All Chapters of Staying with him: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

It was Remi's idea, which meant it was the right idea,because Remi had become, over the course of a yearand a café and the first project with her name on it, awoman with very reliable instincts about occasionsthat needed marking.She called in November. There are fifteen monthsbetween your wedding and my café opening, she said,and both of those things happened in my life and Ithink we should mark them together, everyone, in thecafé, on a Saturday, with food I will cook and you donot have to do anything except show up.You cannot cook for everyone and run the café at thesame time, Olivia said.I have hired a person, Remi said. I have a person now.This is the third remarkable thing that has happenedin the last fifteen months and I think it deserves acelebration too. She paused. Come on Saturday. Bringall of them. Everyone. The whole collection.The whole collection came.Priya and her husband. Maya with Esme, who waseighteen months now and had opinions abouteverything an

Diana came to London in April for a week and stayedin the flat, which she had never done before, thevisiting always being them going to Lewisham orDamien going alone, and the experience of Diana Colein residence was, Olivia thought afterward, one of themore instructive weeks of her adult life.Diana arrived with a bag that contained, among otherthings, two jars of homemade something, a piece offabric she was making into a thing she had notexplained, and opinions about the arrangement of thekitchen that she shared freely and which Olivia foundshe did not mind at all, because Diana's opinions werenever delivered as criticism, only as the naturaloverflow of a woman who had been organising herown kitchen for forty years and could not helpnoticing when other kitchens were suboptimal.The kitchen is very good, Diana said, on the firstmorning, standing in it with her coffee. He has learnedsome things. She looked at the shelf with the plantson it and the keys bowl and the pho

She had asked to come and he had said you do nothave to and she had said I know that is why I amasking and he had said alright, the same word he hadsaid when she asked to see the city, the same word heused when she offered him something he had notthought to ask for.The consulting room was on the fourth floor of abuilding near London Bridge and it smelled the waymedical buildings smelled, clean and slightlyprovisional, as though the people in them were beingkept on pause while the right information arrived. Shesat beside him in the waiting area with her hands inher lap and she thought about all the waiting roomsshe had sat in, in her professional life, the other sideof the door from the person in the chair, and what itfelt like to be on this side.She had never been very good at being on this side.She had spent her career being the one who held theweight and very little time being the one who sat in aplastic chair and waited for news about someone sheloved. She had n

He did not go to Marcus. He called him, which wasunusual, and then Marcus came to the flat thefollowing evening, which was also unusual in thespecific way that Marcus coming to the flat alwaysmeant something.She put dinner on because it was dinner time andMarcus would eat whatever was in front of himwithout commenting on it, which she had come to findone of his more endearing qualities. The three of themsat at the kitchen table and she served and Marcuspicked up his fork and Damien said, I am retiring. Endof season.Marcus ate a bite of food. He did not stop eating. Hedid not put the fork down and look solemn. Hechewed, deliberately, and swallowed, and then he said,I know.Damien looked at him.I have known since February, Marcus said. He askedthe physio. The physio did not tell me the number butthe physio started a programme that had a particularshape. I know that shape. I have been watching thatshape for forty years. He ate another bite. I waswaiting for you to ge

She noticed it first on a Tuesday evening, three weeksafter the announcement.He came home from training and she looked up fromwhat she was reading and he was different. Nothappy in the uncomplicated way, not relieved, not anyof the emotions she had been braced to manage inherself as well as hold for him. Different in thespecific way of a man who has been carrying acalculation in his body for a long time and has put thecalculation down.He was loose. That was the word she found for it. Notloose as in careless — he was never careless, not inthe way that was the opposite of precise — but loosein the physical sense, the joints of him movingdifferently, the set of his shoulders that had beencarrying three months of managed knowledge nowreleased from the managing.You moved differently coming up the stairs, she said.He looked at her.Did I.The stairs, she said. I could hear it.He considered this, the way he considered the trueobservations she made about him, with the part