Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
Sieving through my thoughts, I’d anticipated a version of this conversation. I’d have been an idiot not to. Nonetheless, her sudden change in mood caught me out. Stalling, I asked, “Why would I want your money?”
Her eyes rolled skyward. “Don’t be na?ve. Or don’t pretend to be. Why the hell wouldn’t you? étienne Salvador is a very famous person. And also, very rich. Stupidly rich. And you have stumbled over his big secret: that he is a woman and goes by the name éti. As it stands, only two people alive on this planet know that information, and they are both in this room.”
“What? No one else knows?” I shook my head. “You’re joking.”
Her stormy grey eyes narrowed, and the air temperature dropped. There would be no more flirting. “Do you see me laughing?”
étienne Salvador had kept his private life private because he was an astute media pro. He’d been in the spotlight for nigh on a decade. On the hop, I was discovering that éti Salvador was quite adept too.
“No, I thought not.”
She sat back, folding her arms. “So, Nico. How much money will it take for you to pretend you never met me? We can make it a very straightforward transaction. You will sign a piece of paper, I’ll transfer the money immediately, and you’ll walk out of here a much richer man.”
I pursed my lips, still a step behind her and reeling with shock. “Sorry, you’re telling me no one knows? No one at all?”
“No one. And for the time being, I intend on keeping it that way. So, how much?”
“You… er… you said... a woman? So, do you mean…” I stumbled over the correct words. Not because I didn’t approve or accept or judge; when I said live and let live, I meant every fucking word. But up until I discovered her on the beach, I had never met anyone like her and was unfamiliar with the terminology.
In a word, I didn’t want to fuck up. And, truth be told, I’d not been entirely sure what was going on.
Rising from the chair, she paced over to the windows, then turned and faced me. “Yep, I’m a trans woman. Closeted, obviously, because… well, I’m also étienne fucking Salvador, aren’t I?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb, as if collecting her thoughts, before letting out a harsh laugh. “Do you know what, Nico? That’s the first time I’ve said those words to anyone. I’m a trans woman! A woman! And it feels pretty good. Liberating. Even if I am sharing with a total stranger.”
“And you’ve really not told anyone up until now?”
“God, no.” She gave a hollow laugh. “To be fair, my agent suspects I’m a gay man. Which, trust me, stress tests his stomach ulcer daily.” She rolled her eyes. “He suffers a minor stroke if I so much as smile at a male interviewer or an attractive young fan. So, I do it a lot, just to piss him off. Our goalkeeper Fabien, my very good friend, is convinced I’m gay too, and keeps on trying to set me up with acquaintances he swears wouldn’t blab to the media.” She huffed. “I love him to bits, but yes, they most assuredly would.”
“What about your family?” After the World Cup victory, I hazily recalled an interview with proud parents, a village soccer pitch in the background, the entire village crammed into the mairie to watch on a big screen.
She snorted. “My parents… merde , they’re a whole session in the psychiatrist’s chair all on their own. We’re… we have a lukewarm relationship these days, off camera. They’re in denial. Let’s leave it at that. And the rest of the team—the stupid idiots—think I’ve got religion, hence why I’m not out there bedding anything in a skirt, like the majority of them.”
Putain, how my week had taken a swerve. The ‘rest of the team’ were some of the most skilful, highly paid soccer players in the world. My very good friend Fabien was Fabien Pépin, the current PSG captain and a goalkeeping legend. “But they’re all wrong?” I offered.
“Yes.” She hugged herself, almost taking a childish delight in it, before her face fell. “I haven’t found God, I’m not a eunuch, and, although I’m attracted to men, I am not a gay man. And my name is not étienne.” Her eyes flicked to mine. “And now it is no longer a secret. So, name your price. Take a minute to think about it. I’ll wait.”
Name my price .
I’ve never wanted for much. Neither did I have expensive tastes. But every sou our family ground out was hard won. If we didn’t shrug on the oilskins and tend the oyster beds at three a.m.? We didn’t get paid. So I could be forgiven if, for a minute, I permitted myself to dream of the life I’d lead with a bucketload of cash.
A new tractor would be first on my wish list, and a couple more willing employees to go with it, so Max, my dad, and I could take it in turns to laze around in bed a couple of days a week. We already had three blokes on the payroll, working the beds over at Ars, but more wouldn’t go amiss, especially now my dad wasn’t functioning at full tilt. A new roof on the sheds, too, would be nice. Maybe early retirement for my dad, though God knew how he’d fill his hours after my mother was gone. Knowing him, he’d turn up at work every day.
