Page 17 of Oyster

She was even messier and noisier with the fourth.

“I’m glad I didn’t invite you to one of the local oyster-tasting shacks, acting like that,” I chastised her. “Never mind snogging your merman. You sound as if you’re having full-on penetrative sex with him.”

Giggling with delight, she flashed that famous chipped incisor. Salty, lemony juice coated her lips, making them glisten. “Do I? I’ve never had sex, so I don’t know what noises I would make.”

“Christ, Éti! You don’t tell people you’ve only just met stuff like that!”

“Ah.” She waggled a finger at me. “But you’ve signed my non-disclosure form, Nico. I can say what I like. And how can you expect someone like me to know the rules of what’s normal—I live in a gilded cage, remember? Have done since I was eighteen. Back in Paris, I can’t have a pee on my own without someone checking I haven’t drowned in the toilet bowl.”

I handed her a fifth oyster, drizzled with extra lemon juice to enhance the briny flavour.

“Anyhow, merman expert,” she continued, waving it around. “Enlighten me on how one has sex with a merman? Please tell me it’s not thewholetail? Though that would explain the loud sex noises, I guess, because… waouh.”

I snorted. In the last half hour, Éti had lightened my heart more than anyone else had managed in weeks. She gobbled down the oyster with exaggerated vulgar sound effects, and I gave her a nudge.

“I think your merman just climaxed.”

Her shoulders jiggled with mirth, her laughter sunny and free. Loud and unfettered too, enough to be heard down in La Couarde. I basked in it for a moment, my worries shifting a little farther from the front of my mind and my ego rippling with pleasure.

“What noises do you expect me to make?” She wiped a tear from her eye. “You’re feeding me an aphrodisiac.”

“I’m not sure it works like that.”

“Well, I think it does.” Stretching out her elegant limbs, she closed her eyes and took a deep inhale. “Your oysters are making me sexier already. I can feel it.”

Aphrodisiac or not, watching her tilt her long neck and un-self-consciously wolf them down was having an effect on me too. Éti was not unattractive. On the outside as well as the inside. The longer I spent with her, the easier it was to forget she was also this other person. A very famous person, who up until now had sat in my mind as a man. And I wasn’t attracted to men, even very beautiful ones, like my friend Florian.

But Éti’s mobile, gamine features… yes, far from unattractive. And her energy and frankness—her naive lack of game-playing—were refreshing. Having established I was single, I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t been snapped up already, but I knew the answer, given that no one but me had seen her like this.

The grey clouds, hanging over me since my mum's terminal diagnosis, thinned a little more. “When are you coming back?” She hoovered up the last of the bread. “Or rather, are you coming back? Is the house yours, or are you renting it?”

“It’s mine.” She sucked the juice from her fingers, her lips closing around the end of each one like she was bestowing them with a little kiss. “I bought it a few years ago, as an investment, on the advice of my accountant. But it’s become so much more than that. It’s now my secret hideaway. I love coming here. I strip myself of Étienne and become the real me, without the fear of anyone peeking over my shoulder and spilling my secrets to the world.”

She side-eyed me. “And I sense that even now my secret is shared with you, I can still feel that way.”

“You can,” I reiterated. “You, me, and these oysters. And shellfish are renowned for keeping their mouths clamped shut.”

She shot me a grin, then carried on. “I’ll be back after the Champion’s League game. My PA keeps my diary, but I usually have a couple of days off after international matches. Why do you ask?” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Are you going to miss me, or something?”

“It’s impossible to! You’re everywhere! Or rather, Étienne is. There’s even a life-size cardboard cut-out of him in the tabac in Saint-Martin!”

“Heisa cardboard cut-out.” Her face darkened. “And heiseverywhere. Éti has none of his freedom.” She picked up a loose rock and threw it, hard. “And that’s difficult to bear sometimes. The fans idolise him, but they’d never idolise the real me. Not if they knew. Quite the reverse.”

“You think?” I gathered the detritus of our picnic, over too soon. For two near strangers with fuck-all in common, chatter flowed between us like birdsong. And that didn’t happen to me very often. While I wasn’t quite as taciturn as my brother Max, I had my moments.

“I know.” She hurled another stone. “It’s a herd mentality. In large groups people become unthinking, unquestioning blobs of conformity. Coming out to the media as Éti would be like standing in the middle of the school playground surrounded by a baying mob. I don’t have the strength or the nerve. Not yet anyhow. Maybe when I retire.”

“You’re still a few years off, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I am.”

With none of her former enthusiasm, she passed me her empty plate, keeping the discarded shells in a neat pile on the blanket. I laid a hand on her arm as she reached for her spangly trainers, with cute littleE.S.initialsembroidered on the side.

“Sorry. I was teasing about the cardboard cut-out. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Her eyes met mine, accompanied by a gentle smile. “You didn’t. Don’t worry. This afternoon has been incredible. I’ll remember it forever. I’m being utterly myself in the presence of someone else, for the first time in my life. Up until now, I’ve only ever dreamed of afternoons as simple as this. Living as Étienne day in, day out, is exhausting.”

“Sorry,” I said again. The most inadequate word in the French language. “That you have to. That you can’t always be your… your authentic self.”

---