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Chapter 68: The Dog
publish date:
2026-04-24 06:01:57
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EYES OPEN Chapter 85: The Ex
Her name is Amanda.She is standing in the corridor outside James's apartment when Priya and James come out of the lift, which means she has been there long enough to know his floor and his door and which lift he uses, and the specific knowledge of a woman who spent enough time in someone's life to memorise its geography.Priya tells me this on the phone and I listen and I ask the one question that matters."Do you want me to come?"A pause."No," she says. "But stay on the phone."I sit on our couch with the phone against my ear and Rhys sits beside me saying nothing because he can read the room and the room requires silence.Through the phone I can hear the specific muffled quality of a conversation happening in a corridor, not words exactly, just tone, and tone tells you everything.Amanda's tone is not aggressive.That is somehow worse.Aggressive would be easier to dismiss. This is the tone of someone who is genuinely in pain and has decided that showing up is the only move left,
EYES OPEN Chapter 84: Dinner For Four
James is exactly what I expected and nothing like it.Warm, yes, the kind of warmth that fills a room without trying. But underneath it something sharper and more watchful than his client relations smile suggests, and within fifteen minutes of sitting across from him at the restaurant Priya chose in Soho, I understand completely why she fell for him and also why she took four months to admit it.He is the kind of person who pays attention without making you feel observed.Dangerous quality.Rhys likes him immediately, I can tell because Rhys goes quieter when he likes someone, not colder, just more himself, the version that does not perform anything, and within twenty minutes he and James are deep in something about structural engineering and urban planning that Priya and I let run because watching Rhys talk about buildings with someone who is genuinely interested is one of my favourite things."He researched it," Priya says quietly across the table. "Rhys's restoration project. He lo
EYES OPEN Chapter 83: The Florist Problem
Her name is Bea.She has a shop in Bermondsey that smells like every good thing that has ever grown anywhere and she looks at my simple white flowers brief with the expression of a surgeon being asked to perform with gardening tools."Simple white," she repeats."Yes, simple white," I reply."For a restored heritage hall with original stone and period cornicing and newly unblocked south facing windows.""Yes," I reply."Simple white will disappear," she says. Not unkindly. Just factually. "The stone will eat it. You need texture and weight. Something that argues back."Priya is beside me because Priya offered to come and I said yes because Priya has opinions about everything and I find that useful in direct proportion to how much it occasionally irritates me."What would you suggest?" Priya asks Bea.Bea goes somewhere in the back of the shop and comes back with armfuls of things and begins constructing something on the worktop without explaining what she is doing and Priya and I watc
EYES OPEN Chapter 82: Saturday At The Building
The drive takes forty minutes and Felix sits in the back with Arlo.By the time we hit the motorway they have reached an understanding that involves Felix's left hand available for Arlo at all times and Arlo's chin on Felix's knee in exchange. Felix does not comment on this. He looks out the window at England going green and wide and occasional and plays something quietly under his breath that has no lyrics, just sound, like he is warming up for something he has not decided yet.Rhys drives.I have my feet on the dashboard."You always do that," Rhys says."It is my feet," I reply. "It is my dashboard.""Our dashboard," I say.He says nothing because there is nothing to say to that.The building appears at the end of the private road the way it always does, sudden and certain, like it was waiting rather than sitting. Felix leans forward between the seats and looks through the windscreen and goes quiet in a different way from his usual quiet, more focused, like something has caught hi
EYES OPEN Chapter 81: Felix Says Yes
I knock on his door on a Sunday morning.Arlo is with me because Arlo is always with me on Sunday mornings and because Felix has been giving him cheese which means Arlo considers the fourth floor a satellite territory of our apartment.Felix opens the door in a different suit jacket over different pyjama bottoms which tells me this is his standard Sunday configuration and I respect the consistency.He looks at me.Then at Arlo.Then back at me with the expression of a man recalculating the nature of the visit."Come in," he says.His apartment is extraordinary.Not decorated exactly. Accumulated. Books everywhere, actual everywhere, stacked on shelves and beside chairs and on the kitchen counter alongside what appears to be sheet music and a half eaten piece of toast. Two cello cases in the corner, one open, and a music stand with something complex and handwritten on it that I want to look at more closely but do not because it feels private.Plants in every window doing improbably wel
EYES OPEN Chapter 80: The Wedding Planner
Her name is Dot.Dorothy Ashby professionally, Dot to everyone, a woman of sixty with the energy of someone half that age and the specific authority of a person who has organised four hundred and twelve weddings and has seen every possible way a couple can make a simple thing complicated.She sits across from us at our kitchen table on a Saturday morning with a notebook the size of a small country and looks at us both with the assessing gaze of a professional who is deciding what category of couple she is dealing with."Tell me what you want," she says."Something small," I reply. "Intimate. The people who matter.""How many people?" she asks.Rhys and I look at each other.We have not discussed a number."Forty," I say."Sixty," he says simultaneously.Dot writes something in her notebook."How small is small is the first thing every couple disagrees about," she admits. "You are normal. Fifty. Final answer from both of you.""Fifty," I say."Fine," Rhys agrees."Venue?" she asks."A
EYES OPEN Chapter 16: Mother
My mother has three modes.Warm, which is her default and her best. Concerned, which arrives when she suspects something is wrong and deploys itself as a series of increasingly loaded questions disguised as casual conversation. And activated, which is what three words and a full stop at nine forty
EYES OPEN Chapter 12: The Mistake She Made
I figure out Vivienne's mistake at seven the next morning.I am standing at the kitchen counter with my coffee, scrolling back through every message she has sent from every number, laying them out in chronological order in my notes app like a timeline, and that is when I see it.She tipped her hand
EYES OPEN Chapter 11: Photos
I read the message three times.Then I screenshot it, forward it to my personal email, and save the number.Then I sit down on the couch because my legs have made a unilateral decision about standing.Photos. Someone has photos of me and Rhys at Archer's and they are threatening to hand them to Der
EYES OPEN Chapter 10: Noise
I sit in the office parking lot for six minutes after hanging up on Vivienne.Just breathing.Not because I am scared. Because I need to be honest with myself about what just happened and what it means before I walk into a building full of people and spend eight hours pretending everything is norma
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