All Chapters of Staying with him: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

180 Chapters

CHAPTER 121-Priya At Month Five

Priya came over on a Saturday in July when Olivia wasfive months pregnant and visibly so, the composedprofessional exterior having given way, over thepreceding weeks, to something that could not becomposed or managed or maintained at a carefulremove because it was a physical fact and the bodyhad made its decision about the fact withoutconsulting the person who lived in it.She had been watching Priya navigate the flat in thethree months since Olivia's pregnancy became visible,the specific quality of Priya's attention, which was thesame as it had always been — full, direct, present —but had acquired a new texture, the texture of awoman who had been watching her best friend fortwelve years and was now watching her best friend inthe condition she had wondered about for most ofthose twelve years.Whether Olivia Reyes would have a baby.She had not said this out loud. Priya was the onlyperson who would not have said it out loud, the onlyperson who had been watching long en

CHAPTER 122- Diana's Hands

Diana came on a Wednesday afternoon in August,which was unusual — Diana usually came wheninvited for specific occasions, the Christmases andthe events, the meals planned in advance with thespecific preparation Diana brought to the occasionsshe marked. She did not usually appear on aWednesday afternoon in August withoutannouncement.She appeared on a Wednesday afternoon in Augustwithout announcement.Olivia answered the door and Diana was there with abag and the expression of a woman who had decidedto make a trip and had made it.I was in the area, Diana said.Olivia had been to Lewisham many times and knewthat Diana's house in Lewisham was not in the area oftheir flat in any meaningful sense. She did not saythis.Come in, she said.Diana came in. She looked at the flat the way shealways looked at the flat, with the gathering-assessment, the cataloguing of what was where andwhat it said about the people who lived there. She hadbeen looking at the flat this way for five

CHAPTER 123- The Room

cleared the second bedroom on a Saturday inSeptember when she was seven months pregnant andthe clearing could no longer be postponed by thepretence that they had more time.She had been aware of this for several weeks — thepostponing and the pretence — and she had allowed itbecause she understood that the clearing was notjust the clearing. The clearing was the finalacknowledgement that the thing was coming, thephysical making-room, and you did not make room forsomething until you were ready to let it arrive. Theyhad been ready for months. They had not been readyto clear the room until now.The room had contained, over five years of the flatbeing theirs: the books that had been read and notrehomed, which had accumulated in a specific cornerand had now been relocated to shelves in the livingroom and the hallway; the suitcases they used twice ayear, which went under the bed in the main bedroomand would stay there indefinitely; the Christmasdecorations in the well-organ

CHAPTER 124- Marcus At The Academy

She found him in the oﬃce on a Thursday in October,which was where she found him most Thursdays now,the chair at the edge of the far pitch having beenreplaced, sometime over the summer, by the chair inthe oﬃce.The chair in the oﬃce was different from the chair atthe edge of the far pitch in a way that mattered.The chair at the far pitch was where you sat when thewatching was close enough to feel the sessions. Shehad sat beside Marcus in that chair and she hadunderstood, from the position and from the quality ofMarcus's attention in it, that the watching from thatchair was not oversight but presence, the being-there,the specific physical proximity to the thing that hadbeen the whole of Marcus's professional life for fortyyears.The chair in the oﬃce was where you watched fromthe window.She found him in the chair in the oﬃce, on theThursday in October, with his tea, watching from thewindow. The broken blind had been fixed — Damienhad fixed it in September, which he h

CHAPTER 125- What He Builds

The cot arrived in a flat-pack box on a Thursday inOctober, which was not the way Damien had intendedit to arrive.He had intended to build a cot. He had said this inSeptember when they were clearing the secondbedroom and she had said, you could simply buy abuilt cot, and he had looked at her with the expressionhe used when he considered a suggestion and foundit technically possible but personally incorrect. Thesuggestion was received. It was noted. It was notgoing to be followed.The flat-pack box arrived on a Thursday.She came home from a session at five and found thebox in the hallway and she looked at it for a momentand she went into the living room and found him onthe floor with the instructions. He had alreadyseparated all the components into groups and had anotebook open beside him. She recognised thenotebook. It was the notebook that had appeared sixweeks into the pregnancy, the list-and-diagramnotebook, the one that contained everything he hadmeasured and p

