Chapter 7
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.
So, in many ways, the news was almost a relief. It still fucking stung, though.
Discussions abruptly switched tack; the battalions of courageous battling soldiers marched off; their empty spaces taken up with less hackneyed words like comfort care , syringe drivers, and palliative medicines . And, whatever the fuck those were, she didn’t need them yet.
What struck the most, in the dark hours and days that followed, was how the crazy normalcy of life still drifted along. Standing in the hospital carpark, for instance, fumbling for loose change in front of an overengineered ticket machine and working out which button to press. Placating the impatient man behind us with a smile and a joke, like my mum hadn’t been handed down a life sentence less than a half hour earlier. Then grumbling about the queue at the temporary traffic lights on the way home. And, once installed, the mundane conversations about needing more bog rolls or who was going to put the bins out. Bills were still paid, laundry still piled up, dental appointments still came and went. My mum still switched on the lamp in our dingy porch towards the end of every afternoon because she preferred it that way. Because it made our home more welcoming.
Which of us, if anyone, would remember to do that after she’d gone?
“It feels like when we brought you home from the hospital as a one-day-old baby,” she remarked, scratching behind her ears. I’d become used to her wig. She hadn’t. She wore it nonetheless; I think she believed it was less upsetting for my dad.
I stared at her in surprise. “Does it? I know I haven’t been a model child, but I would have hoped that was a more upbeat occasion.”
Another odd thing. Even with this awfulness hanging over her, over all of us, we still shared a joke, because that was mine and my mum’s love language. We were still us, just dimmer, unlit, and less welcoming porch versions.
“Yes, but I remember plonking you on that rug over there, in your little Moses basket, and then me and your dad stared at each other, as if to say, what now? Because all the midwives and nurses and visitors had gone, and we were two clueless kids expected to get on with it.”
I often ended up alone with her in the front room. Not through obligation—she’d already insisted we didn’t hang around moping—but because I was the only one who hadn’t yet devised a workable grieving strategy. My dad's modus operandi after each carved slice of bad news was to head straight to L’Escale , our local bar, where no one would ask any questions because everyone had already joined the dots; his eyes said it all. Max always disappeared out on the tractor, chasing the tide and tossing oyster pouches until he collapsed with exhaustion. Zo? shut herself in her room, turning her music up very loud. Disconnected souls, all of us, our mundane conversations no better than silence.
“What did you do?”
She huffed a soft laugh. Even with death sniffing around, memories brought some comforting cheer. “Your dad made us both a cheese sandwich, and then he put the telly on, and we watched the news, just like any other ordinary night of the week. That’s how this feels too, except I'm too nauseous to eat a cheese sandwich. Cuddling a baby would be nice, though.”
I flapped at the collar of my shirt. She felt the cold a lot more these days, so I’d cranked up the fire and set the radiators blaring.
“I’d liked to have seen one of you settled,” she added.
The TV sat idle, as did her sewing machine; she struggled to concentrate on anything these days.
“There’s still time,” I felt obliged to point out.
“I’m not holding my breath. Max is too young, and anyway, he’s more interested in tinkering with tractors and that bloody Xbox than girls. And if Zo? wants to find herself a boyfriend, she’ll have to get off her phone and step outside her bedroom.”
Nothing short of a housefire would coax Zo? out. Like a toddler covering her eyes, as long as she couldn’t see it, then maybe my younger sister could convince herself, if only for a few hours, it wasn’t happening.
“Mind you, I was the same as a teenager.” Staring at the flickering flames, her eyes glazed over. “Drove my mother mad. Stewed in there for hours, taping the chart show on Oüi FM and experimenting with makeup.”
“Mmm.” We both knew Zo?’s behaviour was more complicated. Six months ago, she’d have been plumped on the sofa with us, bitching about the latest saga with her mates at school.
“I already had two kids when I was your age, Nico. You’re the one I’d really like to see settle down. But you’ve always been too busy playing the field. Your uncle was the same. Too handsome to pick just one.”
