Page 50 of The Retreat
Imogen’s brain was yelling at her to move, to break free of the touch that was becoming too real. But her body? Her body was responding to Talia’s, moving with her in a synchrony that made no sense.
Talia’s grip on her hands tightened just slightly, and Imogen’s thoughts scattered even more.
‘OK, let’s break!’ Lorna said.
They released. Imogen didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Then Lorna announced, ‘Now, onto Partner Boat Pose! Sit facing each other, soles together, hold hands, and balance your legs off the floor!’
Imogen and Talia swapped a glance but obediently sat down, soles touching. They held hands again, legs trembling as they lifted into the pose.
‘Now, let’s see some serious eye contact,’ Lorna ordered.
But of course. They were in the seventh circle of hell already. Why not add eye contact?
Imogen looked into Talia’s grey, usually unreadable eyes and whatever mask Talia normally wore… slipped. For a split second, Imogen saw it all. Confusion, frustration, desire, and vulnerability all played out in Talia’s nervous look.
For a moment, it was like they were both caught in the same impossible web, neither willing to say it, but both knowing it was there.
Imogen’s heart raced. She wanted this. No, she didn’t just want this—she needed it, and it terrified her. It was too many things.
But seeing that mirrored in Talia’s eyes? It made it too real. Toopossible.
And then somebody, somewhere behind them, let loose a long, unmistakable fart.
There was a beat of silence.
‘Happens all the time in yoga,’ Lorna said brightly as if someone hadn’t just ruptured the space-time continuum.
Talia snorted.
Imogen clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with horror and the barely restrained threat of hysterical laughter. The spell was broken. The moment was gone.
Thank god. Or whoever had beans for breakfast.
Thirty-Five
The room was quiet as Rebecca went over the ground rules for the second workshop of the day.
Talia sat at the front, doing her best to appear engaged. But her mind was not in the room. It was in that bloody conservatory. The yoga session that morning had been the very last thing she needed. Pressing herself up against Imogen like that had almost broken her.
But the demanded eye contact had been even worse. Her cheeks flushed now just thinking about it. How much had Imogen seen in her eyes?
She pushed the thought away and sat up straighter. This wasn’t yoga. This was a corporate-style workshop, the kind of environment where she excelled, where she could be the Talia she wanted to be. Not the horny idiot who climbed into people’s beds and sweated having to look someone in the eye. But her best self, her strongest self. Conflict resolution wasn’t just familiar to her; it was where she lived.
She remembered a particularly thorny case from the previous year when two rival tech companies (both longstanding clients) had gone head-to-head in a dispute over IP ownership after a collapsed joint venture. Each side claimed rights to the same proprietary algorithm, and the threat of injunctions was growing louder by the hour. Talia had been brought in as leadcounsel for one of them. She’d dissected the original partnership agreement clause by clause, identified the single ambiguous sentence everything hinged on, and used it to negotiate a settlement that kept the case out of court. Her counterpart had grudgingly admitted it was ‘elegantly handled,’ and Celeste had called her strategy ‘impressively surgical.’
But this wasn’t a clean boardroom mediation. This was roleplay in a room full of strangers in a venue that smelled faintly of floor wax and herbal tea. And worst of all, Imogen was here. Somewhere behind her. Watching.
She shook that thought off. She could handle this.
‘Alright, folks,’ Rebecca said, looking pleased as punch. ‘I’d like you participate in a role-play exercise. The scenario is this: you and your colleague have a work-related conflict that needs resolving. There’s been some sort of disagreement, and you’re trying to navigate through it. The challenge is to argue with clarity and respect. No shouting, no insults. Just a disagreement that’s handled professionally. Got it?’
She checked her clipboard. ‘We’ll start with… Talia and Daniel.’
Talia felt Lady Luck’s intervention. Or maybe Celeste’s. It was unlikely to be pure coincidence that she was going head-to-head with her professional rival. But if this was a job interview? Fine. Good, even. She’d wipe the floor with that posh boy.
Daniel sauntered over with his usual self-satisfaction, dragging a chair as if he’d just been asked to deliver a TED Talk.
