Read Online The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers - Free Book Online Page B

she’d had enough. She was asking herself, not for the first time, how it was possible to kiss a person you didn’t really know; or rather, what that kiss exactly was .
    Their talk turned, in dilatory fashion, to politics, the arts, subjects of the day, matters over which they had, if any, uninvolving influence: student misbehaviour, the city’s rat population, disasters in China. They despatched several of these topics between them as Joe cooked, before Kit said, ‘What about your work? I mean, about your work—what is it exactly that you do? You didn’t say.’
    â€˜Don’t ask.’
    He omitted to turn round this time, nor did he speak with emphasis, yet it was clear to her that he meant it: don’t ask .
    Perhaps he’s a vivisectionist, she thought.
    â€˜You?’ he said.
    â€˜Oh,’ Kit pulled a loopy, apologetic face, which, with his back turned, he didn’t see, ‘well, I hate to say it, but my work is fantastically interesting and I don’t mind in the least being asked.’
    â€˜Go on then.’
    â€˜I—’ How to begin? She blundered about in her mind trying to formulate the right first sentence. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t answered this question before.
    â€˜Give me a précis.’
    â€˜You sure?’
    He glanced round at her. ‘Give me a précis, woman.’
    Kit said nothing.
    â€˜Very well, what discipline are you in, and what are you working on at the moment?’
    She breathed in deep. ‘DPhil in English, nineteenth century. The past couple of weeks I’ve been tackling my introduction, which I rather bypassed at the start. Roughly speaking, I’m looking at the use made in their work by some of the more substantial Victorian writers of real crimes, bearing in mind the complicating factor that, in their way of looking at it, you could legitimately draw distinctions between factual truth and, as they conceived it, higher moral truths; but also bearing in mind that, increasingly, from the 1830s onwards, writers were prepared to use quite recent real crimes in their novels, so that where they changed the details, their original readers couldn’t avoid comparing the fictionalised result with a more accurate version they would remember from the newspapers—something we miss out on, reading these books now. Added to which, detectives were considered corrupt back then, yet they were seeking the truth, a little like these authors themselves, in a way. In fact, the first police detective unit in England, 1842, was a clandestine operation—the government kept its existence secret from the public.’
    â€˜It did?’
    â€˜For fear of massive disapproval. Just for starters, people thought it was terribly wrong for detectives to be in plain clothes. This wasn’t playing fair. It was deemed un-Christian, kind of thing.’ Kit leant back in her chair and laid her hands down flat on the table. ‘Well, bore, bore,’ she said.
    â€˜Don’t go. Food’s ready.’ Joe put a plate on her place mat, remembered napkins, pepper, bowls for the salad.
    â€˜Start,’ he said, cooking his own omelette.
    â€˜Blimey.’ Kit tucked in, eating fast. It was the best meal she’d had in ages as well as the smartest, and she was deeply hungry.
    â€˜So. So you’re working on Victorian true-crime detective fiction, is that right?’
    â€˜Admirably concise, yes; and n.b., police detectives only. This is delicious, by the way. Yes, and I’m teaching for the first time. I have my first-ever pupil. You won’t believe this, but he’s called Orson.’
    â€˜Orson?’
    â€˜Orson McMurphy.’
    â€˜Which college?’
    â€˜None. He’s in digs with some outfit called Milkweed Hall or whatever. No, I’m kidding. But the small print of the thing is that he’s studying in Oxford, not at it, although considering all the people who teach