Page 72 of The Love Position

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I just don’t want to do this on my own.’

Isaac took her hand. ‘It’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.’

Sophia’s forehead creased. ‘I think she thought you’d done this to me.’

Bile rose in his throat. ‘Unfortunately, that’s not an irrational thought.’

Her eyes became liquid. ‘That’s so awful.’

‘I know.’

Reaching forward, he wiped her tears away with the pad of his thumb. ‘I’m so sorry this has happened.’

Sophia tried to smile, but her lower lip was wobbling. ‘This year has been the absolute worst. I’d like to think things came in threes, but this is the fifth awful thing that’s happened and it’s still only July.’

Isaac clenched his jaw, holding back his own emotion. Like Eveline, Sophia was one of the kindest souls he’d ever met and didn’t deserve the hand she’d been dealt.

She swallowed. ‘Isaac…’

‘Yes, love.’

The endearment slipped out without him realising, but Sophia’s expression didn’t change. Had she even noticed?

‘Am I to blame for all the awful things that have happened to me this year?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘But… What about my prarabdha? The karma from my past lives that I’m meant to reap in this one.’

Isaac knew about the different forms of karma, but when someone as lovely as Sophia was suffering, he struggled to understand it.

‘When people have been breaking down and crying, Swami Saraswati, Mohan and Anisha say it’s because we’re burning off negative karma,’ she continued. ‘But I think it’s more to do with the fact we’re hungry, sleep-deprived, and overwhelmed with information.’

Isaac had heard the ‘burning off negative karma’ explanation given for people’s tears so many times, but had never questioned it before.

‘But if karma is real, was I a truly terrible person in a past life? How Marcus treated me; the affairs, the drugs, the dig. And what happened to my dad this year? Is it all my fault?’

Isaac knew he should talk to Sophia about resilience and fortitude. About having a strong yoga practice to neutralise negative prarabdha and build positive agami karma for the future. But his throat was dry.

He swallowed. ‘Maybe you’re so lovely in this life, your next one will be perfect.’

‘But I don’t care about my next life. I’m living in this one. This is what’s real to me.’

Isaac’s heart twisted as he gazed at the tears tracking down Sophia’s blood-stained cheeks, the dark hollows under her eyes. He’d been so sure about every aspect of yoga he’d been taught, but now questions were forming like tiny cracks on the surface of a frozen lake in the springtime.

‘Maybe,’ he began, his voice low as he spoke his heresy, ‘the idea of karma is there to help us understand why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ she whispered.

He squeezed her hand. ‘I believe that none of this is your fault and you don’t deserve any of it. You’re the best of people, Sophia, and… and I—’

The curtain was swept aside, and a woman entered the cubicle, pushing a small trolley.

‘Oh dear, you are in a pickle,’ she said, then snapped on a pair of latex gloves. ‘My name’s Tonya. I’m one of the doctors here.’

Doreen arrived and passed Isaac a clipboard and pen. ‘Can you fill this out while the doctor’s taking care of your wife?’

Your wife…

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