All Chapters of Staying with him: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The young player replied within the hour, which wasnot surprising given that he was twenty and lived onhis phone. But what he said was surprising, or ratherthe specific detail of it was: he named a moment in aparticular match, a run in the sixty-eighth minute, thatOlivia recognised because she had texted him about itthe evening after. She had been the one who saw therun. She had described it in eighteen words and hehad replied in four and now here was a twenty-year-old saying that specific run on that specific eveningwas why he had started taking the game seriously.She did not tell him this. It was not her story.But she sat with it for a day, the thought that she hadbeen watching a thing she loved without knowing shewas watching the thing that was watching back. Shethought about all the evenings she had texted theobservation and he had replied in the way he repliedwhen she had seen something real, and she hadalways thought of those texts as the two of them,closed, t

She woke before him on the morning of it.She had not slept well, not from dread but from theparticular alertness of a body that knew it was the lastof something and was trying to stay awake for all of it.She lay in the grey of the early morning and shelistened to him breathing and she thought about allthe match mornings. The ones she had not knownabout, the years before a Saturday morning at aquarter to seven and a curtain. The ones she hadknown about from the south stand, learning his pre-match patterns, the stretches, the two sprints, thelooking up into the stands. The one where she hadstood at the barrier, white as a sheet, while he lay onthe pitch for four minutes with a dead leg. All thematch mornings she had been in the south stand for,the seat she had calibrated. This was the last of all ofthem.She got up quietly.She made coffee and she stood at the kitchenwindow in the early light and the city was doing whatcities did at seven on a Saturday, beginning its s

She came home on the Monday after the last matchto find the flat empty.Not worryingly empty, not the wrong kind of empty. Hehad left a note on the counter, which he almost neverdid, preferring the text, and the note said: gone for adrive. Back for dinner.She stood in the kitchen holding the note.He had not said where. She did not text to ask. Sheput the note back on the counter and she changed outof her work clothes and she made tea and she sat atthe kitchen table and she waited, in the unhurried wayshe had learned to wait for things she trusted.He came back at half past five.She heard the keys in the bowl. The coat. Theparticular sound of him moving through the flat, whichshe knew so well she could have reconstructed it inanother room with her eyes closed. He came into thekitchen and he looked at her and his face had thequality she had come to recognise as the aftermath ofsomething interior, the specific settling of a man whohas processed a thing and arrived somew

She went on a Thursday in October because Marcusasked her to, which was unusual enough to make herrearrange two sessions to be there.He had called on Wednesday evening, the rare phonecall, the one that meant something, and he had said,come to the academy tomorrow at three, and she hadsaid, is everything alright, and Marcus had said, yes, Ijust want you to see something, and she had learnedover the last year to take Marcus at his word, and soshe had rearranged the sessions and she went.She arrived at two fifty-five to find Marcus alreadythere, sitting in the low plastic chair at the edge of thefar pitch that he had started using in May, the chairshe had first seen and understood as a sign. He didnot look unwell today. He looked, if anything, morepresent than he had in weeks, the particular quality ofalertness in him that she associated with hiswatching the game rather than anything else. He waswatching the session already underway, Damien withthe under-sixteens at th

Remi was at the table when Olivia arrived, which shenoticed because it was Remi who was usually fifteenminutes late, and Remi at the table early meantsomething was on her mind.What is it, Olivia said, sitting down.I am not in crisis, Remi said. I want that on the record.On the record, Olivia said. What is it.I have been offered a thing, Remi said. She picked upher glass and put it down without drinking. A properarchitectural commission. Not a café. Not aconversion. A building. A full building. A developer,new site in Stratford, they want a small apartmentblock, sixty units, and they want someone who thinksabout it the way I think about things. She stopped.One of their people came into the café last month andhad a flat white and looked at what I did with the roomand found me.Over a flat white, Olivia said.Over a flat white, Remi said. They tracked me down,they looked at my plans, they asked if I wanted todesign a building. She looked at Olivia. An actualbuilding. T