The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers

she was parked back in the warm with a cup of tea, it seemed to Kit as though she might never be able to stand up again.
    She felt so humiliated, so contemptible, and so defencelessly pleased at being tended to a little, even by the person who had humiliated her, that her eyes momentarily swam. She had believed she was going to the class ready for anything, but what had happened was sufficiently offensive to her that she was forced to acknowledge this hadn’t been true. For one thing, she had not envisaged needing to master, so completely, the steps, because she had imagined that some other person would be guiding her as she drifted mostly backwards. For another—
    â€˜What made you decide to go to this particular club?’ she heard herself ask, retreating into dullness.
    Joe perceptibly paused, then replied, ‘Actually, the person I expected to meet last week proposed it. You?’
    â€˜Chance.’
    â€˜You live near here?’
    â€˜No. You?’
    â€˜No, I don’t.’ His eyes flickered briefly as he seemed to consider this prospect. ‘Eat the sandwich,’ he said, and then said, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t pick a studenty dance class in town.’
    â€˜Being I’m a student?’
    â€˜Aren’t you?’
    â€˜Yes, no,’ she bit off a dryish mouthful of bread and cheese, ‘that’s correct. Which is to say, I’m a graduate.’ She didn’t add, ‘You?’ First, she had no instinct as to what he might be. Second, she was still absorbing the information that he had approached her the previous week only after having been stood up by someone else.
    To her alarm, sandwich in hand, she began to cry.
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    For a long time Kit couldn’t stop. Nor, for this reason, could she swallow the bite she’d taken out of the sandwich. Joe sat opposite her, calm.
    When at last she’d got a hold on herself, she wiped her eyes along the back of her sleeve, encountering as she did so the gaze of a man as he looked in through the café window.
    He’s looking at me because I’m crying, and he’s wondering why I’m crying, she thought— or , she thought, as he disappeared from view, he did wonder it, just for a second. Dimly she remembered herself to have seen, it felt quite recent, a woman crying in the street. Daytime, where, Cornmarket? Yes, she remembered the incident, not recent at all. A lady in a headscarf, hand to cheek, distraught, ages ago. A young man had intervened.
    â€˜All right?’ said Joe.
    â€˜I mean, did you see how they looked at us—at me,’ said Kit, her voice rising petulantly. ‘The last thing, the last thing in the world —when I made myself go to a dance place; to end up being the man, strangely enough that was the last thing in the world I ever would have wanted. I didn’t even know it was an option . You—’
    She got herself in hand. ‘Sorry,’ she said blankly, ‘I’ve had it.’
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    How wonderful, she thought, if I could magically click my fingers and find myself sitting in a bath, in a near-faint, shimmering but blitzed, on a slow clock, hidden away from the world, with clean sheets waiting, warm blankets, a decent pillow.
    â€˜And you know, sod them, sod everything,’ Joe was saying. He sounded, not heated, but not indifferent either. ‘You don’t exactly belong around here. I hoped you’d have the nerve to be unorthodox. I wasn’t sure, though. You go somewhere properly cosmopolitan, no one would have cared. It started out, the tango, for example, immigrant workers in Argentina—it had to be men dancing with men because, whatever women there were, they weren’t allowed out by their fathers, unless you’re talking a bordello—’
    Kit struggled to follow what he was saying.
    â€˜â€”and it wasn’t considered effete, not at all. You learned to be a better dancer that