“Please excuse me for a second.” Mia headed into the bathroom and stood inside the stall for long, silent minutes. Apart from the anguish in her own head before, during and after she was doing the actual bullying, Mia had never been properly punished for what she had done. Maybe that time had now finally come.

Chapter Nine

After her confrontation with Mia, Lou felt different. Lighter on her feet. Like a weight had—finally—been lifted. And yes, she still cringed every time she ran into Mia at the Pink Bean, but at least she didn’t have to fear that Mia would join her yoga class and the dread of Mia confronting her had been lifted.

Amber had been right—she usually was. Getting it all out into the open had been so much better than carrying it around in agonizing silence. Lou should have known better. Her yoga training should have guided her in the same direction that Amber had sent her in, but when it came to such deeply personal matters, training tended to fail the individual.

Now she sat, enjoying the wine that was being poured generously, and the laughter and easy conversation of these four women she had gotten to know over the past few months since she’d joined the staff of Glow.

Robin and Martha had tried to be supportive of their respective partners and had come to a few yoga classes. Before Lou had become an instructor at Glow, she had actually been in one of the classes Martha and Robin had attended together. Their disrespectful giggling had got on Lou’s nerves and their yoga habit had not stuck.

“I used to believe otherwise, but not everyone can be converted,” Amber had said laconically.

Amber’s partner Martha had cooked a vegan meal at her home in Camperdown, and Lou had carpooled with Micky and Robin. Working at Glow felt like an automatic inclusion in their group, which often extended to Kristin and Sheryl and occasionally to Caitlin and Josephine.

Lou had lived in Brisbane for almost ten years and although she had returned to Sydney frequently, most of the close friendships she had enjoyed before leaving had petered out. Besides, Lou was a different person now. It had been easy enough to rekindle her friendship with Phil, who now was a dad and a husband, but other relationships hadn’t fared so well.

Lives can diverge, time changes people and Lou wasn’t the best at keeping in touch and keeping the fires of long-distance friendships stoked. She had also learned that knowing someone in your early twenties is very different to knowing someone in your early thirties. So she was glad to have found this group of almost friends that came with the job.

“Can you believe I’ve never been to Brisbane,” Robin said. “Is it something that can’t be missed?”