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‘For those of you who haven’t already, please take a blanket and a bolster and lie or sit on your mats.’

I did as I was told, working out what a bolster was by following Harmony’s lead, moving as slowly as was humanly possible, as if that was going to put off the inevitable. When I glanced towards the hotel I saw Theo striding out into thegarden looking all sleepy and as though he’d literally just rolled out of bed. His usually perfectly coiffed hair was a bit shaggy at the front and I was delighted to see he was also capable of having bad hair days. It was clearly irritating him, though, because in the space of time it took him to join the group he must have brushed it out of his eyes about ten times. He was wearing black football shorts and a white T-shirt and running trainers and I thought he’d probably struggled to work out what the hell to wear. He wasn’t the only one. For the first time – in a long time, at least – I noticed how muscular his legs were, all sculpted calves and thick, powerful thighs. He never went to the gym when I’d known him before, but he’d been in his twenties then and I guessed things changed when you hit thirty and the abs you’d had once began to mysteriously disappear. Not that I’d know how that felt – visible abs had sadly eluded me my entire life and I’d never had any desire to put in the amount of hard work and dedication required to get them.

‘Theo, take a mat and sit next to Scarlett,’ said Melissa, who looked as though she was born for this kind of thing with her expensive-looking vest bearing the sloganEat More Greensand her curly hair piled up in one of those topknots that somehow looked effortless and perfect at the same time.

I smiled awkwardly at Theo as he threw his mat on the ground and sort of folded down onto it. He glanced across at me.

‘Overslept,’ he explained.

As somebody who was perennially late, it always made me feel much better about myself when other people were, too.

‘I was beginning to think you’d bailed on me,’ I said.

‘Tempting as it was, I couldn’t do that to you,’ mumbled Theo, prising his knees into an awkward cross-legged position.

‘Right,’ said Melissa. ‘Let’s warm up our bodies and our minds.’

After a set of relatively easy exercises and some sun salutations which were about a hundred times more challenging than I’d imagined, I was feeling marginally better about the whole thing. While my body didn’t always go into the elegant shapes that Melissa and Harmony were eliciting, the rest of us were as bad as each other and I didn’t feel self-conscious about stopping if I couldn’t manage something, or retreating into child’s pose for a few seconds, which Melissa had told us we could do if we needed a few moments of rest and rejuvenation. I wished I could stay in child’s pose for the entire session, to be honest, not least because with my forehead resting on the backs of my hands and my eyes closed, I could block Theo from my sight altogether. For some reason I was finding him quite difficult to ignore, what with his six-foot body lunging and downward-dogging next to me. It didn’t help that I’d glimpsed the full magnificence of his sculpted back muscles when his T-shirt had fallen forward over his head during one of the more challenging poses. My mind had immediately flashed back to that morning again; that bed. I remembered how raw attraction had hit me like a wall of heat one night, after a late writing session. The realisation that I’d wanted to rip his clothes off there and then had been devastating because up until that point, I’d prided myself on being highly pragmatic when it came to romance, calculating when I could and couldn’t let myself fall for somebody based on how much I was at risk of getting hurt. But this had been different; these had been guttural feelings I couldnotseem to control. And it had been both terrifying and electrifying all at the same time.

‘OK,’ said Melissa. ‘Now our bodies are nice and warmedup, let’s get together in our couples. Please stand up with your backs to each other.’

I caught Theo’s eye. He raised one eyebrow and I tried to smile as though this was no big deal, but it didn’t feel remotely authentic because, truly, this felt like a very bad thing for us to be doing. Reluctantly, we stood with our backs to each other, putting as much space between us as possible. I could already feel the heat of him permeating my leggings and my shoulder blades and, worst of all, the back of my neck, where it felt most intense. I tried to focus on the others. Claire and Rob were bickering about how close to each other to stand, Harmony and Paul were kind of melded into each other and Justin and Renee looked a little bit wobbly but were taking it very seriously. It felt serious to me, too – seriously mortifying. Surely Melissa had enough empathy to cut us some slack. Give us some less ‘intimate’ poses if it all got a bit much.

‘Scarlett, Theo, I want your bodies pressed together in as many different places as possible.’

OK, scrap that.

‘I don’t think––’ I gulped before Melissa cut me short.

‘Just try it, guys. See how it feels.’

I groaned inwardly and although Theo was silent, I could practically feel the tension emanating off him, too. At least I couldn’t actually see his face. It could be anyone standing behind me, couldn’t it, the point was, supposedly, to focus on my own body and mind. I took a step backwards and felt the tops of my thighs bump against his. A thousand sparks flew up along up my spine and I closed my eyes for a second to stop myself gasping out loud. OK, focusing on my bodily sensations was clearly not a good idea. I tried to distract myself by thinking about plot points for the new book, but not even that could stop my heart from hammering against my chest.

‘Buttocks touching, shoulders touching, heads touching, feet touching. I want you making a connection at as many points as possible,’ said Melissa, parading around us all with an eagle eye.

‘Is this really happening?’ mumbled Theo, clearly about as in to this ridiculous exercise as I was.

He shifted position and I felt a gentle pressure on the base of my spine; his skin would be touching mine if it wasn’t for a piece of thin cotton legging. It felt so inexplicably good I could barely breathe. I tried to rationalise it: it was because nobody had touched me for months. Even before that, Jackson and I hadn’t done much more than hug each other occasionally for the last year or so of our relationship. It was just an involuntary reaction, it wasn’t Theo specifically. As I forced myself to straighten up so that almost every part of me was making contact with some part of him, a fizzing sensation worked its way down my arms, pooling in the tips of my fingers. I clenched and unclenched my fists several times to get rid of it.

‘Rotate your shoulders, Scarlett. And Theo, lift your head,’ instructed Melissa.

My shoulders folded into the fleshy part of his back and I let my head sink back into the top of his spine. Looking up at the sky, hoping that would calm my anxiety, I noticed how the rhythm of our breathing was different, mine fast and shallow, his deeper, longer, until slowly we began to find a middle ground. I could feel every sensation, every inhale as air flooded into his chest, every exhale as he released it again. I instinctively filled my lungs harder, matching him breath for breath.

‘Now I want you to fold forwards, like we did before, so that your fingers are lightly touching your toes,’ said Melissa.

‘Jesus,’ I heard Claire grumble.

Trying not to overthink it, I bent at the waist and Theo must have followed suit because suddenly his coccyx was pushing against mine and I had to force my bodyweight backwards to avoid falling forwards and landing flat on my face on the grass. As I tried desperately to stay upright, it felt as though I was having to engage every single muscle possible.

‘Now I want you to put your arms behind you and catch each other’s hands,’ said Melissa.

No.

‘Um . . .’ I gurgled, because my head was basically hanging upside down.

And then I felt Theo’s arms brushing against my shins. In my peripheral vision I could see his hands. Outstretched. Neat, square nails. Comforting, fleshy palms. I liked that he’d done it first, that he’d come over to my side rather than the other way round. Tentatively, I took one of his hands and then the other. It felt strange at first as fingers found fingers, completely unnatural. Clunky. It was like every nerve in my body was on high alert. Wasn’t yoga supposed to be relaxing?!

‘Now pull slightly away from each other, leaning forwards so that your arms are taking the strain. Trust each other that you won’t fall,’ said Melissa in soothing tones that belied the presumably advanced yoga pose she was asking us to contort ourselves into.