A Heart Bent Out of Shape by Emylia Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

beer out of tall stem glasses. The interior was dark and smelt of age-old wood, and stag heads were mounted on the walls. The barman spoke Swiss-German, in a lilting dialect, and wore a felt hat tipped low over his eyes. They settled at a table by the window and Hadley couldn’t stop staring. The view extended down the valley: mist strung the tops of the evergreens and a torrent of river was just visible.
    ‘Does anyone else feel as though they shouldn’t be here?’ she said, turning back to the others. ‘It’s like we’re skipping class.’
    ‘The semester doesn’t start until tomorrow, Hadley,’ said Kristina.
    ‘I know that, I mean, just being here, so far away from everything. It’s like another world. Not just this place, but Switzerland. The fact that we’re here at all.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ said Jenny. ‘We’re miles from anywhere. Dave might as well not exist. I hate it.’
    ‘You hate it?’ Hadley was open-mouthed.
    ‘I don’t mean I hate it here . I just hate the fact of it. He’s in England, I’m here, it’s pointless.’
    Chase shrugged. ‘You can always leave a place if you want. Or break up with your boyfriend. That, of course, is the other option.’
    ‘I’m not saying that . . .’ Jenny began in reply.
    ‘Sounds to me like love’s the problem here,’ said Bruno, holding up his glass. ‘So, here’s to not being in love! Here’s to freedom!’ He waggled his glass for a toast but the others were slow to oblige. ‘Chase? Come on!’
    ‘Cheers,’ Chase said, chinking glasses. ‘To new beginnings.’
    Jenny smiled at him and gulped down her beer. Hadley glanced across at Kristina, but she was fiddling with her nails and didn’t appear to be listening.
    On the way back to the car Kristina caught Hadley’s elbow.
    ‘What do you think Bruno meant when he said love’s the problem?’
    ‘I’m not sure he meant much at all,’ said Hadley. ‘Jenny’s just missing her boyfriend, that’s all. Or maybe she’s not, and that’s part of it too.’
    They kicked through the crumpled brown leaves together, walking behind the rest of the group. The air had turned and had a chill in it now.
    ‘But they’re right,’ Kristina said. ‘It’s a trap. A trap as much as a release.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’ Hadley asked. Before she could ask, Is it Jacques? Kristina had quickened her pace and fallen in to step with the others. Hadley was left wondering.
    As soon as the semester began, Hadley and Kristina’s timetables took them in different directions across campus. Kristina became swept up in crowds of other students, art history types with velvet jackets, half-moon glasses and consciously dishevelled hair. Hadley’s time was spent between the French language school, where internationals took classes on grammar and made cautious forays into French fiction, and the English department. At L’Institut Vaudois , if you chose to study English Literature, all the teaching and coursework was in the English language; so as well as a scattering of Swiss, there were a number of professors from the UK and America among the staff. On her first day in the corridors of the English department, Hadley saw a poster on a noticeboard saying that Professors Caroline Dubois and Joel Wilson would be hosting welcome drinks for student and faculty, near the beginning of term. According to her timetable she had Professor Wilson for American Literature, and her first lecture was that Friday. Hadley decided that she would see what the class was like before she committed to going to the drinks; she pictured everyone standing around stiffly, chewing peanuts solemnly and nursing plastic cups of wine.
    She wandered along the corridor and saw another noticeboard, with a parade of photographs of every staff member. Hadley stopped beside it, and tried to spot Professors Dubois and Wilson. She saw Caroline Dubois first. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a tightly coiled chignon, and her peach-coloured