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Todos os capítulos de Staying with him: Capítulo 131 - Capítulo 140

180 Capítulos

CHAPTER 131- Hour One

The room changed after.Not the room itself — the room was the same room, the same bright clinical light and thesame sounds of a hospital at five in the morning and the same midwife moving aroundwith the specific efficiency of someone doing a job that was also a calling. The room wasthe same room. But the quality of it had changed in the way that rooms changed whenthe thing that had been about to happen had happened, when the potential became theactual and the actual was here and there was no going back from here.She was here.That was the quality that had changed in the room. She was in it.He held her first.Olivia had said, at some point in the autumn, that she wanted him to hold her first. Notbecause she did not want to be the first to hold her daughter — she did want that, thewanting of it had been growing since the scan — but because she wanted to see his facewhen he held her, and she could only see his face if he was holding her rather than if shewas. She had thought

CHAPTER 132- The First Week

What nobody told you, the thing that the books did not say and that Maya had not saidand that the midwife had said in passing but not with the emphasis it deserved, was thatthe first week was the week that existed outside normal time.Not in the dramatic way, not in the way of an altered state. In the way that a week couldsimply be different from every other week that had preceded it without the differencerequiring a dramatic explanation. The first week was different because every hour wasthe first time for something. Every feed was the first time for that specific sequence.Every sleeping was the first time for that specific sleeping. Every crying was the firsttime for that particular quality of crying that was different from the other qualities ofcrying and that she was learning to distinguish, which was an extraordinary and terriblelearning, the learning of a new taxonomy of cries, each one requiring a differentresponse, and none of the responses being guaranteed to work.

CHAPTER 133- The Name

The argument began on the fourth day.Not the first name — the first name had been decided in January, at the kitchen table onthe first morning of the year, the name that had felt right immediately and withoutrequiring examination, the name she had said to her daughter in the hospital at five inthe morning with the November dawn coming up outside the window. The first name wassettled.The second name was not settled.They had not discussed the second name during the pregnancy in any sustained way,which they had both known was a gap in the preparation and which they had bothavoided examining too closely because the first name argument — which had producedthe name they both agreed on — had taken long enough that the idea of opening asecond name argument during the pregnancy had not been appealing. They had left itfor after.After was now.The baby was four days old and her first name was known and her second name was notand Damien, on the morning of the fourth day, had looked

CHAPTER 134- Still The Name

On the fifth day Priya came back.She came without being asked, because Priya did not require an invitation to appearwhen there was something she wanted to know about. She came with more food andwith the expression of a woman who had been thinking about something and had arrivedto say it.The name, she said, before she had fully come through the door.Olivia stood aside to let her in.Still the name, she said.I heard you were stuck, Priya said.From who, Olivia said.She had told no one they were stuck. She had mentioned to Maya that they wereworking on the second name and Maya had said, of course they are, and she hadmentioned to no one else.Maya, Priya said.Of course it was Maya.He was in the kitchen with the baby, who was in the bouncy chair in the kitchen becauseshe went wherever they were, and he looked up when Priya came in and saw theexpression on Priya’s face and said, you have a list.Everyone has a list, Priya said.We have lists, Olivia said. We have two lists. S

CHAPTER 135- Her Name

They found it on the sixth day.Not through debate, not through compromise, not through any of the mechanisms thatresolved arguments where two people had different and equally considered positions.They found it the way you found the right thing, which was not by arguing toward it butby arriving at it from a different direction entirely.She was feeding the baby on the sixth morning, on the sofa, in the early light of aNovember morning that was grey and cold through the window and warm in the flat, andhe came in with her coffee and he sat beside her and he said a name.Not one of the names on either list. Not one of the names on the piece of paper they hadwritten on the fifth day with Priya watching. A name he had not said before, a name thathad not been mentioned in any of the discussions or arguments or the two hours withPriya, a name that arrived in the early light of the sixth morning entirely unbidden.She looked at him.Where did that come from, she said.He looked at the

