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Chapter 76: Priya's Answer
publish date:
2026-04-26 18:36:35
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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 79: The Name
We decide it over wine on a Tuesday evening.Priya is on our couch, shoes off, laptop open, a glass in her hand and the specific focused energy of someone who has been thinking about this since Saoirse said something with clarity in it and has arrived with opinions.Rhys is in the kitchen doing something that smells extraordinary and pretending not to listen which means he is listening completely.Arlo is on Priya's feet because Arlo has decided Priya belongs to him now and Priya has stopped pretending she minds."It cannot be our names," Priya points out. "Too small. Names say who we are, not what we do.""Agreed," I say."It cannot be abstract," she adds. "No geometric shapes or colours pretending to be a philosophy.""Agreed," I say."Saoirse said clarity," she continues. "I keep coming back to that.""So do I," I reply.We sit with it.Arlo shifts on Priya's feet and makes a sound that is not quite a word but has the rhythm of a suggestion."He is contributing," she stares at Arlo
EYES OPEN Chapter 78: Saoirse Decides
She comes to my office the next morning with a coffee she made herself, not from the machine, from the small pour over kit she keeps in her desk drawer because Saoirse has opinions about coffee that she does not impose on anyone but quietly maintains for herself.She sets it on my desk.Sits down.Looks at me."You are leaving," she says."Yes, I am." "Priya too," she says."Yes," I reply."You are both starting something together?" she asks. "Yes," I reply.She wraps both hands around her own cup. "Tell me about it," she says. "Not the version you told Helena. The real version. What it actually is."I let her be ready for it. Then I tell her.Not the document version, not the structured pitch. The actual version, the one I told Rhys in the kitchen with Arlo on both our feet, the version that has the fear in it alongside the certainty, the specific vulnerability of a person who has decided to build something from nothing and is honest about what that costs.Saoirse listens the way
EYES OPEN Chapter 8: Morning Comes
I do not sleep much.Not because I am crying, not because I am falling apart, just because my brain refuses to switch off, cycling through everything on a loop like it is trying to make sure I have processed every single detail before it lets me rest.I lie there listening to the sounds of the apar
EYES OPEN Chapter 7: The Email
I sit on the edge of the bed with my half-packed bag beside me and I open my email.Rhys has forwarded something.A screenshot. From Vivienne's phone. I do not know how he got it and right now I do not care because what I am looking at stops every thought in my head completely dead.It is a convers
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
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