Page 53 of Oyster

“But… it’s in La Rochelle. You have… you have…” I tailed off. I didn’t know what Éti had. My brain had slipped down a dark alley inside my own head, stuffed with panicky and jumbled thoughts. Busy days, I knew that, and responsibilities here, in Paris. To the team, to investors, to fans.

She tugged on a PSG tracksuit. “I have nothing, Nico. Nothing that matters. They can all go to hell. I’m taking you home.”

“But… “

“But shush.” Her head disappeared under a hoodie. Clutching my jeans in my hand, I stayed rooted to the spot, like I’d forgotten how trousers worked. “I’ll take some personal days. What are they going to do? Sack me? Hardly.”

I couldn’t argue. “And by car I’ll get you there much quicker,” she added.

I couldn’t argue with that either. In a flurry of efficiency, she led me to an underground parking lot, shoved me inside something big and sleek with blacked-out windows, expertly manoeuvred it through central Parisian traffic, and drove like the wind.

Except for a rapid exchange of views with her agent, during which Éti did most of the talking, in a clipped, no-nonsense, I-pay-your-wages kind of voice, we ate up the miles in silence. She gripped the wheel with a grim determination.Unable to magically teleport myself there any quicker, I stared out the window at the grass verges. Everything over the last few months should have readied me for this horrible day. The hospital appointments, the depressing conversations, the rows of painkillers, the syringe drivers. Zoë’s frightened tears, Max’s wobbles, my dad’s shattered face. And my mum, of course, fading by the hour in front of our very eyes.

So why had I never felt as unprepared for anything in my life?

South of Poitiers, we pulled into a service station for a quick refuel and to grab coffees. I did both, while Éti lay low in the car, a baseball cap she kept in the glovebox for that express purpose squashed on her head. She even relieved herself behind a tree in an adjacent patch of ground rather than risk being spotted entering the public toilets. Fame came at a price.

Underway again, she took my hand, bringing it to her lips before dragging it onto her lap and holding it there. I almost burst into tears from the unspoken tenderness.

Max texted to say my mum was comfortable, sleepy, and there was nothing left to do but wait. And to beg me to hurry the fuck up.

“I shouldn’t have come to the match. I should have stayed with her.”

“You said yourself she was fine when you left. And she was fine at midnight. Don’t beat yourself up. She even told you to go!”

Roadworks ahead slowed us down for a couple of kilometres. Éti’s long fingers tapped against the steering wheel.

“What if… if…” I began again. My old friend, the heavy steel band, made its presence known in my chest, like an ever-tightening barrel hoop.

“I’ll get you there in time. I promise. Tell me about her. How it was growing up as a kid on the island. Remind me thateveryone’s relationships with their parents aren’t as fucked up as mine.”

Even now, she raised a smile. As we ticked off the miles, I related how my hungover dad used to drag himself out of bed on a Sunday morning to stand with other dads and watch my soccer matches, the only dad who never berated the referee, the only dad who never cared if we won or lost, because as long as I enjoyed myself, nothing else mattered to him. How my mum would make me a hot chocolate every time I came home after a day spent playing in the sea, cold and bedraggled, and how I’d sit in her lap and drink it while she’d comb the lugs out of my matted hair. Even when I was much too old to sit there. How, as a toddler, Max used to try to lick Zoë’s face after she’d eaten a chocolate mousse because he was such a greedy bugger, and how my dad would hoist her on his shoulders out of reach and jog around the kitchen, pretending to be the chocolate mousse monster. Silly stuff, inconsequential stuff, carried in my head, most of it packed away and forgotten until sharpened by death.

And I told her that, no matter how dark times were now, how murky the ocean and how grey the skies, I knew how lucky I’d been, to have always had all of that. Even though I felt terribly unlucky at the moment. And Éti stayed quiet as I let it all out.

Then I stared out of the window again, fearful my heart would burst.

“I’m scared, Éti,” I admitted into the silence. “It’s funny, because we thought nothing would be worse than the… the limbo of waiting around for this day to come. And, now it has, I’m fucking petrified.”

“That’s got to be normal, hasn’t it?”

“I’m scared I won’t know how to manage Max and Zoë. What to say to them. Nor my dad. I promised my mum I’d take care of them. And keep the business afloat through all of this. But I don’t think I’m going to be strong enough.”

Drowning in unshed tears, I counted the painted white lines running down the side of the motorway until I felt able to speak again. I tried to remember the last time I let the tears out and came up with nothing. Maybe they’d build and build until I cut myself by accident—and instead of blood, a lake of salt water would gush from the wound.

“You will be strong enough, Nico. You’ll be amazing, I know it.” She squeezed my hand hard, so hard I almost believed her. “We’ve got this, my angel.”

We.The both of us. A pair. I’d try to hold onto that in the coming days.

“My mum was… is a really nice lady. I would have liked for her to meet you. She would have understood you; I think.”

“If she is anything like her son, then she must be wonderful. Extraordinary.”

I almost smiled. If she thought I had any exceptional qualities, Éti was deluded. “Not especially. She’s spent her whole life on the island. She married young, had children, and helped with the business. Family made her happy. So did sewing. She was kind too, and helped others. I’ve gone through my own life with people saying, ‘Oh, you’re Marie’s son. She’s so nice.’Max and Zoë and I have always joked about that.”

Éti glanced over at me. “If that’s how people remember you, then I’d say that’s a life well lived, Nico. Wouldn’t you?”

The traffic thickened as we left the motorway. With every mile we crawled, La Rochelle loomed closer, alongside a dread of leaving the warm haven of the car. Maybe I didn’t need to. I’d make a home in the passenger seat, and Éti would keep driving, down the broad autoroute pointing us toward the sunny Riviera. Or we could zigzag across the Pyrenees and into Spain, find a long sandy beach, drink jugs of iced sangria all day in the shade, and make love all night.

---