“He’s settled now, though,” I said, trying to appease her. This wasn’t the first time she’d compared me to her brother; from photos I’d seen when he was my age, we could have been twins. “Very happy, isn’t he?”
“Mon dieu, yes. If he’s anything to go by, when you fall, Nico, you will fall hard. You won’t know what’s hit you.”
Waouh, as éti would say.
Now why the hell had she popped into my head?
A thick white envelope addressed to me and bearing a Paris postmark landed in the rusty letterbox nailed to the oyster shed door. Three tickets fell out, boasting the same red-and-blue Eiffel tower logo as the PSG calendar hanging above, triggering unexpected sensations in my belly. The loopy, girlish handwriting on the note accompanying the tickets did even stranger things to my insides. “ A small thank you to my rugby-loving, oyster-shucking, guardian angel. Come and watch my alter-ego dance!”
The tickets were for the away game against mid-table FC Nantes, so an easy train ride from La Rochelle. Obviously, only one person could have sent them. A replay of that person larking about on the beach, in a flowing red dress and gold monogrammed running shoes, interrupted my thoughts several times a day.
Her timing couldn’t have been better. A break from work and home would do Max a power of good. Zo? would rather eat her own arm than sit through a soccer match, and asking my dad to stray further than a mile from my mum was a complete waste of time. Florian, however, would love the trip out, even if he did know bugger all about football. I, of course, pretended to myself that being sent a handwritten note and VIP tickets to a soccer game by éti Salvador wasn’t a big deal.
“How the fuck did you wangle these seats?”
The longest sentence Max had uttered since we’d set off. I was pathetically relieved. The aftershocks of the latest bad news had hit us hard. Zo? had cried angry tears. Meanwhile, my dad oscillated around my mum like she was going to disappear in a puff of smoke if he took his eyes off her, until, irritated, she shooed him off to L’Escale . Whereas Max… did nothing, his deafening silence expressing his pain way more than words or floods of tears.
“More like who the fuck,” laughed Florian.
After greeting us at the turnstiles, an usher led the way to a row of plush seats directly behind PSG’s management team and coaching staff. On Florian’s left perched a gorgeous young US actress with a new movie coming out, surrounded by a bunch of glamorous giggling friends. Max, his eyes out on stalks, knowledgeably informed me she was dating one of the PSG players. On my right lounged a suave government minister, deep in conversation with the ex-manager of the French national team.
Mon dieu, we had stepped into a parallel universe.
“You’re a dark horse, Nico.” Busy taking surreptitious photos to send to Charles, Florian nudged my arm. “Come on then, spill the beans. Who is she, and what the hell did you do to her? It must have been a hell of an orgasm.”
“Jeez, Flor. My baby brother’s standing next to you!”
“Max is a man of the world, aren’t you, Maxi?” Florian clapped him on the shoulder, and my brother blushed, shuffling his feet. His ears had pricked up, though.
Alors, they could think what they liked. The absolute truth would blow their minds. I offered a damped-down version of it. “Um… nothing that exciting. A woman I met last week gave them to me. I helped her out, and she sent me these tickets as a thank you. I had no idea we’d have prime seats.”
Florian’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Is met a euphemism?”
He knew me well. “No, connard. We’ve talked a few times. That’s all.”
“I bet it’s that lady you rescued on the beach, isn’t it?” Max craned his neck to peer around Florian as if he couldn’t quite believe so many stunning women sat within touching distance. “Any port in a storm, Nic.”
Cheeky bugger. I reached into my jacket for my wallet.
“I couldn’t possibly comment. Here, stop ogling what you can’t afford and fetch me and Florian a beer before kick-off.”
“I’m surprised beers don’t get delivered in crystal goblets to this row,” Florian observed, making way for Max. “You never told me you’d rescued someone. A damsel in distress?”
“He’s exaggerating, as usual. It was nothing.” Merely the singular, most extraordinary experience of my life.