As I considered, I noticed a sewing machine sat in the corner of the room. A big, state-of-the-art kind, with a shiny white body and lots of bobbins. I was reminded of my mother, because she owned the exact model. Although my dad hadn’t lifted it out of the understairs cupboard for her for a while. Maybe he never would again.
A bolt of soft olive-green material stood propped next to it, some of the velvety fabric draped across the machine.
“Do you sew?” I jerked my head over to the corner.
Puzzled, éti twisted around. “Yes, I do. I make my own clothes. Or try to.”
I indicated to her pretty floral dress. “Did you make that?”
Pulling out the front, her lips curved in a small smile. “Yes. Don’t examine it too closely, especially across the shoulder seams. It was an early attempt.”
“It’s pretty,” I commented, because it was. She looked pretty wearing it. “Does sewing make you happy?”
She plucked at the material again, straightening a fold over her knees. “I love it. It calms me; I like to get the machine out after a bad game, when the press is giving me a hard time. Not that I read much of that shit, but I still know it’s there.”
My mum loved sewing, too. Although curtains and soft furnishings were more her speciality, along with adjusting clothes for other people. I’d grown up to the background purring of her machine. And the accompanying curses. Sounds likely lost forever. The last time she would ever fire it up might have already passed, unnoticed.
A band of grief tightened around my chest. Here I was, already storing up memories of her, and she wasn’t yet dead. But every morning, I woke and wondered the same thing. Would today be the beginning of the end? How did the end even begin, anyhow? Would it be with a sharp pain in her belly, or a sudden difficulty breathing as the cancer finally conquered the last corner of her lungs? Or would she come over all peculiar while preparing dinner, then collapse to the floor as the monster invaded her brain? When no one was there? Catching us out, unaware that we’d already said our last goodbyes?
Mon dieu, my own breathing was strained, just imagining it.
Staring into éti’s anxious grey eyes as she waited for me to come up with a sum, though trying to play it cool, I figured out what I’d known from the second she’d proposed it: her fortune wouldn’t ever turn back the clock. It couldn’t teleport my mother back two years, to a time when the cancer was in its infancy and a lesser foe. It couldn’t change the past or, in my mum’s case, radically alter the future. Not every problem could be solved by money. A concept a closeted and courageous trans woman like éti, swimming against the tide herself, might understand as well as anyone.
“Thanks for the offer. But I don’t want your money, éti. I’ll sign your form if it gives you peace of mind. But I don’t want anything from you. Like I said, your secret is safe with me. I promise.”
As the seconds ticked by, we studied each other. I doubted she believed me. Why should she? What did she see? A man dressed in scruffy denim, smelling of shellfish. With bold tattoos running down both his arms and up his neck. With sharp eyes and foxy features, the sort of person your mother warned you to stay away from. A dubious stranger, who, in the seconds it took to boot a penalty into the back of a goal net, could alter the course of her brilliant career and her dazzling future.
He could make her the number-one news item all over the world. The press would hound her every move, even more than it did already. Because you didn’t have to live and breathe the professional sporting business to know that topflight soccer didn’t encompass trans women. Hell, it even denied gay men, or at least for all but a brave few until after they’d retired. My very existence must scare the living daylights out of her.
“You don’t need to make that decision now.” Her hand had resumed its tight grip on the cushion. “Think about it and give me a definitive answer tomorrow. And remember, whatever deal a journalist were to offer, I would double or treble it. Pluck a figure out of the air and I’d agree.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need to. Trust me, I won’t be talking to any journalists. Give me the form. I’ll sign it now.”
Chewing on her lip, she squinted me, like I must be crazy. “Honestly?”
“Honestly, éti. Cross my heart and hope to be smothered in rotten raw oysters.”
She swore, then huffed a laugh, soft and throaty. “You know what? I might fucking believe you. Which could be the most stupid thing I’ve ever done.”
“It’s not. Because I won’t. I’m lucky, éti. I have a good life here, and I’m not in the business of fucking up anyone else’s. I’ll still sign your form, though. If it helps you sleep better.”
She eyed me in that speculative way, remaining unsure. Who could blame her? “It’s a shame there aren’t more people like you in the world. But can I see you tomorrow anyway?”
“Why on earth would you want to?”
In her shoes, I’d like to forget we’d ever met.
“To double-check you haven’t changed your mind. To give you another twenty-four hours to reconsider. Because, to be blunt, Nico, you sound too good to be true.”
“I’m not. I’m… I’m just… not a dick, I guess.”
She barked a laugh. “In some ways, I’d have more peace of mind if you were. In my fucked-up world, trusting someone’s word is much scarier than a cold financial transaction. I do a lot more of the latter than the former.”
I shrugged. “Okay then, if it makes you happy, I’ll think about it. But don’t expect my answer to change.”