Page 31 of Oyster

I brought our joined hands to my lips. “I’m what.”

“You… you look at me as if all that is really true. As if you really mean it. You have done since you arrived. And… and I don’t think anyone can fake that.”

“They can’t,” I answered simply. “And I’m not. I don’t play games, Éti. I promise. If you’ll have me and trust in me, I’m here for the taking.”

After that, she ended up in my lap. Kissing me. Like a puppy learning about the world by sniffing every tree trunk, she learned about me through her mouth, nibbling at my lips and ears with her sharp teeth, slanting my face this way and that, gliding her fingertips through my hair. And, taking meat my word about the talking, keeping up an adorable running commentary.

I was reaching the end of long busy day: an early-morning stint on the oyster beds before my wonderful afternoon with Éti, followed by shift number two. I was feeling pretty jaded. “What did you do whilst I was at work?” I asked, suppressing a yawn.

Having kissed her way around every inch of my face, she snuggled down, wrapping her arms around my neck and tucking her head under my chin. Even though I couldn’t see, I sensed her pulling a face and smiled to myself.

“Ugh. I survived a two-hour meeting with my media team about a meeting we had about the media. I think that’s what it was, anyhow. I spent most of it working on a pattern for a skirt I’m putting together, and just nodded and agreed every time my agent and the others went quiet.” She huffed a laugh. “I’ve probably signed up to be the new face of Viagra or something. Which would be kind of ironic and hilarious, and now I’m absolutely hoping that’s the case.”

“A veryhardsell.”

She sniggered against my chest. “After that, when it fell dark, I went for a 10k run, then came back and did the quad-strengthening workout my physio is always nagging me to do.”

I stifled another yawn. “A very quiet afternoon and evening then.”

“Fairly. And then I forced myself to eat some weird protein things I keep in the freezer before an online yoga session with my PT.”

I’d enjoy watching Éti perform yoga. I imagined she was rather bendy. “Putain,talk about two different worlds, Éti. I moved the two-year-olds over to their new feeding ground with Max, and then we chiselled all the barnacles off one of the growing racks in Ars.”

“Beurk.That sounds very cold and wet.”

I omitted the half hour spent coaxing Zoë out of her room, then helping my mum carry the food shop in from the car and put it away while she went for a lie down. And that Max and I had picked barnacles in total silence. Éti’s universe was a self-centred, narrow little cell, whether she wanted it that way or not. Did it have room for a grieving oyster farmer? Because the more I grew comfortable with her, the stronger my urge to unload.

“It’s very late, Nico. Would you like to stay?” Muffled against my chest, her voice was small and hopeful. Holding Éti in my arms the entire night sounded wonderful.

“If you’d like me to?”

She hesitated. “Yes, because I’m driving back to Paris tomorrow, and I want to spend every second I can with you. But maybe… could you take the spare room? Is that weird, asking you to sleep somewhere else? I’m… um… it’s too soon for you to see me with my… well, this.”

Of all the strange turns my life was taking, sleeping alone in her spare room didn’t rank very highly.

“And I’ll make your breakfast in the morning? In bed?”

Mon dieu, this woman was a keeper. Done deal.

CHAPTER 10

When I was about fifteen, my cousins from Toulouse came to stay. Twin girls, no more than toddlers. It was a hellish week. I was at the awkward age when respecting my personal space felt of paramount importance, and nobody had clued them in; my baby cousins barged right through it. Every morning, I’d wake to the disarming sensation I wasn’t alone, and open my eyes to find two more pairs of big brown ones about three inches away from my face, staring at me like I’d landed from an alien planet.

I was reminded of that now, except the pair of eyes smiling into mine from the other side of the bed, not brown but flecked a cool silvery-grey, were a welcome sight. Below them, a grinning mouth revealed the world’s most famous chipped incisor.

“Oh God. Was I snoring?”

“No.” She hesitated. “Well, maybe a bit. I prefer to think you were dreaming about tractors.”

Great impression, Nico.

Dressed in the flowery pyjamas I’d seen hanging on the back of the door the night I’d helped her home from the beach, Éti was propped up on her elbow alongside me, under the bedclothes. She smelled clean. She’d applied light makeup too; it saddened me that she felt she had to do all that before I woke.

“How long have you been lying there?”

“Um… since about… ah… half an hour after we went to bed?” She gave me a sheepish smile. “I mean, I got up twenty minutes ago to take a shower and then came back.”

“So, we… um… we’ve slept together now?”

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