“Well, I like her way of showing appreciation.” Florian held out his phone to me. “I told Charles I’d send him some pics. See if you can get the goal net and that umpire in the background.”
“He’s called the referee. Umpires are for tennis.”
“Stop being so pedantic. As if Charles knows the difference.”
Obliging, I smirked as a red-faced and apologetic Max squeezed in front of the row of young women. Bringing him out had been an excellent idea.
“I think you should meet with this mystery woman more often,” Florian added. “You might get tickets to the Champion’s League final next. Are you going to tell me who she is?”
“Mais, non. I think you know me better than that. But she’s…” Apparently, my words were bypassing my conscious brain today. “I’ve arranged to see her again. She’s nice. And interesting.”
Akin to describing the outer layer of an oyster shell as "a bit chewy."
Florian pounced, eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“Nico! You’ve never said that about any women you go out with!”
“What, that she’s nice? I must have done. Damning with faint praise, isn’t it?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. You’re finally maturing, mon ami.”
Fuck it. There was a limit to the number of secrets a man could hold inside. Especially when one was running out onto a football pitch not twenty metres away, to roars of approval. My heart was running even faster. “We’ve only met up a couple of times, but there’s something about her I like. And not just giving me these tickets. I doubt it will come to anything, what with what’s going on at home and everything. And she doesn’t live on the island. I haven’t got time to…”
“Non, non, Nico!” Florian tutted. “Stop with the excuses. You don’t get to pick someone on a day or a time that suits! Love is like an ocean wave; it doesn’t choose which patch of sand to cover. This woman might be the special one, the love which comes without warning. Sometimes we fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.”
Did I mention my Florian was an old-fashioned French romantic? Love. He tossed that word about like a ping-pong ball, when we all knew it was a stick of dynamite. I rolled my eyes at him.
“Whoa, whoa! Who said anything about love? I said I’d met her and liked her, that’s all. We’ve had coffee together.” The first time she was drunk, and the second she offered me cash for silence. And by the way, she's stretching out her newly healed hamstring over by the centre circle. “I showed her around the oyster farm.” And now she’s adjusting her laces.
Florian rubbed his hands together in a gleeful manner as if already plotting my future betrothal. “That all sounds very promising.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean she likes me! As you’re always keen to point out, I’m a smelly oyster farmer. She’s a rich Parisian.” And retying her hair in a tighter ponytail about fifteen metres away.
“But you want to get to know her more,” Florian pointed out. “You never say things like that. Which means she must be very special. Tell me what makes her special. Give me some hope, please.”
Delicate feet clad in glittery golden running shoes, heel-to-toe, flitted through my head. “Um… she’s cute. And funny. And…” I trailed off. Nico La Forge was an ignorant straight guy about to take a trans woman on a date. His best friend was an out, experienced homosexual man. A reliable and discreet go-to resource for all things queer. “And she’s transgender,” I finished in a rush. “Does that make her special?”
While Florian absorbed that interesting and surprising nugget of information, we watched the linesmen and referees shake hands. This conversation had travelled way farther than I’d intended or was comfortable with.
“Her being trans is irrelevant to whether I’m attracted to her, by the way,” I added. Her being éti Salvador was a much bigger whammy. “Which means, if anything develops between us, it shouldn’t fucking matter to anyone else either.”
“Okaay. Well, that makes my queer little heart very happy.” He sounded unconvinced. “But are you sure it isn’t going to become of relevance for you? When you get beyond the met stage? Because she’ll have suffered enough, Nico, at the hands of unkind people. Ignorant people. Thoughtless people.” His lips pursed. “Don’t become one of them. You’re… ah... you know, quite traditional when it comes to the fairer sex. Don’t go beyond the talking stage if her identity will be a problem for you further down the line. Break it off now, before you hurt her.”
I threw him a wry smile. “Someone else already has, unfortunately.”
I remembered éti’s long elegant throat, swallowing down the oysters, how she sucked the juice off each of her fingers with such unadulterated joy. Finding deep pleasure in a simple afternoon picnic. “It hasn’t been an issue so far. And I don’t think it will be. I like her. A lot. But let’s not get too carried away. As I said, I don’t know if she’s attracted to me yet.”