CHAPTER 136- Damien With The Baby

She had been watching him with the baby since the hospital.She had made a specific decision, in the hospital on the first night, that she was going towatch him with the baby with the full attention she gave to the things she most wantedto understand. Not the professional attention, not the reading-the-room quality shebrought to the consulting room, but the personal attention she had been developing forfive years, the specific quality of watching that was not analysis but was simply beingpresent for the watching.She watched him with the baby the way she had watched him at the academy with theunder-sixteens. Not the football, not the technical content of what he was doing, but thespecific quality of his presence with the person in front of him. She had learned,watching him at the academy, that what he gave the players was not primarilyinstruction — it was attention. The quality of attention that told a person they were beingseen specifically, as the exact person they were ra

CHAPTER 137- Marcus

came on a Tuesday in December when she was three weeks old.Not the Thursday, which had been Marcus’s day, the day she had associated withMarcus at the academy for two years since the full-time handover. A Tuesday. He hadcalled on the Monday evening and asked if he could come on Tuesday and she had saidyes and she had told Damien and Damien had been quiet for a moment in the way thatmeant he was receiving something significant.Marcus had called himself.Marcus did not usually call. Marcus texted when it was necessary and appeared inperson when it was important and let other people handle the administrativecoordination of when appearances would happen. He had called on a Monday evening toask if he could come on a Tuesday. That was information.He arrived at eleven.She opened the door and he was there with his coat and his expression of a man whohad made a decision and was executing it. He came in and he looked at the flat the wayhe always looked at the flat, with the gather

CHAPTER 138 -Three In The Morning

The three in the morning of the pregnancy had been several things. It had been the fearat four in the morning before the wedding, arriving and sitting at the end of the bedwhile she lay in the dark deciding whether to wake him. It had been the hip in the nightsafter the specialist, him at the counter in the dark, the maintenance of a body that wastelling him things. It had been the specific quality of lying awake in the third trimesterwhen the body was too large and too present to sleep through easily and the mind filledthe wakefulness with the things it filled wakefulness with.The three in the morning of the baby was entirely different.The difference was not the noise — though the noise was different, the specific qualityof a baby’s cry at three in the morning which was unlike any other noise she had heardand which produced in her, even when she was deeply asleep, a specific quality ofinstant wakefulness that she had not possessed before and that she now possessedcomplete

CHAPTER 139 -What Olivia Is

She understood it on a morning in December, at six weeks.Not as a realisation that arrived all at once, not as the specific moment of recognitionthat made a good story when you told it afterward. The understanding arrived gradually,over the course of a morning, the way the mornings in the flat had always accumulatedtheir specific quality, and by the time she noticed she had understood it theunderstanding had been there for a while without her having named it.She was good at this.She was genuinely, specifically good at this.Not fine. Not good-enough-given-the-circumstances. Good. The way she was good atthe professional work, which was not just competent but appropriate to the thing,aligned with the thing, the right person doing the right work in the right room. That kindof good.She was that kind of good at being this person’s mother.She had known, theoretically, that the five years of the work on herself had producedsomething that would be relevant to this. Priya had told

CHAPTER 140- Priya And The Baby

Priya held her for the first time on a Saturday in January when she was two months old.She had been in the flat many times since the birth — the food on the third day and thelists on the fifth day and the visits since, the regular appearances of a person who didnot need to announce herself or be invited because she was Priya and the flat and thepeople in it were hers in the specific way that the people you had known for twelve yearsbecame yours, not as possessions but as the permanent facts of your life that did notrequire renegotiating. But she had not held her. She had come and sat on the sofa andheld the cups of tea Olivia made her and she had looked at the baby with the specific fullattention she brought to things she was taking seriously, and she had talked about thebaby with the precision of someone who had been thinking carefully about what shewanted to say, and she had not asked to hold her.She arrived on the Saturday with the specific expression of a woman who had

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