Oyster (Island Love #2)

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

My mum had been dead for six weeks. The spaces between missing her grew longer, although some days her absence felt as raw as if, only yesterday, she was sitting at her sewing machine, singing along to the radio. On others, when my arms were full of éti, hours could pass before I remembered she was no longer with us. For the most part, my emotions oscillated somewhere in between, like now, as I settled down for the match on the sofa next to my dad.

The Champion’s League final in Munich brought the European soccer season to a close. Having already lifted the Ligue 1 trophy and smashed their way through the Champion’s League qualifying rounds, PSG were tipped as hot favourites against a Manchester City side struggling with injury and at the tail end of the long, tough English season.

We had a beer each; unusually, it was his first of the night.

“How are you, Nico?” he asked, as the players lined up for the national anthems. Like always, éti stood alongside Fabien, her curly head at least a foot lower than his. Seeing her on the telly would never grow old; I felt my usual frisson of excitement, even though she’d found time for a quick phone call twenty minutes earlier. I’d have been at the match myself if I hadn’t given the tickets to Max and his mate. éti being éti, not only was my brother in the VIP section, but she’d covered the cost of their travel and hotel too.

“Um… okay?”

While I recognised it wasn’t the most searching of enquiries, for us, it was atypical. More so since we’d spent most of the day together out on the oyster beds.

“That’s good.” He shuffled closer and patted my knee. “Good,” he repeated. “You must tell me when it’s not.”

I edged away a fraction. Maybe it wasn’t his first beer after all. “Er… what’s going on?”

“Nothing! Just asking, that’s all.” He took a tiny sip, hardly making a dent in the bottle.

“Okay.”

He didn’t speak again until the handshakes and huddles were over. Zo? wafted down the stairs for a night out, her first since saying a final goodbye to our mum. Dressed to the nines in a thigh-hugging skirt and with the smudgy, smoky eyes thing. Fabulous, in other words, a volcanic mix of brittle confidence and naivety that only teenage girls could pull off. Seeing her dressed up again, making an effort like she used to, was thrilling. But ah merde, my hackles rose. I knew how teenage lads’ minds worked. Should I say something? Was her choice of outfit any of my business? It shouldn’t be anyone’s but hers, yet testosterone-fuelled horny teenage brains didn’t always work that way.

My dad tensed. Seemed he was on the same page. There was an awkward pause while we both met her fragile but defiant stare; the slightest wrong move and she’d fly off the handle. How come I always fell so drastically short when confronted by this girl-woman-child? My mum would have known exactly what to do, what to say.

Our dad ended the stand-off, his drawn features breaking into a gentle smile. Seemed he’d been paying close attention to his wife’s expertise in navigating three tricky teenagers after all.

“Don’t you look smashing, love! Hey, Nico, you could learn a lesson or two from Zo? on smartening yourself up.”

Rich, coming from a guy with nothing in his wardrobe except tatty jeans and an array of identical fisherman’s jerseys. “Speak for yourself!”

“ And she’s got somewhere to be on a Saturday night! Not like you, you sad loser.”

Cheeky bugger. Zo?’s stiff shoulders eased. She smoothed down her skirt and rolled her eyes at him. My dad’s foot pressed down on mine with intent. Getting the hint, I took up the baton.

“You scrub up well, Zo?. But honestly, you didn’t need to go to all that effort for us two.”

“God, you’re so original, Nico.”

“Not going to tell us who the lucky fella is, though,” teased my dad, playing along.

“Or girl,” I interjected. éti and Flor would have been proud of me.

“OMG, you know I’m just meeting Sabine and Isabelle and bunch of friends.”

Blushing hard, she shot us both a reproving stare straight out of her mother’s repertoire, bringing an unexpected pang to my chest.

From the way his voice cracked, my dad hadn’t missed it either. “Have you got enough money, love?”

“Yeah.”

Dad fished a twenty euro note out of his pocket anyway and handed it over. “Just in case.”

“Have you got plenty of charge on your phone?” I added.

“Yes, of course! I’m seventeen, not ten! Stop fussing.”

“If you need a lift home, or you’ve had enough of everyone, give us a call,” said my dad. “Me or Nico will come and get you.” He indicated to his beer bottle. “I’m not having another one.”

She tottered from the house, stopping to switch on the cheerful porch light as she breezed past.

As luck would have it, the match had started, saving either of us from speaking for a few minutes. Which was just as well because the thing with the bloody light had us both struggling. Not much had happened in the soccer, both teams sizing up the other. éti made a couple of passes, nothing extraordinary, but thrilling to me, nonetheless.

Blowing out a long breath, my dad rubbed his face. “Christ, she’s the spit of your mother at that age. I hope she’ll be all right.” He checked the time. No more than ten minutes had gone by. I’d been thinking the same.

“I’m sure she will,” I reassured. “It’ll do her good, going out.”

“I never used to fuss about her like this.” He stared fixedly at the telly. “I had an appointment with that counsellor woman in the week, the one your mate Charles recommended. I’ve seen her twice now. She said worrying about everyone more than usual was normal after a… a bereavement.”

Ah . That explained a couple of things. If I made a list of the least likely people to agree to see a counsellor, my dad would top it. But somehow, my mum’s sister and Charles had persuaded him. And the early results were promising, even if the experimental leg pat made us both uncomfortable.

“She sounds like she knows what she’s talking about,” I said cautiously.

“Yeah. I’m going again this week.”

With the shadow boxing out the way, both on the sofa and on the telly, we focused on the soccer for a while, which was hotting up. Against the run of play, a nippy City midfielder sprinted for the penalty box, unanticipated by his teammates. Meyer, the hefty German playing at left back for PSG, sliced across him. With no one to pass to and running out of options, the City player tried a dummy, failed, lost possession then swallow-dived to the ground like he was auditioning for a role in Swan Lake. The referee’s arm shot up, and so did my dad out of his chair.

“No way was that a penalty! He scarcely breathed on him, ref!”

Groans and boos from the PSG fans echoed around the stadium, clashing with the raucous cheers from the English supporters. Despite an angry cluster of PSG players circling him—éti trying to calm a couple of the feistier young ones—the ref pointed to the spot. A second later, amid a chorus of boos, the video assist referee signalled his concordance with the decision.

“I don’t know what bloody game that referee’s watching,” grumbled my dad as the City captain stepped forward to take the penalty, “But it ain’t the same one as me. He needs his bloody eyes testing.”

In the goalmouth, Fabien stretched himself wide, doing everything in his power to put the player off his stride. But even the best goalkeepers in the world only had a ten to fifteen percent chance of saving a penalty kick from a topflight striker. He read the player and dived the right way, but the City striker coolly shot the ball past him and into the back of the net.

Still bitching, my dad slumped down.

“Plenty of time,” I reminded him. “The early goal might wake them up a bit.”

Unfortunately, it woke City up, too. For the next nail-biting twenty minutes, PSG couldn’t get the ball out of their own side. It took until the stroke of half time before Ruiz equalised, his lightning reflexes intercepting a loose back heel from one of the City defenders. Thank fuck. One apiece as the players trudged into the dressing room—PSG could easily have been three or four down.

“Salvador needs to pull his finger out,” commented my dad, cutting himself a wedge of Port Salut. Correcting the pronouns was on the tip of my tongue; I bit it back.

“Salvador’s up for it,” I said, smiling to myself. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Well, we need him to turn on the magic, and pretty fast,” he chuntered around a mouthful of cheese. “I don’t care if he’s got two defenders on his heels. I want to see those quick feet earning their money.”

Those quick feet had been cradled in my lap a week ago, having their priceless soles massaged while their owner ran through recordings of every single City game stretching back over the last six months, homing in on the defenders and the goalkeeper. If they had a weakness, a tell, a favoured move, then she’d memorised it. My lover would seize an opportunity when it presented itself.

She kept us on tenterhooks until the eighty-third minute, though. Until my dad was screaming profanities at the telly, the baguette on his plate reduced to a pile of crumbs. Until the commentors discussed extra time substitutions, mooting the possibility of the dreaded penalty shootout, and even debating whether PSG relied too heavily on my lover. Perhaps the time had come to bring in another, bigger, more aggressive centre forward alongside her.

But then came the goal. And what a goal. One that made all that pessimistic shit talk evaporate in the time it took the love of my life to spot her weary opposing defender’s minor error and exploit it. It defied logic. A sloppy diagonal ball from Dubois at an awkward angle was an innocuous start, but then éti controlled it on her chest before she ran with it at full speed. The first defender was left in her wake like a tailor’s dummy; the second player she skipped around for fun. But, running out of pitch, if she took another step, the third defender would clear the ball. Surely, she’d backed herself into a hole, hadn’t she? Because with a ball stuck on your left foot, how did you go back with that same leg and tap the ball in the air, to make sure the third guy could not touch it? And then maintain sufficient balance to hoof it into the back of the net?

Pundits would be asking themselves that question for many years to come. But only I would hear the answer. My lover would talk me through it with a slo-mo replay in the privacy of her own living room.

“Shit!” My dad leapt up. “Did you see that? Quick, let’s watch it again on the replay! Ah merde! Check out that City defender! He can’t fucking believe it!”

The famous chip-toothed grin beamed around the globe before éti tore away from the goal, towards her teammates, fist pumping the air, swallowed up under a host of loose-limbed bodies. The crowd roared. As PSG and the fans celebrated, the telly cut to a replay and then another, slowed down from a different angle and with a famous ex-footballer explaining just how incredible the goal was, in case we somehow failed to notice the first time.

My dad shook his head, like rattling his brains around might help him make sense of it. “Salvador was going down! He fucking smashed it into the top corner while almost falling over! Fucking incredible! How the hell did he stay on his feet?”

The pile-on was nowhere near finished. I wanted to reach into the screen and pluck my girlfriend out from amongst those hefty men, crush her against my chest, bury my face in her curls, and scream to the world she was mine. And then tell my dad to stop getting her pronouns wrong.

Instead, I took a fortifying swig of beer and shrugged as casually as someone could when their heart threatened to burst.

“Practise, I guess.” With smooth grey pebbles and rotten pinecones, with her hand held tight in her boyfriend’s and her joyous kisses on his lips. When all the world was put on pause, when she dribbled lemon juice down her chin and tilted her pretty face to the sun.

“He should have tripped! How the hell did he flick it from one foot to the other without landing flat on his face?”

“Salvador never falls, Dad. You should know that by now. Staggers maybe, but never falls.”

The goal celebration in front of the travelling PSG fans went on and on, so much that the referee issued éti and Fabien a yellow card each, not that they gave a stuff. With no guardian angel watching in the crowd tonight, when éti finally freed herself from the pile, she did the next best thing, blowing him kisses into the camera and making heart shapes with her hands. I was blushing from a thousand kilometres away, as if 400 million viewers sensed those were directed at me. As if, any second, my dad would turn around, see my red face, and put two and two together.

“Quick! See if you can spot Max,” he urged, as the camera panned to the rows of cheering fans lining the rows above the PSG dugout. “His tickets were for the third row back. And he’s wearing his PSG scarf.”

As we studied an ocean of blue-and-red scarves, I snorted with laughter. “That doesn’t narrow it down!”

“Is your girlfriend there tonight?”

“Um… yeah.” You’ve spent the last five minutes telling me how she’s so much better than Neymar. She would wholeheartedly concur.

“Lucky lady. Max is a lucky bugger too. What a night to remember.”

“Yes, they’ll both be enjoying it for sure.”

“Will you point her out if the cameras swing up to the area around the players dugout again?”

“Sure, will do.”

He side-eyed me as the celebrations began to wind down, helping himself to more cheese. “I’m not used to you seeing someone more than once. Did you even know how to behave on your second date, Nico?”

What the fuck? Bereavement clearly hadn’t robbed him of his ability to take the piss. “I can’t have been too terrible; she’s put up with me over the last few months. And I haven’t exactly been at my best.”

“Got yourself a good one, by the sound of things, then.”

“I have.”

Throwing the fans a final wave, éti jogged back into position to play out the closing minutes of the match. Most of her hair had escaped her band, and she was still grinning from ear to ear. I knew that tousled, flushed expression well. Whenever she stayed on the island, I woke to it every morning. “No complaints from me. She’s great.”

“Well, just make sure you look after her. Don’t go taking her for granted.”

What was this? Twenty questions? “Um… is this relationship advice part of the counselling service too?”

“No, not really.” Shaking his head, he patted my knee again. It felt weird. I contemplated moving to the armchair. “I’m just checking you’re doing it right, son. When you’ve got a good one, you hold on to them. Never know how long you’ll have together.”

Ah merde. His voice broke on the last part, eyes brimming with tears. How swiftly in the aftermath of bereavement the pendulum of joy could swing to sadness. I hadn’t spotted it on the way down, and neither had he until it was upon us. We’d had ages to get used to my mum’s terminal cancer, but even a very drawn-out death was sudden at the end. Like an earthquake, there one minute, gone the next. But the aftershocks? They hung around a while, and we never knew when they would hit.

I stayed on the sofa. “We look after each other, Dad. I want you to meet her soon. She’s been… she’s been great through all of… everything.”

Everything . Another handy euphemism as we struggled to say the words out loud. Nevertheless, everything encompassed them. He made a noise somewhere between a sniff and a chuckle, then blew out his cheeks. “Didn’t think I had any crying left in me. Seeing Zo? tonight, so much like her, set me off.”

Aware we were having the first meaningful chat alone since my mum’s death, I grabbed him some tissues from the bathroom. “I don’t know what to do with myself, half the time,” he said on my return. “I keep turning around wanting to tell her something, and she’s not there.”

The irony of grief in a nutshell: the person he most needed for comfort was the person no longer able to offer it. “I know, Dad. But you’re doing great. Really great.” It was my turn to give him a knee pat, and we sat in silence, both watching the screen and the jubilant celebrations as the referee blew the final whistle but seeing nothing.

As he finished crying, I waited him out and then stayed quiet for a little longer as he sat in that grey emotionless limbo between feeling wrecked and pulling yourself together. On the screen, two stories played out: one jubilant team dancing the conga in front of the home fans, the other sunk to their knees, heads down.

“Nice of you to give Max your tickets. And I never said at the time, but thank you for moving back in and staying around to help. It meant a lot to me and your mother. I know you’ll probably want to head out again soon.”

“Yes, but I won’t go far. My girlfriend has asked me to move into her place here on the island. It’s less than a mile from the farm, off the La Couarde road, you know, one of the places in amongst the pines.”

“Very posh! Hopefully I’ll get a glimpse of her in a minute. The award presentation will be just above the players dugout.”

Putain. Now was as good a time as any, wasn’t it? Seeing as we were being touchy feely and all. And if not now, when? As éti broke away from her teammates to shake hands with an inconsolable City player, I took a fortifying breath and pointed at the screen.

“There she is.”

“Where? Where? Pause the telly.”

“I don’t need to. You know what she looks like.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do, actually. It’s… um… listen, Dad. She’s… she’s étienne Salvador, although her correct name is éti.”

In a million years I could not have devised a better sequence of words to render him speechless. For the shortest sliver of time, his grief took second place.

“Remember that woman we spotted drunk on the beach that morning? Sitting in the sea, and I went and helped her safely home? That was her. That was éti Salvador. Hardly anyone knows, but when she’s not hiding her true self, when she’s in private, éti is a trans woman.”

The players had begun lining up to receive the trophy, not that I was watching. My dad’s facial contortions were far more amusing. “So, I’m going to be living at her place, a mile up the beach,” I added, as if that explained everything. “She won’t be there constantly, obviously—she’ll be splitting herself between here and Paris. And for what it’s worth, she’s more than great. She’s the love of my life.”

Ten minutes later, and so astonished, he still had nothing to say. I didn’t think I’d ever cut myself a piece of Port Salut cheese again without remembering this profound moment. On the screen, pundits were endlessly marvelling over the goal. Even the taciturn Man City manager begrudgingly admitted he’d seen nothing like it. Yet, for all my dad noticed, I could have switched to the cookery programme on the other channel.

And then éti was thrust in front of the camera, squashed in between Ruiz and Fabien, still breathless and swigging from a water bottle. As she praised the excellent performances of the coaches, the managers, her teammates, and the fans, my dad’s head swivelled from the screen to me and then back to the screen. After she’d finished, Fabien threw his great long arm around her and kissed the top of her head. Teasing about how she’d forgotten to mention her own exhilarating performance, Ruiz slung his arm about her from the other side, and kissed her too, on the cheek.

Somehow, that roused my dad from his stupor, and he gave me a nudge. “Are you happy, Nico, with these other blokes being quite so familiar with your girlfriend?” He pointed his finger at Ruiz. “Eff off, mate. She’s taken!”

As much as éti was desperate to ship out of Paris for six glorious weeks off, winning the Champion’s League came with a host of media commitments. So her slender arms plunging through billows of steam to wrap around my waist came as a wonderful surprise. Even if I narrowly missed being scalded while I processed sacks of shellfish through the oyster kettle.

“Let me turn this thing off, connard,” I shouted over the noise, banging my fist down on the bright red button. “You’re going to kill us both!”

Did my bulky yellow oilskins stink? Probably. Were we surrounded by bags of unwashed oysters, clanking machinery, and a choking cloud of foul-smelling steam? Absolument. But did the woman clad in a flowery sundress and spangly gold trainers, moulding her firm body to mine like we were two halves of a perfect whole, give a flying fuck?

“What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you until much later!”

This afternoon marked a special event, hosting our first-ever social gathering together. A barbecue at éti’s. For my dad, Max, and Zo?. So they could meet her properly. Florian and Charles were coming too. For the last few days (and nights), she had agonised over the food, her clothes, the garden, the pool temperature, the weather, our…

“Couldn’t wait. Missed you so much, Nico. So, so much. Like I couldn’t breathe.”

Our tongues mated as if never parting again. At last, she’d mastered talking and kissing. Not breaking contact, not even for a second, I found myself walked backwards out of the steam and pushed against one of the shed doors.

“Six weeks, Nico,” she panted, nimbly unzipping my jacket. “Six weeks. Of this, of us.”

Her clean warm hands roamed across my sweaty chest as my filthy ones cupped the twin pert mounds of her arse, my dick on its way to growing as hard as the seashells scattered at my feet. Putain , how I wanted her, like, all the time. While she ground into me, heat blazed over every inch of my skin, my legs melting like chocolate. Her fingers slipped below my waistband and…

And yeah. That awkward moment when you’re making out with the girlfriend you haven’t seen for six days, fifteen hours, and twenty-two minutes and have forgotten you’re in a relatively public place. And hoping you don’t come in your trousers but with a feeling you actually just might, because you’ve missed her so much, even though you’re almost thirty and old enough to know better. And, oh yeah, your dad and younger brother have been watching with amused interest for, like, over a minute.

I had forgotten the sound my dad made when he belly-laughed. Raw and broad and so fucking joyful that, for a second, I forgot I should be drenched in embarrassment. For the sheer pleasure of the kissing and the sound of his laughter, I carried on kissing my girl.

“We’ve got company,” I murmured into her mouth.

“I know. This was, um… not how I had planned on introducing myself. If we carry on, will they go away?”

Highly unlikely.

“End-to-end stuff this, isn’t it?” said my dad to Max. “Nico’s got a silky touch.”

Fucker. éti snorted into my shoulder.

“Might have to show him a yellow card if his balls stray into the technical area, though,” agreed Max. “Needs a bit of work on his set pieces, too. He could… “

“All right, all right, enough. éti, my dad is blocking your escape route. And he’s desperate to meet you.”

As éti slowly turned around, a grin pulled at my dad’s mouth. Not how I’d envisaged presenting her to the family either, but if any of us learned one thing in the last six months, what we’d planned wasn’t always what life had planned for us.

“éti, meet my dad, Stefan. Dad, this is éti Salvador. She’s even better than Neymar. At everything.”

“What did you say to Max? When you pulled him closer and whispered in his ear? He’s already texted me twice to see if everyone can come over sooner.”

We were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to a salad. I didn’t think éti’s kitchen had ever witnessed so much food—in her anxiety to make everything perfect, she’d catered for an entire football team.

“Nothing much. He thanked me for the ringside seats to the match, and I thanked him for not giving away my secrets. And for keeping an eye on you when I’m not around.”

“Hah! That’s a joke! I bloody traipse the beaches and pubs hunting him down half the time! Making sure he’s not decided to wade into the sea, never to return!”

“I know, I know,” she said, chuckling. “Calm down, angel.” She tapped the side of her head. “But it’s team psychology, non? Works a treat with the younger players when they join PSG. They need to feel important and useful. They have big egos because they have been the best at their lesser club, and then, overnight, they become a nobody at PSG, scrabbling for a place in the squad. We have to make them believe they're special until they mature into themselves and find their feet. A little like being the younger brother of a man who runs an oyster farm, has all the ladies dangling, and the face of the devil and the body of a revolutionary hero.”

“Huh. Now you’re flattering me.”

She tapped my cheek. “Yes, I am. But if someone he admires, like me, gives someone like your unhappy younger brother an important job they believe only they are in a position to carry out, they think better about themselves. They hold their heads a little higher. Young men’s egos do not like to be flattened.”

“Waouh .” Fuck, her favourite expression was catching. éti pressed a finger to my mouth.

“You are very hot when you say that. Your lips go all pouty, Nico. Do it more.”

“No. Absolument, non . And what did you say to my dad? Because he had a stupid smile on his face afterwards, too.”

éti’s face softened. “I told him I wished I’d been around sooner so I could have met his wonderful wife. And that I’m envious of the happy home they created together for their children and that I’d be humbled to become a part of it. Do you think that was okay?”

A warm flush of pride suffused me. Pride in my girlfriend, my heritage, and for the life we were creating together. Maybe not today or tomorrow or the day after, but one day in the future, my family was going to be okay.

“There is only Zo? left to meet. And you will, any second now. Look.”

Florian led my family through the little beach gate and into the garden. éti wiped her hands and patted down her hair. She had been shy about my sister. “What if she doesn’t like me?”

“She will. You’re impossible not to like. And she’ll be glad of some female company.”

“Yes, but not with someone like me. She’s so cool—look at her! Mon dieu, maybe I should change into something else. I feel so old and frumpy!”

She plucked at her flowing dress; the red one she’d worn for our first-ever picnic on the beach. It was my favourite out of all her creations, showing off her toned arms and flat belly. “You’re beautiful, my sweet. Stop fretting.”

There was no denying my sister looked pretty good too. Spoiling Zo? and giving her little treats wouldn’t ever soften the loss of her mother, but if my dad could bring a tiny bit of pleasure to his daughter’s life, then he’d do it. And for Zo?, that meant clothes and makeup. He’d splurged and pampered and indulged, and today’s ensemble included a pair of shiny black DMs, a new patchwork clutch bag type thing, and a pair of sunglasses that hadn’t come off the ten-euro rack at the tabac.

“You didn’t tell me how pretty she was, either! La vache , now I’m even more nervous!”

Our guests halted as Charles took a bottle of white wine from my dad and placed it in the cooler. Max pointed at the pool pump, discussing it in-depth with Florian. A little lost, Zo? hung off the back of the group, nervously twisting her hair as she absorbed her fancy surroundings. Slipping an arm around my girlfriend’s waist, I planted a soft kiss in her curls. “It’s just armour. Underneath all that, she’s more anxious than you.”

“You think so?” éti shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Because right now, I feel like I’m stepping up to take a winning penalty in a world cup final.”

“Don’t be silly. She doesn’t bite.” Not literally, anyhow. “And you never miss penalties, éti.”

“I know, but I… éti Salvador is about to make her first ever girlfriend, and she doesn’t want to fuck it up.”

Some sunny afternoons lived in your memory forever. As dusk fell, this one would be carefully folded up inside too, placed on top of dozens of others already stored there, memories that included my mother. Even though not with us in person, I felt her presence, in the way my dad went quiet, his gaze turning to the pine trees edging éti’s garden and to the ocean glimpses beyond. In the tiered seafood platter Max had painstakingly prepared on my mum’s favourite china tableware. In Zo?’s laugh, a little husky, a little self-conscious, and a perfect echo of my mum’s.

éti’s nerves didn’t last long. After all, she was PSG’s number ten; she’d faced down critics baying for blood, frustrated defenders, and CEOs of multinational conglomerates all seeking a piece of her. A seventeen-year-old girl should pose no problem whatsoever, even if said seventeen-year-old had several years more of experience navigating female friendships. They skirted each other at first, éti fussing around my sister like she was made of glass, and Zo? still overawed by my girlfriend’s obvious wealth and status. But, as the wine was passed around and our group split into smaller ones, they both relaxed.

Us men all but forgotten, we talked soccer and beer and whether an upgraded air conditioning unit for the oyster sheds was worth the outlay. “It’s going to be nice to have another woman in the family,” observed my dad. We were flipping the last of the sausages on the barbecue—heaven knew who for, because we were all stuffed to the gills. At the table by the pool, with their heads together, éti smiled at my sister, easing the fat diamond from her finger, letting Zo? try it for size.

“She won’t be here much when the soccer season restarts.”

“And nor should she be! We’re going to win everything next year too!”

Not once had my dad fucked up éti’s pronouns. And if a laggardly old fart like him could get it right, then no one had an excuse. My mum would have been so proud of him.

Zo? tapped on her phone, no doubt swiping through photos, memes, TikTok videos and fuck knows what teenage girls found amusing. My éti lapped it up. Taking out my own phone, I surreptitiously snapped a pic of them both together to show éti later. My Eloise amongst a thousand Eloises.

Later that evening, when everyone had gone, we strolled to the beach for a sunset picnic. éti’s bottomless belly needed more filling. We found our favourite sheltered spot, not too far from where I first hooked my mermaid out of the water. Aside from a man and a boy in the distance, picking over low tide for whelks, we had the beach to ourselves; few tourists ever bothered to traipse this far.

Laying out a blanket, I made myself comfortable against a smooth rock, then scooted éti back into the triangle of my spread legs. With my arms wrapped around, I indulged, kissing my favourite part of her neck.

A scattering of low clouds drifted across the horizon; a parade of drowsy elephants chivvied along by the light island winds. My mum had lived for summer evenings like this. She would drag my dad out for a meander along the shore to fill his pockets with pretty shells. Even though he’d spent all bloody day working there, he’d always tag along. Tonight’s ripening sunset was shaping up to be a good one. Wherever she was, I hoped she could admire it.

“Zo? is a sweetie, Nico. She’s going to show me a few shadowing tricks to soften my jawline.”

éti’s sharp jawline was pretty damned perfect, but her opinion mattered the most. “You should see her stumbling out of bed at seven in the morning. Less sweet, I assure you.”

“She adores you.”

“Sometimes she has a peculiar way of expressing it.”

éti giggled. “Funny, because she said exactly the same about you. And you’re not so clever first thing either.”

“If you can imagine her about thirty-five years older, she’s what my mum looked like.”

“I know. She showed me some photos. She seems to be coming to terms with everything very well. Zo?’s strong. Like you.”

I pressed my lips to her warm nape again. “I’m only this strong because I have you. But I think you’re right, Zo? will be fine. Max worries me a bit more.”

éti nodded. “He’s so quiet, isn’t he? Is it because of me?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I frowned, trying to come up with the right words to describe my complicated brother. “He’s always been that way. Always quiet. As a toddler, he hardly spoke. Then, when he was around ten, he stopped speaking altogether for a few months. Mum and Dad found out he was being bullied at school. When that ended, bit by bit, he began chattering again. Once Mum became ill, he quieted, not totally like before, but yeah, still pretty bad. He’s still almost silent around strangers. Stress makes it worse.”

“There’s a name for it, isn’t there?”

“When he was a kid, they called it selective mutism. An anxiety thing, apparently. He’ll be much more communicative when he gets to know you.”

“Have you asked him how he’s feeling?”

“My dad does regularly. Max says he’s fine.”

To say my dad had embraced counselling was like saying the sea was wet. His alcohol consumption had halved, his interest in his children doubled, and this week, he’d begun telling me stories about my mum with fondness, not tears.

“He even persuaded Max to come along to one of his counselling sessions, but it was like drawing blood from a stone. Max was embarrassed by the whole thing. He’s quite shy. And he’s not a child anymore. We can’t drag him along if he doesn’t want to go.”

“Perhaps he needs time.”

“Time is in great abundance on this island.” My gaze travelled along the beach towards the lighthouse, taking in a crop of jagged rocks and a tumbledown old stone rampart which, to my shame, I’d once graffitied. A view no different from a hundred years ago.

“I hope I made an okay impression on your dad.”

“You made a great impression, my sweet. Meeting you did him good. I didn’t think I’d ever hear him joke or laugh again.”

“He’s lost his forever. We can’t imagine how that feels.”

“No, we can’t.”

Some evenings, our stretch of ocean grumbled grey and angry, ready to fling a man into its briny waves at the slightest provocation. On others, like tonight, with the sun’s reflection dancing across the surface so brightly I had to squint, I believed anything was possible. That unimaginable treasures, like mermaids, hid just under the surface.

“On days like today, I feel like she’s still with us.”

“I hope your dad feels like that, too.” éti tilted her face up to the day’s last hurrah of sunshine. “Are we going to be forever, Nico?”

“Is that what you want?”

She let out a long breath, savouring it. “It’s everything I want.”

Forever with éti. My heart swelled. That sounded like an awfully big adventure. I was more than ready.

“I know you’ll never follow me to Paris, Nico. And I’ll never ask you to. I don’t want you there. You belong here.”

With those few reassuring words, the only dust mote of doubt lingering over our love was swept away. “Then forever sounds marvellous to me.”

She twisted so our mouths could meet. Like our very first kiss, she tasted of joy and sunshine, and everything good in between. I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone more than I loved her then.

“It does, doesn’t it? And this island will be my permanent home too, one day, when I retire. I’d already decided that before I ever met you.”

We traded another kiss. “It’s strange talking about retiring when neither of us are even thirty.”

“I’ve become used to it.” She gave a rueful laugh. “People think being a high-ranking professional footballer is so cool and exciting. Travelling the world, visiting exotic destinations, and meeting more famous people. In reality, we train endlessly, watch video after video of other teams playing less well than us, and then sit around a dressing room smelling of stinky socks and discussing who has the best financial advisor and where to invest our ill-gotten gains. Or Ruiz’s next tattoo. But I’m not planning on retiring yet. I’m in my footballing prime; there are still things I want to achieve.”

Mon dieu, she’d achieved everything. “We can make driving up and down the A10 work for a few years.”

“We can. And we will.”

Even the boy and his dad left the beach now, taking their buckets of shellfish treasure with them. éti wiggled her toes in the fine sand, unable to resist the temptation to flick a couple of tiny pebbles up into the air.

“Your dad was just kidding about Mbappé, right? I’m much quicker on the ball.”

“You’ll have to get used to him. He’s a total windup merchant.”

I reached around her for the cool box and my shucking knife. By now, she’d gathered quite a collection of oysters shells at the apartment in Paris. At the rate she scoffed them, she’d be needing a bigger coffee table. “Time to eat.”

“Not yet. I’ve got something to show you first. I’ve been keeping it secret all afternoon.”

“That must have been an enormous challenge for you.” Like sacks of confetti, after a period apart, she hurled her latest news at me within seconds of reuniting.

She giggled. “You wouldn’t believe.”

This evening, she’d changed into a floral blouse with little pink roses dotted across the front, like loops of a necklace. She’d made it herself, which explained the wonky collar. “Promise you won’t laugh.”

With another huff of laughter, she unfastened the buttons, exposing her matching pink bra. She eased the shirt off her left shoulder, taking the slim bra strap with it.

Putain, my sweet girl had gone and got herself a tattoo.

“What do you think? Too small? Too big? Should I have chosen brighter colours? I planned the design weeks ago. Then changed my mind, like, a million times. I drove Fabien mad.”

With my fingertip, I traced the outline. A hint of redness still clung to the edges. éti craned her neck, trying to examine it herself.

“He’s ten days old. I had him done after the Monaco afternoon match. My agent arranged for a guy to come over to the apartment with his kit. Took five hours! Can you believe he made me lie still for five hours! Almost killed me.”

I bet. She would have wriggled like crazy and not stopped talking. The poor tattooist deserved a Champion’s League medal himself for not screwing it up.

“How did you choose which artist? You don’t know anything about tattoos.”

She snorted with laughter. “?a alors, Nico! Have you seen the amount of ink in the PSG dressing room? I mentioned to Ruiz I was thinking about getting one, and within five seconds, the whole team leapt up to add their centime’s worth! The biggest team-bonding exercise ever! I should do something like that more often!”

Maybe a little warily, her eyes met mine. “So? What do you think?”

I dropped my gaze to her pale shoulder, where a stubborn-faced angel stared back. Not plump and cherubic, like most angel designs, nor was he a religious, Jesus-like figure. Nonetheless, the tattooist her teammates selected for her knew his stuff; his artistry shone through. In the ordinary clothes, for instance—jeans and a plain T-shirt hanging loosely from a lean man’s body. And the tiny designs covering the angel’s long rangy arms, tattoos within a tattoo. The strands of the guy’s hair, wind-swept and messy. His eyes, dark, hooded, and staring straight at you. The serious line of his smile.

The angel’s wings were even more modest. Two sweeping misshapen curves, with the inked infill grey and uneven. Crude, to be honest, compared to the delicacy of the rest, unless you knew what they represented. My eyes pricked with tears—they’d learned how to do that a lot over the last few weeks.

“It’s you, Nico,” éti said. “My guardian angel, with oyster-shell wings.”

Choked, I struggled to get the words out. “I’m no angel.”

“Yes, you are. You rescued me from the sea, from my misery, from a sad secret hidden behind cardboard étienne. And I will have you with me everywhere now, even when I am pretending to be étienne in Paris, and you at home waiting for me.”

She shifted, smoothing her fingers over the angel’s face. My face. “Not long after we met, you said your tattoos were a timeline of your life. Do you remember? And I said I didn’t have any because I hadn’t found anything important enough imprint on my body forever. But now I do. Because éti’s timeline started when I met you.”

We got around to eating the oysters, but a lot of kissing happened first. If we hadn’t been on the beach, the kissing would have led to more because my woman dressed in her cutesy flowery blouse was sexy as hell. These days, my sex drive had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with her.

Afterwards, as always, éti piled the empty shells on the blanket, to wash clean, then take back to Paris. With the last one, she rubbed her thumb back and forth along the smooth mother-of-pearl lining the empty insides, then tipped the shell this way and that, catching the iridescence in the sun’s dying rays. “So velvety,” she observed. “You’d never guess the inside of the shell was as magical as this from the outside, would you? Or that something as ugly could ever hold an object as beautiful as a pearl.”

“No,” I agreed. Oysters were truly one of the ocean’s remarkable gifts. Like éti herself, my mermaid treasure. “Do you know how natural pearls are made?”

Taking the shell from her, I studied it. “They are part of an oyster’s defence mechanism. Mussels can make them too. A tiny grain of sand or a food particle squeezes into the shell, and the oyster can’t repel it. So, it responds by coating the invader in layers and layers of this shiny hard stuff, the nacre, trapping it there. Binding it tight so it can’t do any damage. All oysters have the ability, although most pearls made into jewellery are cultured. Finding them in nature is exceedingly rare.”

Taking the shell from my hand, she pressed it to her lips, because she was ridiculous like that, then returned it to the pile. Cuddling back into me, she rested her head on my shoulder. “Have you ever found any pearls, Nico?”

In a few minutes, the dying sun would dip beyond the horizon. The low clouds had a lit-cigarette edge to them now, the burning embers of another hot day. The same sunset the world over, the same that éti, in her different life, saw in Paris. I’d try to remember that when she was away, and I was here. Burying my nose in her curls, I breathed her in.

“Just one, my sweetheart.”

Predictably, for the rest of the evening, she analysed the tattoo to death. Then, in her own inimitable style, éti dropped her next bombshell. A much bigger one. Early in the morning, while I was trying to embrace sleep a little longer.

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. This version 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 Zo? 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 man?na. 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 no might about 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 what anyone 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 said I’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.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But I won’t be doing it because I hate myself. I’ll be doing it because I love myself and deserve to be happy. It’s not something I’ve suddenly decided overnight.”

I knew that already. éti must have pictured how coming out would be ever since she’d risen to fame and accepted the challenges of it. She gave me the slow smile, the chipped one, leaving me incapable of anything except smiling back. My hand tracked down to her fingers, and I brought them up to my mouth, kissing them one at a time.

“Then if that’s what you want, my love, we’ll do it. I’ll be by your side the whole journey. Do you think it will be the end of your career?”

She tilted her head to one side. “I hope not. And no, I don’t. Why should it? I’ll still be Salvador, PSG’s number ten, the best player the world has ever seen.” She threw me a naughty smile. “I want to carry on being PSG’s number ten. But I want to outwardly reflect who I am on the inside at the same time. Like every other fucking player on the pitch is allowed to.”

“Will your teammates be supportive?”

“Yes, one hundred percent,” she said with confidence. “I know my dressing room. Strong players, talent, and dancing feet do not win championships alone. Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, even Salvador, they do not win championships alone. Championships are won by teams that stick together. And we are a great one.”

“You are still going to receive a lot of hatred. Not only from fans and the press. Maybe from people who make money from you, too.”

éti gave a half-hearted shrug. “The club investors will still find my goal-scoring ability a valuable commodity. And if they don’t, then another big club will. Although getting rid of me will be expensive. I have two years left on my contract.”

“And the advertising sponsors?”

“ Pffft . They can fuck off if they want. I have enough money to last ten lifetimes.”

Stuffing éti back inside is hard. And the more she was let out, the harder it became. I’d known the day would come. I drank my coffee, embracing the warmth trickling down my gullet. Putain, Nico La Forge was about to become arm candy for one of the most famous soccer stars ever to kick a ball.

Florian would piss himself laughing.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she urged. “I’m not a mind reader. If you don’t want to be a part of it, then say so. I could come out without you, if I had to. I would totally understand if you wanted to stay anonymous. It’s asking a lot.”

She was a better mind reader than she knew. I cupped her dear, worried face in my hand. Clear of makeup with a hint of stubble scratching under my thumb. These days, we shaved side by side. Regardless, the face staring back at me still belonged to éti Salvador, not étienne. And she was ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Whether the world was ready for her was another thing altogether. “You’re asking a proud boyfriend to turn up at his girlfriend’s awards night. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. But I am going to need to invest in a decent suit.”

The night before the Ballon d’Or, we travelled up to Paris together, a journey I would have to get used to. But what were a few hours in the car and a few years spread between two homes when we had forever together? If the last three months of our long-distance relationship had taught me anything, her absence sharpened her presence.

Our romantic evening in the city of love kicked off with a few Zoom calls, one a hell of a lot easier than the others.

“?a alors , Fabien! Don’t you two look adorable!” Clapping her hands together, éti beamed into the computer, sighing with joy. Cradling a tiny baby against his broad chest, the PSG captain and France’s number-one goalkeeper threw us a casual wave.

“Shhh! You’ll wake him, and then I’ll be in all sorts of trouble!”

éti cooed at the bundle of blankets as if she was trying to work out how to climb into the computer and snatch him up. Lack of ovaries be damned; I recognised a broody woman when I saw one. Ah, merde .

Fabien gave a rumbling laugh, jiggling the sleeping baby and indicating between the two of us. “You two are looking pretty adorable yourselves!”

Yep, my arm was around éti’s, and her hand was in my lap.

“Is this what you phoned to tell me? Because I kind of joined the dots anyhow. And it’s fantastic news.”

“Well, yes, sort of,” éti began, but he cut her off.

“Listen; before I forget, again , and the missus gives me a bollocking, I’m supposed to be asking you if you’ll be godfather to this one.” He dipped his chin to admire his newest son. “Please say yes. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask Ruiz, and he’ll be teaching him Spanish swear words before he’s out of nappies.”

“Mmm…” éti hawed, and the damp hand in mine clenched tighter. “Would it be so terrible if your boy’s first word is joder ? Or mierda ? Because I… um… ah merde . How can I say this?”

Fanning her face with her hand, éti took a couple of deep breaths. “Fabien, I might be more comfortable being… can I… um… is the role of god mother still vacant? You know, ah… Aunt éti? Um… going forward, like from tomorrow night? Because I… I phoned to tell you I’m a trans woman and my pronouns are she/her and now I’m going to squint at the screen so I can’t actually see your response and actually, no, I can still see you out of the corner of my eye so I’m going to say bye-bye and run away because I’m scared you won’t be my friend anymore, and if you don’t like me as éti then none of the team will either and this all of a sudden seems like a really bad idea and I might as well resign now. Bye!”

I didn’t possess dancing feet or an eye for goal, but my reflexes weren’t too shabby. I beat éti to the laptop, though I did have an unfair advantage, seeing as my hands weren’t shielding my eyes. “Hold on one second,” I said to Fabien before peeling éti’s hands from her face. Her eyes remained clamped shut.

“éti, my love? You’re being absurd.”

“He’s hung up, hasn’t he? Or he’s hurling abuse at me across the ether. La la la , I’m not listening, Nico. I’m not listening. Oh God, I should never have decided to do this. I should just carry on pretending to be étienne. It would only be for another four or five years, six at the most.”

Fabien had neither hung up nor dropped the baby. He did pass him over to his wife, though, then leaned forward as he waited patiently for the pantomime to finish playing out at our end.

“Love, listen to me. He hasn’t hung up, and he isn’t shouting. If you opened your eyes, you’d see him smiling at you. He’s going to be fine about it. And very supportive. Trust me, I’ve met the bloke.”

“We could just pretend it was a big joke, Nico. Why don’t we do that?”

“Hey, God mother éti!” hollered Fabien. “Listen to your boyfriend! Open your damned eyes and talk to your best mate! Otherwise, I’m going to come over with Godfather Ruiz and sort you out.”

With one eye half open, éti peeked at the screen. “You still… still want me to be a godmother? Even though I’m… er… trans?”

“Of course I do. Now open your bloody eyes so I can see them properly!” As éti cautiously peered up at him, Fabien stared into the camera. “Look at you, all dressed up so pretty! And you’ve got some smudgy crap on your eyelids too!”

“Gel eyeliner,” I murmured. Seemed me and Fabien had attended the same charm school.

“Yes. I have. I have done for a while, years, but not… ah… not in public. Dresses, too. Are you sure you’re okay with all this?”

“Jeez, Salvador! I’m your best mate. You’re like a brother to me.”

“Sister,” a female voice hissed off screen. “She’s your sister now.”

Mrs Fabien sounded like a very cool woman.

“I’m going to come out tomorrow night,” said éti. “At the Ballon d’Or. But I wanted to tell you first. And you need to warn the team that… I guess it’s not going to be the usual dull affair.”

“Hey, at least it will guarantee they’ll all turn up! Of course, I’ll do that, and I’ll ring the boss, too, if you like. So you don’t have to.”

éti sighed at mention of the boss and no wonder. Brashness and a hard nose were the PSG manager’s defining characteristics. “No but thank you. It’s my next call. I thought I’d practise on you first.”

Fabien’s voice softened. “étienne, are you very sure? It will be huge, you know? Once it’s out, your life is going to change forever.”

“éti, please, Fabien. And yes, I do. I want it to change.”

“Sorry, putain, that’s going to take some getting used to. éti Salvador. It’s a cute name! Suits you, honey!”

I left them talking. And laughing. My girlfriend, giggling with her best friend, cooing at his new baby boy and talking baby clothes with Fabien’s wife. While she called the PSG manager too, I left her alone, then cuddled her close, smoothing out the pinched frown lines from her pale forehead. He had been accepting but not enthusiastic, which was as well as could be expected. His six-week break was going to be more eventful than he’d anticipated.

éti’s parents were next. We sat less close together for this one, not even touching. We didn’t need to; her outfit and the presence of a young bloke on the sofa next to her confirmed this was the phone call they’d hoped would never come. I only glimpsed her mum for a moment, an insipid older version of éti, her eyes filling with tears before her husband shooed her away.

“I’ll deal with this, Eleanor. Go and make us both a drink.” With his hands loosely clasped together over the tracksuit top covering his thin belly, M. Salvador sat at ease behind his solid kitchen table. The curve of his mouth and the jut of his chin hinted at superiority, the expression of a man used to having the world—and his only child—dance to his tune. A bully, in other words, and still keen-eyed and hungry, even now his every ambition for that child had been overachieved. He didn’t bother hiding his irritation.

“Oh dear. I thought you’d grown out of all this nonsense, étienne.”

The tiny part of me that felt sorry for him at receiving éti’s news out of the blue evaporated. Given the disdain dripping from those words, I was surprised she granted him even this simple courtesy. He made no effort to acknowledge my presence, making me glad we weren’t in the same room; the temptation to punch him would have been overwhelming.

“It’s éti.” She spoke with a drained inevitability, enduring a necessary self-flagellation. I sensed it wasn’t the first time they’d had versions of this conversation. “I thought you and Mum should be amongst the first to know I’m going public at the awards ceremony tomorrow night. As a trans woman. Of course, I’d understand if you didn’t want to attend.”

With a dismissive groan, Mr Salvador ran a hand through his luxuriant salt-and-pepper hair. “Then you’re a bigger idiot than I’d realised, étienne.”

Any respect I might have had for the man, for what he’d achieved, the support he’d given éti over the years, took a hike. Skipping introductions, I barked, “I’d rather you didn’t speak to her like that!”

“It’s okay.” éti placed a warning hand on my arm. “Let him say what he thinks.”

Like I wasn’t there, Mr Salvador calmly carried on. “Do PSG know?”

“As of ten minutes ago, yes. Although it’s not football-related, so I’m not sure it’s any of their business. I told the manager as a courtesy to him and the club, as I have a great deal of admiration for both.”

Mr Salvador harrumphed. “They’ll think it’s their business. As will the club’s lawyers. They pay your wages!”

“Yes, which is why I gave them that kindness,” éti pointed out. Nonetheless, she sounded more unsure of herself. “My contract states my personal life shouldn’t bring the club into disrepute, nothing else. Warning him was a courtesy to give PSG time to get its statement prepared. I have good relations with the Board—I don’t want to spoil that.”

“Hah! So na?ve, étienne. Have you thought of the effect it’s going to have on us?” How people are going to laugh at us? Laugh at you?”

éti scoffed. “Is that your biggest concern?”

“No, of course it isn’t but, for Christ’s sake!” Her father threw up his hands. “Why are you so set on doing this? Why can’t you stick to playing ‘let’s pretend’ at home? Why bring it out in public? Think of what you’re throwing away!”

“I’m not throwing anything away,” replied éti, in a much more reasonable tone than I’d have managed. Her hands in her lap pressed down her on her legs as if to stop them jiggling. So full of colour and joy cooing over Fabien’s baby a few minutes ago, her face was now white and pinched. “I’ve literally won everything there is to win.”

“What about feathering your nest with a couple of lucrative seasons in the US before you retire? Or a season in China? We won’t see that money now.”

“We don’t need that money. We have enough.”

“You can never have enough.” I revised my poor opinion of him even farther downwards.

“Has he made you do it?”

For the first time, M. Salvador’s gaze swivelled to mine, antipathy leeching through the screen.

“ He has a name, Dad. Nico. And no, he hasn’t. I’ve felt this way long before I met him, and you know it.”

“Well, I’m disgusted. The shame you’re bringing on your mother and I, after all we’ve worked for.”

Raw anger shot through me. For all my dad's struggles to express himself—and mon dieu, I could relate—he’d would never have done this. He would perhaps have wished my life had taken a different path, if only that my passage through it might be more straightforward. But he’d never shun me. My éti a disappointment? With her charm, her generosity, her achievements, and her courage? I could almost taste my rage. And still the fucker hadn’t finished.

“You’re throwing everything away, étienne. I’ll wager PSG will have dropped you by Monday morning. And good riddance. They won’t want a man like you disrupting the dressing room. And what about the Nike sponsorship?”

“I don’t need them,” éti said listlessly, not bothering to correct the pronouns. Her voice had flattened, devoid of inflection, never mind emotion. Dragging my eyes from the monster systematically belittling and overlooking her every accomplishment, I turned to my girlfriend to offer her what comfort I could. Except the person on the sofa next to me wasn’t my éti any longer. Her verve had gone, her sparkle, her joyous zest for fucking life. And in her place, despite wearing a skirt and makeup, and having as many so-called feminine attributes as any woman I’d ever fucking encountered, slumped the dull, solemn, cardboard cut-out of étienne Salvador.

“Shameful, that’s what you are,” her father continued. “People like you are a shameful aberration. Unnatural. I wish your mother and I had never… “

I balled my fists. “Mr Salvador. You daughter has done everything anyone has ever demanded of her. She has achieved beyond your wildest dreams. And yet you are still fucking disappointed. You know how crazy that sounds?”

“Daughter? Did you just say daughter ?” As he batted me away, Mr Salvador’s nostrils flared. He literally didn’t give a shit, like he was swatting flies. “Young man, step aside, shut the fuck up, and let me talk some sense into him. Instead of wasting your breath telling me how to behave, persuade étienne here not to wash all our dreams down the plughole.”

Her eyes now wet with tears, éti brought her knees up, hugging them, making herself as small a target as possible against the brick wall of this horrible man. As she did, her loose blouse slipped down her shoulder, exposing the edge of her fresh tattoo. A tattoo of her rescuer, her lover. Her guardian angel with oyster-shell wings.

It was time I lived up to it. Fumbling for her hand, I gripped it tight.

“No can do, I’m afraid. Call me an old-fashioned sort, M. Salvador, but no one incinerates my girlfriend for the fucking fun of it. Not even her father. She owes you nothing.”

“Hah! He owes me everything, the fucking idiot. And on Monday morning, you’ll wake up and both realise that, and it will be too late. And he’ll be no child of mine.”

Blind fury rocketed through my gut, hot and unstoppable. “On Monday morning, I’ll wake up thanking my lucky stars I’m éti Salvador’s boyfriend. And you’ll wake up knowing that in the pursuit of your dreams, you’ve lost the very person you created those dreams for. Say goodbye, Mr Salvador.”

Vibrating with rage, I smashed down the laptop lid, sending the computer skidding across the table.

The room filled with a stunned silence, as deafening as the flash heat of the argument . Ah, merde. Did I really just do that? Cut him off? Any second now, éti’s phone would buzz with her dad on the other end, picking up where he left off. And étienne would nod and listen and cooperate and regretfully inform me it was all a huge fucking mistake and sorry, Nico, but for the time being, éti was going to stuff herself back in the jack-in-the-box. She sniffed, wiping her eyes, and I braced for it.

“Waouh .”

“Sorry, my love. Call him back if you want to. I don’t know what I was thinking. He pissed me off. I’m afraid I may have…ah… overstepped.”

Letting go of my hand, she traced a thumb along the stubbled line of my jaw, then across my bottom lip. If she thought climbing back inside the box was right, then I’d support her. Five or six years wasn’t so long. We’d cope. Our love was strong enough to weather the…

“Don’t be sorry, my angel,” she whispered.

I looked up to meet two bewildered grey eyes. Still in shock, we stared at each other. “Astonished face emoji,” she added, solemnly. “No one ever speaks to my dad like that.”

“No?”

“Mon dieu, no.” She shook her head. “He’s kind of scary.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

Christ, my hands were still trembling. A hysterical urge to laugh swept through me. Had I gone too far? Interfering between her and her parents, stamping all over a tricky relationship I had no right to judge? “Thank god he doesn’t know who I am. Or where I live.”

She gave a nervous giggle. “I think he was as surprised as me. Say goodbye, Mr. Salvador? That was straight out of a Bond film, wasn’t it? Our arguments don’t end like that.”

I kissed her mouth, feeling more myself again. And a tiny bit jubilant. “They do now.”

“Alors, Nico, that was so manly.” With both my hands in hers, she held them up, regarding them. “When he was talking, these gorgeous, rough fisherman’s hands of yours were all tense and quivering, bunched into two fat fists, like you were going to smash the screen and hurl the computer across the floor or something. In defence of my honour. So romantic .”

She batted her eyelashes like a black-and-white movie star before spoiling the effect with a snort of laughter.

“Come here, woman, I’ll show you quivering .” Putting my rough fisherman’s hands to good use, I lunged for her. She was laughing too much at her own teasing to wriggle away.

Our playfight began with tickling and ended with me straddled, as usual, pinned down underneath her. But not complaining, because éti was pulling her dress off over her head and tossing it to the floor. Her bra and knickers chased after it, as did my shirt, buttons pinging, cotton tearing, and belt buckle clanking while she pushed my jeans down. Desperate fingers slicing through my hair, her tongue attacked mine.

“La vache, I love you, Nico La Forge.”

“Love you more, éti Salvador. Less fond of your dad.”

“That makes two of us. Forget about him.”

Her soft wet lips burned a trail across my skin, leaving my mouth bereft and my brain mushy. They skimmed each tattoo, nipping with the blunt edges of her teeth on every patch of bare flesh in between, marking it with a tattoo of her own, branding her name on every undeserving inch of me. Blazing hotter still, her mouth followed the swirl of a garish octopus arm, down to its root and beyond. My thighs fell open to let her in.

“Ugh. So good, éti.”

A warm palm curled around my leaking cock; she swiped the head with her tongue as a needy whimper escaped my throat. More pearls of moisture pulsed from my slit as she covered it with her mouth. Sinful eyes, two smoky daubs of slate, flicked up to mine. Her plump lips glistened with spit.

“Oh Christ. That feels good.”

She sucked some more, sliding deeper, building a rhythm. Too good. “I want to be inside you.”

Her mouth slid off my cock, and she wiped a finger across her wet lips. “You want to fill me up?”

“Pute, yes. Now. Have you got anything?”

“Some stuff Florian recommended, yes. He says it’s the best.”

For fuck's sake.

Again, her mouth engulfed my dick as that spit-slick finger slid behind. Lightheaded, my vision blurred. I fell apart underneath her, begging her to stop, yet pleading with her to carry on. I was floating in a dark void, led blindly through an ocean of warm velvet, like my bones, my limbs, my brain were melting away, like…

As my balls retracted, she pulled away, and I swivelled back to reality in time to see her reach for something from the coffee table. A tearing noise and then she was leaning up on her strong thighs and fingering herself, lips parted, restless eyes drinking me in.

“You are so beautiful doing that, éti,” I panted, running my hands over her taut bare buttocks. “Does it feel good?”

“Amazing,” she moaned. “But you inside is better still.”

“No rush.” My hand found my cock. “I could watch you like that all night.”

Lining herself up, she took me into her body. Long, long seconds of exquisite torture, of not daring to move until she was fully seated. Then the familiar look of bliss I’d come to adore settled across her features. With a minute arching of my hips, I tested the waters.

“You feel that, éti? You like that?”

“Oh yes.” She gave a little gasp as I did it again. “More.”

I stroked my fingers up her thighs, admiring her sat atop me, taking unashamed joy in her body. “That’s us, éti.” I lifted again as she writhed on my cock. “That’s me moving inside you and you begging to have me there, my love.”

Digging my heels into the sofa, I pushed high inside her. In a slow and steady rhythm, we fucked hard, harder than her father’s hurtful words. Beyond the pain they caused. Beyond the bigotry and hatred. Beyond the boundaries ignorant, small-minded souls drew around her.

When we found the perfect spot hidden deep inside, a warm splash of colour suffused her chest. Claiming her right to celebrate herself however the body she’d been given was capable of providing joy, she rode out the high. Embracing her sexuality, confident in her beauty, confident in our love. And when it all became a little choppy, when her knees were giving out and my thighs caught fire, she rewarded me with the most glorious sound. Desperate, hungry, and filthy, it would stay with me forever. The triumphant shout of a woman and her unlampshaded soul.