Florian’s keen eyes appraised me in my lanky, shabby glory. “Nico, that corner flag is attracted to you.”
Ignoring him, I carried on, needing to get it off my chest. “What if I told you her gender wasn’t the most complicated thing about her?” That as we speak, she is peeling off her trackie bottoms and unzipping her top? That if she turned around and sought me in the stands, my heart might actually give out? Because when she isn’t allowed to be her sweet trans self, she is étienne fucking Salvador!
“What do you mean?”
“She’s told me some stuff in confidence. But without going into details, I haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m getting myself into, to be honest, Flor. All I know is that I like her a lot, and I’m up for more of it.”
I like her a lot. Mon dieu, where the hell did that confession bubble up from? More to the point, where did any of the rest of it come from? I’d only met éti four times, and on one of those occasions, she’d been pissed as a newt.
I held that bit back.
“Putain, don’t say she’s married. Non , Nico, non. You know better than to go down that route.”
I laid a hand on his arm. “Relax. She doesn’t have kids either.”
“Okay, so she’s not involved. But we still need to talk.” Florian tugged my arm. “Merde, Nico, how can you drop something like this on me then expect me to concentrate on eighty minutes of football?”
“Trust me, it wasn’t planned. And football matches are ninety minutes, not eighty.”
“Obviously, I knew that. I was testing you. écoute. If she’s managed to turn your head, then I love her already, and if she’s trans, then she’s about as special as you can get. And I’ll adore her even more. But if you’re also throwing other stuff into the mix and you don’t want to fuck this up, then please, talk to me before you do anything rash.”
Florian knew me too well. “I will. But not now. Not yet.”
“Don’t allow your mum’s illness to stop you following your heart, Nico. She wouldn’t want that for you. And… and you’ve been fine all these years on your own. But you need someone, and you’re going to need someone even more after… after… you know.”
Another person unable to voice the inevitable out loud. Maybe the military metaphors were apt after all. Maybe cancer sufferers were the only ones with any courage.
We needed a rapid change of subject. At the end of the row, Max wound his way back, balancing three beers and a carton of fries. I jerked my head in his direction. “Coming to the football has cheered Max up, anyhow. I caught him sitting on the sofa in the dark the other night, after he thought everyone had gone to bed. Just sitting there, doing nothing. And he’s regressing with his speech again.”
As a child, my brother was diagnosed with selective mutism, which waxed and waned as he grew older depending on whatever was going on in his complicated head.
“He’s scared, I imagine. He’s still so young, and he’s losing his mother. Facing something most of us don’t expect to encounter until we’re, I don’t know, mature enough to cope, I guess.”
Some days I didn’t think I’d ever reach that stage, but his point was fair. “We’re all scared, Flor. But he won’t talk to me about it. Zo?’s just as bad. It’s like we’re a bunch of strangers.”
We were quiet for a second, watching the opposing teams going through some warmup exercises. With a smirk, Florian gave me a firm poke. One of the young women had said something to Max, and a smile I hadn’t seen in way too long broke out across his face. For a brief second, he behaved like a normal twenty-year old lad again.
“Yeah, he needed to get away for a few hours.”
“As did you, mon ami,” agreed Florian. In the coming weeks ahead, I had a feeling I’d be leaning on him more and more.
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s a fucking weird time, Flor. Like, on the surface, everything is carrying on as normal, but we’re just acting a part. We’re all waiting for the hammer to drop. I’m checking my phone every ten minutes, dreading a message telling me to hurry back home or something. And it’s Zo? I’m concerned about as much as anyone. Like you said, I can keep an eye on Max. But she’s become a recluse.”
Florian’s arm landed around my shoulders. “I know. You’re worrying about all of them. But who’s worrying about you? If you do get close to your new friend, tell her your troubles, yes? Problems weigh heavier when the only person carrying them is you. My Charles has shown me that.”
