eyes wide open!

And if we are lucky enough to actually experience them, that is serendipity in action.

The population of the world is some 7.888 billion. Surely people can’t just happen upon someone they once knew… outside the same type of institution where they once met, and worked…on the other side of the world?

Surely…not…

Yet it did!