‘Oh,’ Marisa stumbles. She hasn’t thought this bit through. ‘It’s very early days. Six weeks,’ she blurts out.
‘Congratulations,’ the instructor says with a beaming smile. ‘I’m Carys.’
‘Marisa.’
‘Beautiful name,’ Carys says. ‘Welcome, goddess.’
Marisa scans the instructor’s face for signs that this is a joke but finds none. Goddess it is, then. Carys moves to the front of the room and tells everyone to sit cross-legged at the front of their mats and to use any props they need to make themselves comfortable. The other women are all in varying stages of pregnancy. Some of them have neatly packaged bumps underneath the expanding waistbands of their leggings. Others, in the later stages, move their limbs around with graceful heaviness, as if swimming through swamp-water.
‘Breathe in,’ Carys says, and her voice acquires a performative edge. ‘Breathe out. And again.’
Carys plugs her phone into a cable by the windowsill and the room is filled with the plinkety-plunk of strings, offset by the rhythmic beat of a tribal drum. The music is too loud for Marisa to hear what Carys is saying, but everyone else seems to know what to do through an unspoken herd instinct, so she follows as best she can and crouches back into a wide-kneed child’s pose. She has always struggled with yoga, with the idea that you have to be in the present moment and concentrate on what you’re doing rather than on anyone else. Marisa can’t help but compare herself to the other women here. The one next to her, whose mat has been positioned slightly too close to Marisa’s, is one of those skinny, glowy women whose body hasn’t much changed since adolescence. She has elegant shoulders and slim hips and her baby bump is as discreetly scaled as the rest of her, in a way thataccentuates her thinness rather than masking it. That is how I want to look when I’m pregnant, Marisa thinks.
‘Today, I slept through my alarm,’ Carys is saying. ‘And it meant I was a bit late for everything. I left my flat without eating breakfast. I forgot my umbrella. The first tube was too busy to get on. We’ve all been there.’ Carys laughs gently. ‘And I just felt so,disconnected, you know? Unrooted from Mother Earth and, like, not in my own skin. I was getting frustrated and anxious. And then, yogis, I remembered what I say to you every single week. I did what I tellyouto do. I closed my eyes. I looked inwards. And I found my breath. Because breath is life. And as you are in charge of bringing beautiful new life onto this earth, we need to free our breathing now more than ever. Let it float! Liberate it!’ On the mat, Marisa is trying to liberate her breathing. The skinny blonde on the mat next to her is making a noisy, rasping sound emanating from the back of her oesophagus. Marisa tries to emit a slightly louder rasping sound just to prove that she can, but then her throat constricts and she realises her competitiveness is distinctly un-zen. Bugger it, she thinks.
At the front of the room, Carys is still proclaiming. ‘As the teachers tell us,’ she says and then she launches into something that sounds like Sanskrit, by way of Chelmsford: ‘Sarva karyeshu sarvada. Please make my understandings free of obstacles.’
Please make my yoga class free of Carys, Marisa thinks. She is already sweating and they haven’t even started properly yet.
There follows an hour of side-bends and gentle pigeon poses. The music rises and swells and then drops off again for the final resting pose, when Carys launches into a meandering disquisition on the nature of creation (‘What does itmeanto create, to be fertile, to open your heart up to the wonder of the universe?’). After it is over, Marisa rolls up her mat. The blonde woman next to her catches her eye and smiles.
‘You new?’
‘Yeah,’ Marisa says, loosening her ponytail so her hair falls around her shoulders.
‘Thought I hadn’t seen you before. She’s great, isn’t she? So in tune.’
Marisa looks over at Carys, who is mid-conversation with a heavily pregnant mother-to-be, nodding intently while keeping her hands clasped in prayer at her chest.
‘Mmm,’ Marisa says, knowing that she will never come back to this class. There have to be easier ways to trigger pregnancy hormones, she thinks.
‘I always feel so much better after coming here. How far gone are you?’
Marisa can’t remember what she told Carys, so she fudges it.
‘Oh, it’s still early days for me,’ she says and doesn’t elaborate.
The woman raises her eyebrows but when the silence draws out, says, ‘Well, good luck. See you next week.’
‘You won’t,’ Marisa utters under her breath and then she turns to walk out of the studio as quickly as she can without making eye contact with Carys. It’s only when she is right at the back of the hall, about to push the door open into the street, that she catches a familiar shape out of the corner of her right eye.
It takes her a minute to focus. Dark hair. Fringe. Grey harem pants and – of all things – a crop-top sporting the logo of an expensive athleisure brand. And when it all slots together into one human form, even then Marisa has to blink to ensure it is actually her. The lodger.
‘Kate,’ Marisa is astonished to find her here. It feels as though Kate has been snooping, and she has the uncomfortable realisation that she would have been able to watch her throughout the class from her vantage point at the back of the room. Surely she can’t be pregnant … can she? And then, quickly, Marisa remembers that she isn’t pregnant either and that she can’t ask the question without facing uncomfortable questions of her own.
‘I didn’t see you here.’
Kate grins, revealing her slightly crooked front teeth.
‘I was at the back!’ she says. ‘I’m working from home today so, you know, I thought I’d drop by.’
Her yoga mat is one of those expensive, padded ones. It is mottled grey with a swirling pattern of palm leaves and Kate has it neatly rolled up and slung over her shoulder with a purple strap. She notices thatKate’s toenails are painted a bright, shiny orange – unlike hers, which are flaking pink and in obvious need of a pedicure.
‘Did you enjoy the class?’ Marisa asks, placing a certain emphasis on the verb.
‘I did! I saw you coming and thought I’d join in at the back. I thought it would be a nice thing to do together, you know?’
Kate’s manner is relaxed and comfortable, as if it were totally normal to follow one’s landlady out of her house to a pregnancy yoga class without explanation. Kate is looking at her frankly, as if expecting Marisa to be appreciative. She is stunned by the sheer entitlement of this.