Kick-off time was fast approaching, and the PSG team huddled in a circle, arm-in-arm, éti in the thick of it, receiving last-minute instructions from the manager. With her mass of spirally hair already escaping the confines of the hairband, and her comparatively diminutive stature, éti was always easy to pick out. More so when you had prime seats and she stood next to PSG’s giant of a goalkeeper and team captain, Fabien Pépin. I tried to imagine her in a floaty red dress and glittery gold trainers instead of the plain dark shorts and matching top of PSG’s away strip. Once a whistle blew, heralding the beginning of the match, it was much easier than I thought.
As the match got underway, my worries vanished for a while. Sport was always good for that, soccer especially. Maybe that was why millions of us were glued to our television sets every weekend—to escape the miserable or the mundane. To wallow in the spectacular. When éti Salvador turned on her special brand of magic, a person could forget their own name, never mind the state of their marriage, their money worries, or their mum’s terminal illness. You didn’t dare tear your eyes away. Even her bad games were good.
For the first few minutes, the opposing teams felt each other out, passing the ball in triangles between defenders, then tapping back to the goalkeeper. Patiently awaiting an opening and hovering around the halfway line, éti was as much a spectator as the rest of us. Nonetheless, my gaze locked on to her, holding like she was a shooting star.
“Salvador missed the last match,” observed Max, supping his beer. “Flu bug or something. I’m glad he’s back—we’re going to need him for the Champion’s League game next week. We need his strength up front.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a nod, like my heart wasn’t pumping out of my chest. His use of the wrong pronoun jarred; something I was going to have to get used to.
Unaware, my brother carried on. “Dubois and Ruiz both play better when they’ve got Salvador on the inside. If he’s back to full fitness, this afternoon should be a walk in the park.”
With a dry mouth, I took a long swig before answering. “Yeah.”
At the beginning of her career, éti had played out on the right wing, using her blistering pace and dancing trickery to run at and beat defenders, before providing a cross to one of the main strikers. As her dominance grew, however, she developed more positional freedom and now mostly occupied a central striking spot herself. In the space of a couple of years, she transformed from fast tricky winger to unrelenting goal scorer and global icon.
And she was my date for next week.
With effort, I dragged my eyes away from her, toward the end of the pitch with the action.
“There are no easy games at this level,” Florian chipped in, like he was fucking Zinedine Zidane. “You cocky PSG supporters shouldn’t count your chickens. My pretty Nantes boys are very solid at defending a counterattack. They aren’t going to be a walkover, not with that flat pack four.”
Seemed my best mate had brought along his favourite footballing clichés. “Flat back four, mon ami. For a second there, I almost believed you knew what you were talking about.”
“I do!” Florian pouted, hamming it up for me. “Nantes are my local team! And you know I’ve always fancied teams that play in yellow.”
I snorted. “You just fancy their tall blond centre half.”
From the second she jogged out, éti was all business as usual. Which meant she was solemn, serious étienne. During the warmup, while she and her training partner tapped the ball between them, her dark head had filled the big screen. No flirty smiles or fluttery eyelashes this afternoon, no acknowledging waves to the crowd, no chitchat with her teammates. Simply one hundred percent professional concentration. As if 30,000-plus spectators crammed inside the modest Nantes stadium weren’t taking photos and chanting her name, thrilled that, in years to come, they could boast they had once watched the great étienne Salvador dance.
As she got her first proper touch of the ball, with no sign of the hamstring niggle, a cheer went up from PSG fans, relieved to have her back. Outsmarting a defender, she made a clever little back heel through to her nippy teammate on the right wing, Dubois. Another raucous cheer.
“Come on,” yelled Max, echoing thousands of voices behind him. I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Whatever the average PSG fan experienced, multiplied a hundred times, would nowhere approach the weird sensations coursing through my bloodstream. I felt hot and cold, both hungry and nauseous. Like my life was embarking on a journey I didn’t have a map for.
