Page 66 of Oyster

Two solemn grey eyes, already staring into mine as I peeled apart my lids, attached to a body good enough to eat, covered in a snuggly set of flowery pyjamas. At least she’d brought the coffee this time.

“The Ballon d’Or ceremony is next Thursday night,” she announced. “At Theatre du Chatelet, at 8 p.m.”

“I know. Max is already planning his week of television viewing around it. I’ve told him you’ll get Mbappé to sign a photo.”

The following grumbling gave me a chance to wake up. “Why he wants one of that fly-by-night is anyone’s guess. Once he loses his pace, he’ll be playing in a Sunday afternoon village league. You mark my words. I’m worth two of him in anyone’s money.”

I yawned and stretched lazily. “Good to know your ego is still intact.”

After my coffee, I planned to entice her back to bed. The ten-kilometre run she mapped out last night, followed by a targeted gym session, could wait. Wasn’t this the beginning of the off season?

“Anyhow, I’ve won it again.”

What?“The ceremony is a week away. You should win, but don’t count your chickens. Stranger things have happened.”

She huffed. “It’s a good job my ego is intact! Don’t you mean,Congratulations, Éti, on such an amazing achievement, although I’m not surprised because not only are you the finest girlfriend known to mankind but also the most awesome soccer player the world has ever had the privilege of witnessing?”

Yep, more than intact. Extremely well nourished; it didn’t need any more feeding. Instead, I gave her a sharp and unexpected poke.

“Yes, my love. But what I mean is—don’t they announce the winner on the night?”

She made a dismissive hand gesture. “They do, yes. But putain! Have you heard soccer players being interviewed and giving thank you speeches? Dubois once told a pundit to fuck off on live TV because he asked him to present the Man of the Match award to his teammate standing next to him and he thought he’d played better! I wouldn’t trust any of them to give an off-the-cuff speech on national TV. So, while we pretend it’s a shock, actually, they give us a week for our media teams to prepare something suitable.”

“Oh.” Put like that, it made sense. I watched as she slid off the bed and pulled a tracksuit from her wardrobe.

“I want you to come with me.”

“No chance. I’ll run to catch a flight to somewhere hot and sunny and that’s about it. You can do ten bloody kilometres on your own.”

“Écoute,Nico! You’re not listening! I’m asking you to come to the Ballon D’Or. As my partner. With me.Thisversion of me. The real me.” She paused a beat and looked down at herself. “I don’t mean in these jimjams, obviously. Or this tracksuit. Something more… feminine and glamorous.”

“I love you in those pyjamas,” was my inappropriate floundering response. Mon dieu.She must be out of her mind.

“I know you do,” she answered blithely, like she hadn’t just told me she was announcing to the international soccer world that its most celebrated son was actually… not. “You love me whatever I look like on the outside. Not many of us have that love.”

I scrabbled around in my numb brain, speechless as my mouth tried to translate the sudden chaos. Florian had mooted the question. He’d warned we couldn’t hide away forever; that was even more true now Zoë and Max were in on the secret. People would gossip, he’d warned. And I’d listened, even if I had waved it away to manãna. Who wanted to worry about the future when the recent past had been so awful, and the present so perfect? Me with my girl in our little love nest?

“Some people, especially on social media, might be really unpleasant when they find out? People you thought were friends, too.” There was nomightabout it. She had a shit tonne of ignorant bigoted vileness heading her way. My stomach felt sick just at the thought of it. “You need to give this a hell of a lot of thought. Your life is going to change forever. There will be no going back.”

“Yes. I know that, too.” Éti sounded very calm. The run forgotten, she came back to the bed and sat on it beside me. “But I’ve been managing the media for years. Not much of whatanyone says about me bothers me anymore. And I have you, and you love me. I have you and your family, your friends. Fabien, too, when I tell him. A whole ecosystem of support. It will give me the strength to go through with this. I couldn’t have done it a year ago, but now I’m ready.”

My brain dissolved to mush; I felt powerless, adrift, unable to advise, to suggest, to rationalise, to fucking cogitate.

But I could offer my support. I could do that. Because seeing her now, cross-legged on the bed in a pretty set of flowery pyjamas, so at odds with the determined expression in her eye that saidI’m going to slot the ball slap bang into the back of the net and no one can stop me, my support was all she sought. And if not now, when?

“Have you thought about waiting until you retire?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to. I’m fed up with my personality being cut into pieces, Nico. Existing like this—Éti here, Étienne there—I can’t do it for much longer. It’s like being caught in the crossfire of a tempestuous marriage. Éti wants a divorce.”

I laid a hand on her arm. “I know, my love. You don’t have to explain. I know.”

“For a long time, I thought that the only way to live as a woman would be to wait until my career ended and then seek medical treatment. Almost to validate how I felt to myself, never mind anyone else. As if I couldn’t come out as trans unless I had the medical certificates and a pair of boobs to prove it. But being with you has made me realise that’s not true. I might have medical treatment one day—I will investigate the options for sure, but I don’t need hormones and operations to be me. To be Éti. And anyhow, I’m not ready for them yet.”

I took her hand. “No, you don’t. And you should carry on playing soccer for as long as it makes you happy.”

“I know that now. My job—my role in society playing soccer with a team of men—has nothing to do with my gender. I can be a woman and a great player. Being trans isn’t about what I do. It’s about how I feel.” She patted her chest. “In here.”

“It will be tough.”

---