Composition

The short story “Kiss” by Elizabeth Baines has a non-linear structure, with many flashbacks to the main characters’ life stories. 

The story begins in medias res, showing two of the characters kissing in the Tube station while another man is preparing to detonate a bomb (ll. 1-3). This works as a narrative hook, inciting readers’ curiosity about who the characters are and how they are connected. 

The plot is then presented through a series of flashbacks that go further and further back in time. The first flashbacks show the characters just before they cross paths in the Tube station. The woman and her partner were “leaning together” (l. 9) on their ride while the young bomber crossed “the road towards the tube station entrance” (ll. 11-12), where someone pushed into him, and he was afraid the bomb might have been damaged. The story then flashes further back to the night before, when the couple me...