“Mon dieu, look at those eyes,” cooed Florian when the camera zoomed in on éti’s solemn face after Dubois went down in a tackle. “So pretty. So smouldery .”
Against my ribs, my heart danced a fresh tango. Max rolled his own eyes.
“You think?”
“I know,” said Florian. “It’s that enigmatic thing he has going. Trust me, it gets all the gays wild. étienne Salvador is a mystery, a closed book.”
“Hardly,” my brother huffed. “He has one of the biggest social media followings in the world!”
Florian wrinkled his nose with disgust. “Yes, but have you seen it? So boring! Reruns of goals and training sessions and fucking nutritional advice!”
“Um… he’s a footballer? That’s kind of what they do?”
“Maybe, but that’s not what the viewing public wants to see!” Florian tutted. “We want pics of our footballers hot and sweaty in the dressing room afterwards, peeling off tight damp shirts. Climbing into those big baths together. Soaping each other’s difficult-to-reach parts.”
He ducked as I clapped him around the head. “So speaks a true football fan.”
“I’m right, though! It’s like Salvador vanishes in a puff of smoke the second he leaves the pitch. He shows and tells the media nothing. That Instagram must be done by a PR company. Such a waste! So sexy. Nice legs too,” he added, like my younger brother wasn’t turning scarlet. Though, as Eti’s quick feet skipped around a couple of midfielders, her socks at half mast, I found myself in private agreement.
“ Le danseur could dance his way into my bed any time.” Florian remained blissfully unaware my mind had entertained vague thoughts in the same direction all week. “And you see that yellow number eight with those gorgeous dreadlocks, lining up for a free kick? He could join.”
“Might be a bit of squash with Charles in there too.” I tracked Eti’s slim legs from one edge of the pitch to the other. “Are you planning on actually following the match this afternoon, Flor, or merely scoring all the players on their sex appeal?”
During the first half, éti’s fire was on a low simmer, aside from a couple of probing runs down the left flank. It was often the way; opposing teams attempted to neutralise her by putting two players on her every move. A decent tactic, but with the predictable side effect of opening up acres of space for the Spanish winger, Ruiz, no slouch himself. Whatever Florian’s partisan views, Nantes had been notoriously weak in defence this season, so his lightning speed was always going to pose problems for the home side’s opposite number. Sure enough, with scant minutes remaining before the half-time whistle, Ruiz cut in around the Nantes left back to deliver a pinpoint cross, converted by an unopposed Dubois with inch-perfect precision. As the ball crashed past the despairing dive of the Nantes goalkeeper and into the roof of the net, a chorus of groans from the home crowd echoed around the stadium.
“Yes!” Max cheered, his face animated and flushed with colour. “Three points in the bag!”
“Reckon so.” I high-fived him, thrilled, even if éti hadn’t played a part. She joined her teammate in a bear hug as Dubois celebrated in front of the away fans. “They rarely lose once their noses are in front.”
“Putain, get over yourselves,” chuntered Florian. “It was a lucky pass against the run of play. Typical PSG. So lucky. So undeserved.”
All around us, PSG supporters whooped and hollered. Max scoffed. “Are you watching a different match, mate? Nantes have scarcely held possession for the last ten minutes!”
“My Nantes can always be relied on to give it one hundred and ten percent. We’ll come out fighting in the second half.”
“Nah, they’ve got no chance,” Max predicted. “PSG haven’t even woken up yet. I’m betting on three-nil. Look, they’ve dropped their heads already. They’ve not yet got the ball out of their own half. PSG are just too strong for everyone this season, especially when Salvador’s playing.”
“He’s hardly touched the ball!”
Max shrugged. “Doesn’t need to; just having him on the pitch scares the other teams. And it’s keeping him rested for the big one next week.”
“Bah oui, maybe,” conceded Florian. Big one? he mouthed to me, and I chuckled. My friend knew about as much about football as I knew about crochet.
