Summary

The short story “Kiss” by Elizabeth Baines starts with a young couple kissing on their way out of the London Tube as a young man carrying a bomb in his backpack is on his way in. As the young man with the backpack gets off a bus on his way to the Tube station, someone pushes him from behind, and he nearly falls. He is afraid that the fuse might have been damaged and worries the bomb will not go off. 

The story moves on to share pieces of each character’s life story. The young woman comes from a middle-class family and was sexually abused by her father. Her mother was also cruel and did not allow her daughter to confide in her. These problems caused her to develop anorexia, and she eventually attempted to commit suicide.

The young man with the dreadlocks has a history of being racially...