The Twisted Heart Read Free

one day cut into pieces and then in some appalling fashion raped, who had best exemplified the name, Meta Cherry . In the act of forming this thought—too late, that is—Kit wished her mind would leave words alone where words didn’t serve.
    The scene through the café window, plus the window itself, scattered over with special offers handwritten on dayglo stars, looked like a black-and-white photograph, ‘Useless People at Twilight’, that happened to have come out in colour.Who were they all, Kit wondered, these wasters? She stared at them, annoyed, until two of them started to laugh, at which she was pierced by a sense of her own loneliness. Oh yes, she thought, more annoyed still, and isn’t this just exactly the kind of moment where you’re supposed to ask, ‘What is life for?’
    While she was busy replying to herself that this was a question she was unqualified to address, she was startled by a hand on her arm, ‘You off then?’ She—a man had taken hold of her, nondescript, tough, thin, Kit only peripherally looked at him—crop-haired, a not-quite-youngish man.
    He let go.
    Kit said, ‘I’m just catching the bus,’ and looked back at the café, at the laughing people inside it, at the sun-bleached, illustrated menu, green and orange dayglo stars. She looked around at the street, at the world, at the rest of the world, at a cyclist, a graffitied dustbin, a kid opposite who—
    â€˜You’re okay, are you?’
    â€”a kid opposite who was walking along with odd, stiff, jolly, deliberate steps.
    The man hesitated then tried again. ‘Were you thinking of coming back next week?’
    Not now, I’m not, thought Kit, though she hadn’t been planning to anyway.
    â€˜I was hoping I might get a chance to dance with you,’ he said. ‘You were—you didn’t want to try out with a partner?’
    Kit felt got at. She was a definite pip taller than him. She drew herself up. She muttered, ‘I don’t know, I have to be off.’ As she had just left the hall, wasn’t that pretty obvious?
    â€˜Might you make it next time, do you think?’ he asked.
    â€˜If I can,’ she said, gracelessly.
    â€˜Joe,’ he said, and held out the hand with which he had notionally detained her.
    She shook hands—how could she not?—and seemed to remember hearing that blind people judged the beauty of strangers by the feel of their hands. What did his hand feel like? He was nondescript, tough. His hand was nondescript, tough. It meant nothing to her. What might her hand feel like, come to think of it, to him? Nothing, also?
    â€˜Kit,’ she replied.
    â€˜Kit?’
    â€˜ Kit ,’ she said, more distinctly. Perhaps he wasn’t nondescript after all. Tough though, yes. There was about him a certain—what? He caught her eye, smiled and turned away, and walked away back towards the hall.
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    On the short return bus ride down the hill to town, Kit felt furious. She often thought about joining this or that club, society, about attending events, getting out, meeting people. She would think about it, would revolve the idea in her mind, would feel she had understood whatever it was she wished to understand, and would then proceed to remain at home. The scheme of a dance club, of really going to one—the fact that she had done it had been an exception.
    Now, trailing along in the traffic past the drearily colourful little Cowley Road shops, murals, tawdry and decayed; now, sitting on the bus in a bad mood, it felt to Kit as though she had left the dance class expressly to avoid, as he had saidhe was called, Joe ; though the fact was, she hadn’t known he existed until after she’d got outside. She wished she had walked back down into town, he wouldn’t have caught up with her then; but she had wanted, and did want, to fit in time at the library, and it was late.
    For an instant