Page 6

She wasn't angry with her father. She saw his point. She just wished that he could see hers. She guessed that from the outside she looked like she wasn't achieving anything, but she was trying things, finding new things, tracking down what was important to her.

Okay, okay, she was taking longer than most people took, but was it her fault that she wanted to do everything? It wasn't like she was lazy.

“Focus!” She glanced up again and this time the Doctor was definitely looking at her. She calmed her breathing and tried to center herself.

Doctor. No one had ever actually said whether Doctor Patil was a real doctor or not. And if she was, what was she a doctor of? Could you be a doctor of yoga? Was that a thing?

Hadley's brain started to whir. She liked yoga. She liked it a lot. It was sometimes the only place where her mind was calm. Maybe she could be a doctor of yoga too.

“Focus!”

She caught herself, bit her lip, moved into the next pose and tried to get her mind straight, empty, clear.

Of course, she was going to have to choose something sooner or later. Her brother was a lawyer, her sister worked for an NGO. Having family money was nice, lucky, but she wasn't going to take it for granted. She had every intention of working for a living. Once she'd figured out what exactly she wanted to do.

There was the sound of someone clearing their throat and Hadley looked up, losing her balance as she did so. The only reason she didn't fall was because she caught hold of the Doctor's arm just in time.

“Today you have not found your center,” the Doctor said. Her voice was calm but her eyes looked mad and Hadley gulped. “So you will please leave my classroom and take your negative energy away from others who are trying harder.”

Hadley opened her mouth to protest but then shrugged. It was fair. Even yoga wasn't calming her today.

She left the room as gracefully as she could.

Halfway between the classroom and the locker-room was a juice bar and Hadley brightened up when she saw it. Her premium membership allowed her one free smoothie a day. Ha. Her last ever smoothie wasn't going to be kale and pomegranate.

At least something was going right today.

She was scanning her membership card and picking up her frosted glass when a voice came from behind her.

“Guess we're the bad kids for today, huh?”

She turned to see the red-head from her class. “Oh no, you got thrown out too?”

The woman pulled a face and nodded. “I think that the Doctor's chakras might be a little out of alignment today.”

Hadley was about to make a joke but something about the woman's face made her bite her tongue. The woman was dead serious about the chakras.

“Um, yeah,” she managed. She held up her smoothie. “At least we get free smoothies though, right?”

“Let me guess, strawberry, wheatgerm and... banana.”

Hadley was suitably impressed. “How did you know that?”

“I've always had a touch of the spirits in me,” the woman said, and for the first time Hadley caught the edge of an accent in her voice.

“Are you English?”

“All the gods forbid, no, child, Scottish, thank you very much. Though it's been years since I came to this country. Maeve McLeod.”

“Hadley Rains, pleasure to meet you.”

“You're a woman after my own heart. I'll have what she's having,” Maeve said to the juice server.

“So,” Hadley said, stirring her smoothie with a straw. “What did you do to get thrown out of class?”

“Ach, lack of focus. Which is no surprise really. I should have known better. There are too many real world things tying me to the ground today, I shouldn't have tried coming to class, but I thought it might help.”

A smoothie was slid across the counter and Maeve picked it up. She was older than she appeared at first, Hadley noticed. In her early forties perhaps.