Free The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers Page B

tomorrow.’
    â€˜Hey,’ called Michaela, ‘remind me in future not to tell you what to do. And, Kit, get some proper shut-eye, for God’s sake, you look like you really need it.’ As she retreated backwards into her room, Michaela slammed her door shut, thus cutting in half her sign-off, ‘Sleep ti—’

CHAPTER 3
    â€˜Look what the cat dragged in,’ said Michaela, swishing.
    Kit got to her feet confused, exposed, her open notebook and a saucepan of custard in front of her on the kitchen table.
    â€˜He asked me if you lived here,’ said Michaela.
    Kit had assumed, without great regret, that she would never see Joe again, or at worst, that they would half acknowledge each other on the street some surprise day in the future. Michaela notwithstanding, she had hardly thought about him since the previous Friday, putting him to the back of her mind if for no other reason than to ward off shame.
    She closed the notebook. She had stretched out to it instinctively, wanting something to do, to appear engaged. She wasn’t ready for this situation.
    â€˜I knew it had to be one of these buildings,’ said Joe, ‘so long as you meant it last week about the other side of the Woodstock Road.’
    â€˜And you just happened to ask Michaela?’ Kit delivered her rejoinder with considerable bite, hand arrested on the tabletop.
    â€˜She wasn’t the first,’ replied Joe evenly. ‘And you left several glass slippers when you ran away.’
    â€˜I just did happen to be coming back to this shit hole,’ said Michaela, ‘bloody Friday and there he is wanderingaround like a lost dog, so we have a little parlez-vous and don’t go glaring at me like that, Kit. He found me, I didn’t find him. What do you think?’
    Of course Michaela hadn’t gone and found him. How could she have? As well as feeling confused, Kit now felt daft. Me, I’m the lost dog, she thought.
    Almost before Joe had begun, Michaela spoke across him, ‘She would’—as he said to Kit, ‘I was wondering if you’d like to—as it’s Friday, it’s—’
    Both of them stopped.
    â€˜Feel free not to answer on my behalf,’ snapped Kit at Michaela, who was already removing herself from the scene. ‘Later, darlings,’ she crooned, as she backed merrily out of the kitchen.
    â€˜God,’ said Kit. She and Joe, eyes askance, listened until they heard Michaela’s door close. ‘What exactly did she say to you?’
    â€˜It’s all right,’ said Joe.
    Â Â Â 
    Kit had been sitting there eating custard off a wooden spoon, reviewing her notes from the morning, which she’d spent in the library. Between the library and home she had gone to the supermarket, where she’d found herself mooching past the section with tins of Bird’s custard powder—the shelf-stackers were discussing it, it didn’t come in actual tins any more—and had remembered all about Bird’s, eating it as a child. There she had stood, remembering how much she’d liked to eat custard off a wooden spoon when her mother made it, because, after her mother decanted the custard into a diamond-patternjug, Kit had always been allowed to scrape out the saucepan. All spoons should be made of wood, she thought. She had felt pained for herself as a child, thinking how solitary that character now seemed; which had caused her to buy a container of Bird’s and extra milk, and to go home and at once make a pint of custard in a large, flat pan, letting it cool for a while because she also liked puncturing the skin. These days, her mother bought ready-made custard that tasted synthetic, had no skin, and poured over the carton lip in gouts.
    â€˜Did you know, in—’ Kit blinked anxiously, unsure how long she’d been standing there failing to communicate, ‘—in the Co-op they put custard powder and Fray Bentos pies,