Page 18 of Oyster

She trailed her fingers through damp sand, in a figure of eight pattern. “Don’t be. I know how fortunate my life is, compared to most. I’m done with raging about it—I’ve decided to concentrate on the joy being Éti brings me, whenever I am able. It’s just that… stuffing her back inside and jamming down the lid is hard. She’s like a jack in the box that refuses to be squashed. Even if Étienne weren’t famous, it would be a challenge.”

“I bet. She’s… ah… a big personality.”

“She is.” Éti’s plump lips curved into the hint of a smile.

I hesitated. Should I ask her? Why not. I might never see her again, and I’d always wonder. “Is that… is that why you did what you did the other night? Because you can’t be yourself?”

A pink blush stole across her cheeks. A hint of makeup—a foundation, I guessed—was just visible in the clear light of day, to smooth them over.

“Partly. But more than that, I was a bit bored, a bit upset, and experimenting. Doing the sort of thing most people did as a teenager, but I never had the opportunity. I’ve never drunk that much alcohol in one sitting in my life!” She chuckled. “It was reckless of me, and as soon as I’d taken the pills, I regretted it. I was drunk, and they made me dizzy and confused. I’ve never taken anything stronger than an aspirin before. Then I think I must have gone outside to try to clear my head and decided the middle of the beach would be a good spot for a nap.”

“Why were you so upset? Was it the leg injury?”

She shook her head. “God no. That was nothing—the manager being over-cautious because he wants to make sure I’m fit for the Champion’s League game.”

She fiddled with the shells, clacking them together like horse’s hooves. “You’re going to think I’m an idiot. But… I’d made friends—anonymously, obviously—with a man online in Canada. French-speaking Canada. On a dating website. He looked nice in his pictures, and we chatted a lot via direct message. He was funny. But better than that, in his bio, he described himself as pansexual.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’m a backwards island boy. You’ll have to explain. Thepanbit. Does that mean he wants sex with everything, like furniture and things?”

She sniggered. “Erm… not quite, although far be it for me to kink shame. It means someone who can be attracted to another person in a romantic way regardless of gender. So, I… I thought—stupidly, as it turns out—he might be attracted to someone like me. Like Éti. And Canada is a long way from Europe, and Canadians aren’t much into soccer, so I had this crazy idea I could fly there for a holiday at the end of the soccer season, under the radar, and… and be Éti. Leave Étienne behind and just be myself.”

I could guess what happened next. Before he fell in love with Charles, Florian used hookup apps a lot, seeing as we lived on a small island with a severely limited homosexual population. He regaled me with plenty of tales of men writing absolute bullshit on their bios to hoodwink the naïve or lonely. Sadly, Éti was both.

“Anyhow,” she carried on, “I confided I was trans, suggested we meet up, and he then verbally abused me, accused me of leading him on, and deleted his account.”

“What an absolute connard.”

She let out a sigh. “Yes, but I… um… overreacted. I’d had a bad game the day before; I’d missed my first penalty in around fifty games. I hadn’t slept very well all week either—my hamstring niggled. His snub felt like nasty green icing on top of a very mouldy green cake. So when I arrived here, I had a drink, then a couple more, felt restless, and wondered what the pills would taste like.” She shook her head. “Idiotic, reckless. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Compared to my youthful exploits, necking half a bottle of vodka and a couple of painkillers were tame. “Don’t beat yourself up; we’re all allowed to do stupid things from time to time.”

“Mais, non.” She held up a finger. “You are, perhaps, but Étienne isn’t. Because millions of people are always watching. But Éti can. And she does. She’s desperate to try stupid things.”

“But maybe in the future not alone on a quiet beach at dawn, non?”

We packed up, then walked side by side back to the pines sheltering her villa, the empty oyster shells rattling in Éti’s pockets. I sensed her dragging her heels, even though she chipped aside every vaguely spherical object with the temerity to cross her path.

“You can chuck them away on the beach, you know,” I said as she picked one of her empty oyster shells out and brushed sand from it. “It’s kind of where they belong.”

“I know. But I’m going to wash them and take them to Paris with me. As a memento of a very nice afternoon.” The smile she gave me was wistful, barely a little tilt to her mouth, before she glanced up at the house. “And now, I have to change back into Étienne and endure a tedious drive back. And an even more tedious meeting with my agent and PA. Wish me luck.”

We shared an awkward moment. I would have liked to give her a hug, but her mention of Étienne and watching her check the time on her flashy watch reminded me who shewas. Hugging suddenly felt overfamiliar, so we ended up with a weird, prolonged handshake, as if our hands embraced on our behalf. Annoyed with myself and aware our last seconds together were ticking away, I took the plunge.

“As someone who doesn’t follow football, I’m not one hundred percent sure of when PSG’s Champion’s League game against Porto is scheduled. But my spidey-sense tells me it’s a fortnight tomorrow?”

She laughed, as I’d hoped she would. “Waouh. That’s an amazing guess. Especially for a rugby fan. Can you also shoot webbing from your wrist?”

My turn to chuckle. Mon dieu, was I really about to ask the world’s most famous soccer player out on a date? No, I didn’t do relationships. It would be nothing more than another opportunity to spend some time with her. “Alas, no. But although a shitty bloke in Canada doesn’t want to take you out to lunch and show you off, a smelly French oyster fisherman could be persuaded, next time you are back on the island?”

If I wasn’t mistaken, that sounded very much like a date. Éti’s mobile face creased into a dimpled, almost shy smile and the chipped incisor gained itself a new Instagram follower. With a delightful rosy blush, she looked down at her feet and kicked at a stone. “The only thing I can smell around here is freedom, Nico.” Her grey eyes met mine again. “Thank you. Lunch with you would be lovely.”

CHAPTER 7

Nothing crashes you back down to earth quite like the shadow of terminal illness. Sure, you could duck from beneath its dark umbrella for a few hours, by taking a stroll along a pretty beach with an attractive and fascinating new friend, but cancer simply lay in wait until you got back.

Later that week, the doctors withdrew my mum’s chemo. She didn’t put up a fight, mount a challenge, batten down the hatches, or perform any other fucking clichéd military analogy. Quite the reverse, in fact. She politely agreed it was in her best interests. And as much as it hurt hearing her decline any further life-prolonging treatment... she was right. None of us were blind or stupid. Her hair had disappeared, taking her immune system with it, exposing her to everything but the most innocuous germs.

To summarise the specialist’s roundabout explanation: if the cancer didn’t get her, then the treatment would. And when all was said and done, the chemo had never promised to be more than a hideous, unpleasant holding pattern. Buoying ourselves up with new drugs had been a drain on everyone’s mental energies; holding on false hope killed us almost as much as letting go.

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