Lahat ng Kabanata ng Go Away Chris : Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

Ayesha's POVThe morning after the preliminary agreement was signed began the same way every morning in the house with the garden began, which was with the alarm and the specific quality of early light through the bedroom curtains and the warm weight of Ken beside me in the way that had been part of every morning for three years and that still produced in me, each time I was aware of it, the quiet satisfaction of something that was right and that I had not stopped noticing was right just because it had become familiar.Familiar and right were not the same thing. I had learned this distinction at considerable cost during the years before the gallery and I intended to keep the knowledge current by applying it daily to the things in my life that deserved to be distinguished rather than conflated, which included Ken beside me every morning and the walk to the gallery through the streets I had walked for six years and the specific quality of morning light through the gallery's tall windows

Ayesha's POV"Tell me," Ayesha said, and her voice had the specific quality it had when she was managing several significant things simultaneously and was applying equal attention to each of them, the gallery director's version of composure, the kind that looked calm from the outside and was something considerably more active from the inside.Diana said, "The third board member. I know who it should be."Ayesha said, "We haven't finalised the criteria for the third position yet.""I know you haven't," Diana said. "That's why I'm calling before you do. There is a woman named Priya Chandran who has been the head of programming at the National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Edinburgh for seven years and who has announced her resignation effective in three months. She resigned because the institution reduced her curatorial autonomy in response to board pressure and she declined to operate under those conditions. She is the most respected independent curatorial voice in the country and she

Ayesha's POVShe arrived at the gallery at seven forty-five the next morning, which was fifteen minutes earlier than her usual early arrival and which she told herself was about the preparation she needed to do before Priya arrived at nine and had nothing to do with the possibility that she might learn something from the sounds of the city at this hour that would be useful in the meeting.This was not entirely true.The truth was that she had slept badly for the second consecutive night, lying in the dark beside Ken with the specific quality of wakefulness that came not from anxiety but from the mind's refusal to release something that was still being worked through, and what was being worked through was the question of what Priya and Cecile had found in the documents that warranted an eight o'clock meeting before the nine o'clock conversation."You're thinking loudly again," Ken had said at some point past one in the morning, without opening his eyes."I'm thinking quietly," she said

Ayesha's POVThe call to Vincent Reeves at seven in the morning London time was the kind of call that tested a professional relationship in the specific way that only genuinely honest disclosures could test it, which was by removing the comfortable distance between what people presented to each other and what was actually true and requiring them to stand in the closer distance and see whether the relationship held."Good morning," Vincent said, and his voice had the quality it had when he was already several thoughts ahead of the conversation's starting point, which was the quality of a man who had been awake for a while and had been thinking about things. "I expected your call last night, if I'm honest."Ayesha said, "You knew.""I knew that Ken's firm had submitted a proposal for the courtyard," Vincent said. "I was informed three days ago when the shortlist was being assembled. I assumed you knew as well and was waiting for you to raise it."She absorbed this. "He told me last nigh

Ayesha's POVBy seven in the morning the gallery street had the specific quality of a place that had been significant the previous night and was now in the process of becoming ordinary again, the fire engines gone and the boarding on the windows and the smell of smoke still present but reduced to a background note rather than the dominant quality it had been at two forty-nine.Ayesha had not slept.She had sat in the kitchen of the house with the garden from four until six with coffee and her phone and the specific discipline of someone who was managing multiple urgent things simultaneously and who had decided that managing them well was more important than managing them quickly, which was not the instinct of the moment but was the instinct that the years of building had produced in her.Suki arrived at the gallery at seven with the corner coffee and the expression of someone who had slept for two hours and had used the two hours efficiently."Rowan is coming at nine," Suki said. "Tom