In the second half, like all decent sides, Nantes dug deep and tried to revive their fortunes, attempting to exploit their superiority in the air. But, offering their usual stout resistance, the defensive line like a brick wall, PSG stopped the yellows from translating pressure into goals. Which meant, with the clock ticking down, Nantes had to take a few chances.
And when the opposition took chances and dropped their guard? éti Salvador, le petit danseur, was deadly.
We had to wait until around the sixty-fourth minute until she turned up the burners, conjuring a brilliant pass out of thin air, splitting the home team’s defence. Like a mind reader, Ruiz was there, waiting on the end of her millimetre perfect cross to curve the shot home. A cracker of a counterattacking goal, worked from nothing. Even Florian was impressed.
“There it is! Oh yes!” crowed Max as he punched the air and jumped up and down next to me. “Two-nil. One more and you owe me a drink, Flor.”
The pure happiness spreading across my brother’s face was worth the trip alone. éti had no idea the difference her little gift had made. Maybe I’d get to know her well enough to tell her one day.
“It’s all over now,” Florian agreed, resigned. “Tant pis. My boys in yellow have done everything right except put it in the back of the net.”
I couldn’t argue with that. And nor could PSG. With the flood gates flung wide, PSG’s third goal came three minutes later and had me on the edge of my seat and my heart in my throat, even though victory was virtually a given. Because for the last sixty minutes, I hadn’t been able to tear my eyes away from the woman known to everyone in the stadium, except me, as étienne Salvador. And from the way that woman had loosened up her dancing feet, she was on the way to producing a slice of pure ballet. What the fuck had changed that all of a sudden made me find another person so fucking beguiling when I’d been happily single for years?
I swear the second hand on the clock wound down at a slower rate for éti than for the other twenty-one mere mortals on the pitch. As if the laws of physics bent to her will, giving her more time to think and act. What other explanation was there? With the ball glued to her left foot—and she was no less proficient with it glued to her right—she waltzed through a thicket of Nantes defenders like cardboard cut-outs standing in the local tabac. As if two world-class players weren’t hot on her heels with another world-class goalkeeper bearing down on her. Fixed on the goalmouth, she lined up a shot.
My fingers gripped the cold plastic seat like I’d fall off the earth if I didn’t. While the whole time-space continuum stilled, I held my breath. God knew why I was so bloody nervous—éti evidently wasn’t. She slotted the ball in the top right-hand corner of the goal net as effortlessly as if she was the sole player on the pitch. Almost as if doing nothing more arduous than toeing a rotten fir cone into a pale spring sky.
“Yessss!”
A roar of triumph echoed around the stadium. Loud enough to be heard back in Paris. Leaping up, Max pumped his fist. “Yesss!”
The government minister was out of his seat too. Even the dolly girls next to us screamed. This was what we’d all come to see—a slice of pure theatre, as pundits everywhere, Florian included, were fond of saying. La petite danseuse working her magic.
Swamped by her teammates, éti disappeared under a pile of bodies. The crowds were still roaring when she scrambled away, straightening her shirt, the only person in the whole fucking place not beaming from ear to ear. Almost as if, at that moment, something on her mind was more important than the attacking masterclass she’d just delivered. Almost as if…
Serious soccer fans like me and Max believed we knew our players inside and out, when, in fact, we didn’t know them at all. Every one of our guys out there wanted to win, of course; that’s what made them amongst the best in the world. But ten-yard sprints, passes, and sharp tackles didn’t constitute a biography nor an internal dialogue. Nor did post-match interviews when every player insisted it had been a team effort and they couldn’t be prouder of the lads.
But when individual phenomenal goals, like the one we’d recently witnessed, were scored? We got a glimpse of the person behind the player. Because as much as they tried to hide it, soccer was the song of these talented humans, the kicking rhythm of their beating hearts. They could no more stop the emotions spilling into celebration than I could stop the island tides. And, believe me, some of those humans had patented all kinds of celebrations.
Max’s favourites were the boyish swan dives, long skids in the mud accompanied by a triumphant roar of youthful exuberance. He used to do them himself, playing for our village side, until recent circumstances extinguished his joie de vivre . Other guys stood over the corner flag, pointing at themselves and beating their chests, gorilla-like, a combination of movements shorthand for, ‘I have a massive, massive ego.’ A handful of goal scorers, the most agile, celebrated by stringing together six or seven impressive flick-flacks, to the delight of the watching crowds. (Florian’s favourites, as if I needed to ask, were the guys who tore off their tops to reveal a ladder of abs.)
éti Salvador, however, had patented a much, much simpler style. And really, why bother showboating, when your skills on the ball did all the talking for you? Sometimes there was a tiny fist pump, but, more often than not, she did nothing more than jog away from the goal towards the home fans, then drop a modest kiss to the plain gold ring adorning her left middle finger. Understated, classy, and consistent. Much like éti the soccer player herself.
Tonight, however, to everyone’s surprise, not least mine, she changed the narrative. Pushing through the congratulatory hugs of teammates, she sprinted to the players area of the stands, her gaze darting up. The big screen camera zoomed in on her, chest heaving, and the world watched as her grey eyes intently searched the crowd. Could she…? Was she…? Mon dieu . She was searching for me.
As our eyes met, the thousands of people around us vanished. My breath died in my throat. The intense mask of étienne Salvador dropped; a smile like sunrise broke out across her face. With a rush of pleasure, I found myself grinning back so hard my cheeks ached. Grinning at playful éti, a woman who couldn’t resist kicking stray pebbles and laughed as she dribbled lemon juice down her chin. A woman who’d occupied my thoughts all match. A woman I was taking on a date.
As the crowd roared, that woman masquerading as a man swept a hand across her front like a palace courtier and performed a flamboyant bow, before topping off the impromptu celebration by blowing a two-handed kiss.
And, as the people around me screamed and the cameras flashed, I wondered what kissing her back would feel like. And made up my mind to find out.
“Putain, I feel like a voyeur!” laughed Florian. “You don’t get a view this good on the telly, do you?”
“Salvador’s a lucky bugger,” griped Max. “Which one do you reckon he’s with, Flor? The fit blonde girl on the end?”
The big screen camera lingered on the preening women next to us, and I began to breathe again. Once more, éti’s teammates swamped her, and the moment passed.
“Your brother would be a better judge of that, Maxi. He’s a little more familiar with the ladies than me. But my money’s on the brunette with the brown eyes. What do you think, Nico? Closest to us? He was definitely looking at someone towards this side of the group.”
“Brunette, I agree,” I managed to croak. “I think Salvador prefers brunettes.”
“Hey, turn it up! Let’s listen to the interviews.”
The game ended at four-nil. Better than Max had predicted. Because éti Salvador snuck in another goal in the closing seconds, dancing a polka between a couple of tired defenders, just for the hell of it. The footballer’s smooth, solemn tones echoed around the car as Florian drove us from the train station back to the island. Thank fuck I wasn’t driving.
A confident, attractive voice, the same as éti’s but flatter somehow, lacking éti’s verve, gave a bland and modest summary of PSG’s dominance. As if her animation had been turned down a notch. Stuffing éti back inside is hard. Breathier too, since the interview was recorded minutes after the match. The interviewer éti so accurately lampooned posed the questions.
You had a great match today, étienne. I think you showed us you were back to fully fit.
Yes. On the whole, I was pleased with my performance. Nantes put up a good fight—they are always a strong team—but tonight we outclassed them in the second half. Xavier (Ruiz) had an opportunity to show everyone what he’s capable of when he’s given free rein in the midfield. The manager got the tactics spot on tonight against tough opponents.
Absolutely. The team have had a couple of lacklustre performances in their last two outings. They were glad to have you back on the pitch. What do you think made the difference for you personally this evening, étienne?
A few seconds of radio silence ticked by. Then éti’s voice came again, softer, more her own. And like she was speaking to no one but me. C’est simple. My guardian angel was watching from the stands. And I wanted to put on a show. I wanted my angel to see me dance.