CHAPTER 126- Her Fear, Named Properly

She named it on a Wednesday evening in Octoberwhen she was thirty-six weeks pregnant and the birthwas four weeks away at the most and probably less.She had been carrying this fear for longer than shehad been carrying the other fears. She had named thecloseness fear to him in June and it had beenreceived and held and the holding had helped in theway that holding always helped, which was not toresolve the fear but to reduce the authority it had overher, to make it a known thing she was in relationshipwith rather than an unnamed thing she was managedby. She had named his fear back to him in July, helpedhim put it in the room, sat with it with him until he wasin it rather than alone with it.This fear she had not named.She had been examining it for months. She knew theshape of it, the specific architecture of it, she couldhave described it to someone in the professionallanguage with precision and accuracy. But she hadnot said it out loud to him because she had not yetfo

CHAPTER 127- What He Says Back

He had said the thing on the Wednesday evening, thething that had changed the shape of the fear, and shehad held it and sat with it through the night and thefollowing day, and on Thursday evening she told himwhat the holding had produced.I want to tell you what I found, she said.He was at the counter with the evening tea and heturned.When I held what you said last night, she said. Aboutthe after being what the child will know. About thebefore being the material of the after. She paused. Iheld it for a long time. I am still holding it. She satdown at the table. What I found is that the fearchanged shape. She looked at him. It is not the samefear it was yesterday.What shape is it now, he said.She thought about how to say it.The fear yesterday was about the unconditional love,she said. Whether I could hold it. Whether the childloving me before I had earned anything from herspecifically was something I knew how to receive. Shepaused. What you said changed that. I unde

CHAPTER 128- The Last Session Before Leave

She told her last client on a Thursday in late October.Not told about the pregnancy — all seventeen clientshad known for months, the body having made theknowledge unavoidable well before the summer andthe specific one-by-one tellings. She told her lastclient before maternity leave that the next sessionwould be their last until the spring.She had been thinking about how to do this for weeks.The maternity leave was a professional event as wellas a personal one, and the professional event requiredthe specific care that all endings in the consultingroom required: the preparation, the acknowledgment,the giving of the right amount of time to transition.She had arranged for each client to have the sessionsthey needed before the break, some of them movingto Aisha for the duration, some of them taking thebreak and returning in the spring, some of them at apoint in their work where the spring was a naturalcontinuation.The Thursday client was the last one.She had scheduled th

CHAPTER 129- The Night Before Everything Changed

They did not know.That was the thing about it: they did not know it wasthe night before. They ate dinner and they watchedsomething on the television and she fell asleep beforeit ended and he lay beside her in the dark for a whilebefore he slept and neither of them knew thattomorrow was going to be the day.The dinner was the soup she had been making moreof in November, a specific leek and potato soup thatwas not a recipe she had ever followed and wasinstead the accumulated result of making the sameapproximate soup many times over many years andarriving at the version that was hers, the version shemade without measuring anything, which she neverdid, having never been a person who measuredquantities in cooking, regarding the measuring ofquantities in cooking as an administrative task thatbelonged in the professional world and not in thekitchen where the point was to produce the thing.She had not been able to stand at the counter for longover the last two weeks. She co

CHAPTER 130- The Birth

It began at quarter past four in the morning, whichwas not a surprise in the sense that she had known itwas coming, and was a complete surprise in thesense that nothing prepares you for the specificquality of the thing beginning.He was awake before she said anything.She had always wondered how he did that, the wakingbefore the occasion required it, and she had come tounderstand it over five years as a quality of thespecific way he slept, which was not deeply butcompletely, the kind of sleep that was a full restwithout being an absence, the kind that could surfacequickly when the quality of the air in the roomchanged. She had changed the air in the room atquarter past four and he was awake.I think, she said.Yes, he said. He said it before she finished. Hereached for the lamp.She held his hand.He sat up.How long, he said.Not long yet, she said. She was sitting up in bed withone hand on the side of the mattress and the other inhis. The quality of what she was feeli

...

11 12 13 14 15

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP