I gasp for air as the piles, so carefully stacked up, come crashing down into a mess of everything. My hands shake – my whole body is shaking – and I try to steady myself by grabbing onto Mum's jumper but it only serves to whiten my knuckles and make me feel light-headed.

My throat dries, and the patch grows bigger and bigger until my gasps are in vain and I absolutely cannot breathe.

I try to speak to tell her that it's all wrong, but the words fall short and I know there are tears burning down my face. They wash over my skin and they drop onto my t-shirt, but there is nothing Mum can do to stop them.

She stands but I still clutch onto her. I don't want her to leave me. She can't do that again.

"Fleur," Mum says calmly, but there are invisible hands over my ears and the sound is wobbly and muffled. "Darling, lean forward."

I shake my head.

She presses a hand to my back, guiding me into the position, but the room spins as I lurch my head between my knees and something tells me I'm going to be sick.

"Deep breaths, okay?" My chest opens up just a bit. I breathe in. "That's it. Keep going."

I go again.

The air rushes in and out like it cannot decide where to be. I slow the gasp. I ignore the thump in my ears or the pins digging into every millimetre of my skin.

"That's it," Mum repeats as it starts to subside.

But, when the panic has abandoned me too, I am left in my head, standing amongst everything that has just toppled, trying to figure out where to start. What can I fix and what has been broken beyond repair?

Mum sits me up.

Physiotherapists are horribly easy to talk to. They learn how to get you to relax, and they have tongues like honey that are just too enticing. And so she asks, to loosen the tension in my shoulders and jaw, what I am so scared of. Hands over her eyes, she wanders blindly into the answer, not knowing if what just happened will repeat itself again as I consider it, still stranded in a sea of destruction. 5

I suppose we are back to where we left off. An hour before that flight, I ended up in the same position. The question then was stupid to ask, because of course she knew what was terrifying me: she was moving away. Now, it is different. Everything has changed, and I don't know if that is something I am equipped to cope with.

"I have fallen in love," I croak, because the dryness in my throat has not been moistened though I have swallowed the lump of tears back many times. "I don't know what to do."

━━━━━━━

The crew flies out the next day.

There's one week of the World Cup remaining, and they want to get some 'wind-down' footage to serve as a balance between the tournament and season. I think they also enjoy following me to the beach every morning, entirely prepared to feel the sand beneath their feet as I dive through the waves, hoping the water cleanses my mind.

Sand in the camera becomes the most of my worries as I try to separate Fleur de Voss from the girl who visits her mother from the Netherlands. The two are both me, but the locals here, who have known me far longer than the world ever has, care more about rugby and netball and the smile on my face returning.

I am happy here.

Mum's dog, Daisy, joins me in the car as I drive to Torquay, stealing Jaimie's X7 so that I can fit a surfboard in the boot. The crew follows behind me, letting me lead the way.

Alexia plays the semi-final against Sweden today. I am unbelievably nervous for her. I haven't eaten. I hope the regression to my childhood activity takes my mind off it.

"Do people know you can surf?" Olivia asks as I park the car near where the sand starts, unclipping Daisy. The camera follows the dog for a moment, tracking her as she sprints towards the sea.

I shrug. "They don't know that much about me."

I pull on my wetsuit underneath Mum's huge dryrobe, and then grab the surfboard. It's almost ten in the morning, which is a little later than I wanted to start.

Erik films me as I jog alongside Daisy to warm up. The dog bounds like she is still a puppy, and her slobber drips off the tennis ball (stolen from a tube of expensive, professional balls that Jaimie left lying around on her court) in her mouth, dolloping onto the sand in small, frothy pools. I point at them with a grimace, making the crew laugh.

"I'm going to start now," I tell them, not wanting them to just witness me sprinting into the ocean and leaving the dog to her own devices. "Just throw the ball for her a couple of times. She'll be more than occupied."

"Yes, ma'am," Olivia jokes with a salute. "Go. Have fun, Fleur. Ignore us!"

And of course I do.

Surfing is like being set free.

The board harnesses the power of something so great, so vast that it covers one third of the world, and I am tiny in comparison. I paddle out until there is a decent wave to catch, and when I push up onto the board, there is nothing in me to stop the smile spreading across my face.

I think about my balance. It is so easy to falter, to fall off into the expanse of blue, to hit the water with a splash, but I know that the board is attached to me. It will not float away. I can get back on it, and I can paddle out once more. My arms know what to do. It is a ritual I have perfected, over years of occupying myself in a foreign country. Years of trying to bond with my cousins without them understanding my love for football. Years of going to the beach to escape Mum's obvious happiness – to escape the inevitable that I could see and chose to hide from.

I decide that I should maybe start doing this in Barcelona. The waves are known to be sporadic and fickle, but it wouldn't need to be a regular thing. I could just... Well, I know that this season is going to be different. It would be good to feel so released there. It would probably rejuvenate me.

Maybe Alexia would enjoy it.

My grin widens at the thought of her on a surfboard. Well, more so at the image of her in a tight wetsuit. That would be a blessing.

I may or may not lose focus and fall off the board, stumbling until the ocean punishes me for my wandering thoughts and dunks me in the temperate water, wiping the smugness right off my face. I hope that they haven't caught that on camera.

Daisy's bark as I go under aids me in my choice to take a break. She's a protective dog, and I'd rather she didn't doggy-paddle her way out to save me from an imagined danger. I swim back to shore, the sand sticking to my wet feet as I drag the board out of the water, lugging away from the lapping waves to leave it for a bit. Jaimie stashes energy drinks in her – of course she does – and I head into the BMW to grab one for myself. I offer the crew their own, but seeing as the sound guy, Sam, was not needed, he has already made a trip to a nearby café and got them all coffee.

I plonk myself down on the beach, calling Daisy over. She drops her ball, oozing with water and drool, at my feet. I kick it away. She shakes out all over me (payback), but soon settles by my legs, panting after all the fun she has just had.

"What have you been up to here, then?" Olivia asks, her curiosity more genuine than that of a list of questions she has drawn up for the sake of the documentary. Then, I guess she remembers herself. "How have you been coping with the loss?"

The camera is subtly in my face and I hum, watching the dead brick of my phone as if Alexia has the power to switch it on from her hotel in New Zealand. When I look at Olivia, it is with a sharp turn of my head, my wet plaits flicking water around until they rest on my shoulders. Mum redid them for me yesterday.

"Well, my mother lives in Melbourne, so I was on a flight the day after we got knocked out. And, like you've seen, I've been staying at Jaimie's house because I've never been before and it's like a luxury hotel." I laugh, and it blends in with the quiet thrash of the waves and the squawk of a circling seagull. "I guess it's just a bit more peaceful here. It's better than shoving myself onto two flights and getting back to Amsterdam. I need the time to let it sink in, or to remove myself from it so that I am less hurt when I do grapple with the idea that we'll have to wait another four years."

"Physically, how has the tournament affected your body?"

I wipe a droplet of seawater from my brow, realising that paths of white salt will track down my cheeks when this gets put on TV. "It's hard. Tournaments are intense, and it's all very sudden – you go from matches every three days to nothing. I feel a bit lost, like I'm still supposed to be on the go: training, moving, and squeezing in sleep when I can. The season is so fast-paced, and adjusting is always a bit of a shock to the system. Luckily, my mother's a physio, right? She's forcing me into that physical recovery."

"So are you feeling good? Or are you not there yet?"

I glance at the ocean, invited to look by the waves that I'm missing. My drink is nearly finished, and the break has been long enough. "I'm... No. I'm not feeling good, but I will. Soon. And we go again!"

"Unusually optimistic," Olivia says with a grin.

"It's the salt air," I tell her.

The camera has stopped recording. "Definitely not Alexia, right?" she teases.

"Uncalled for."

(It's true.)

━━━━━━━

They beat Sweden 2-1, and Alexia is in tears when she FaceTimes me well past midnight. This is an unheard of achievement for their senior team, but she says it's as if everything is falling into place. She is proud of her team for how far they have gotten, and she is even prouder to have done it in utter defiance of Jorge Vilda, whose coaching is starting to become better regarded by the rest of the world like some horrifying joke.

The fear of what she is beginning to mean to me is becoming easier to forget. The more I see her face, the less I want to run away and hide and pretend that Scarlett never died and I remain the woman I have always been. It's scary when someone has the power to change every atom of your being – to pivot you on an axis and bend you to her will regardless of your wants and wishes.

I have fallen so deeply, irrevocably in love with her that I cannot do anything but bear witness to her taking control of me. Not that she knows quite the gravity of it all.

"I'm so proud of you," I say as she recounts the game for the third time, her excitement failing to wane.

"You don't know how much that means to me."

Though I don't disagree with her out loud, I know that she is so, so wrong.

Mum, the next day, thrusts a plane ticket in my face upon my return from my morning swim.

She is waiting for me in Jaimie's drive. "Pack your bags," she says as she tugs one of my plaits affectionately. "We're going to Sydney to watch the semis. Logan said we could stay the night and fly back tomorrow, but I'm guessing that you'll want to watch the final. You decide how long you're packing for."

"Logan's not going to want me staying for–?"

"No, he doesn't care. He loves his little cousin. Get your stuff, Flootz. Our flight's in two hours."

"Mum!" I shriek in horror. There are so many logistical issues with this awful spontaneity.

"You're only half Dutch, darling. Come on, get a move on." She leans out of her car window and prods me in my back as I hurry into the house. Do I even have a bag I can bring with me? Do I want to fly home straight from Sydney? Will Jaimie care if I haven't left her house pristine?

Before I know it, I'm on a Qantas plane heading to Sydney, with Mum on one side of me and my cousin's nine-year-old on the other. Hazel is obsessed with football, and begged her parents to let her come with us. Somehow, they agreed.

Hazel is making me go through every player I know, forcing me to recite facts and spill their (tame) secrets. "There's no way Raso and Jaimie dated," she repeats to me with a slack jaw.

I roll my eyes. "Do you guys forget all of this stuff? I know you were young, but surely you recognise her from that one barbecue she brought her to?"

"I just don't see you two as, like, cool, you know."

After another hour of being violated, we land and I am quick to leave Mum to watch Hazel as I wait in line for a coffee before we get a text from Logan saying that he's here to pick us up.

I feel a few pairs of eyes on me, knowing that there are bound to be fans around here right now. No one approaches, though, so I ignore the whispering, instead texting the film crew my apologies for uprooting them and saying I'll pay for their flights out to Sydney if they want to continue filming. Luckily for my bank account, they say it's fine as long as I make sure to take some videos so that this week isn't entirely absent from the documentary. (Olivia also says that she's just nosy.)

"Alright, girls, let's go," Mum says with her arms slung around both our shoulders as she spots Logan's truck. I giggle at it. And then I coo at his adorable daughter strapped into her car seat in the front.

"You got me a ticket, too, right?" he asks as we get in, bags piled into the boot. I'm going to stay for the final and fly out from Sydney, so I have all my belongings (though I managed to get rid of some of my excessive amounts of kit by gifting it to my relatives or leaving it at Jaimie's). "I've been dying to see 'em. They've got the whole city buzzing, and I actually like soccer."

"Football."

"Soccer," Hazel states. "And you call yourself a professional!"

"I am a professional," I reply with a playful jab to her side. "Who are we supporting?" They turn to me and glare. I hold my hands up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Has everyone got something to wear or do I need to make some phone calls?"

"Mum got me a Kerr shirt," Hazel reminds me. "Auntie Anna has Kerr, too. Logs, who've you got?"

"Audrey is friends with thingie. What's her name? Ellie Carpenter? So I've been forced into that shirt, and Eden's got a baby grow that'll work."

"I thought you were going to go in a netball dress," Mum teases. He's married to a player for NSW Swifts, and she's just won her own World Cup. Their baby is five months old, and could probably catch a ball better than I could. "Fleur's gonna sport Kerr too."

"Fleur, if she's really your 'best friend', can I meet her?"

"Only if you admit that I am cool."

Hazel huffs. "Not supposed to lie."

"You are such a little sh–"

"The traffic is mad!" Logan interjects. I don't talk to Hazel for the rest of the evening. I am deeply offended.

notes: 

sorry about that i've just been a bit busy xx

this reminded me about how much i missed fleur so at least i'll write more again!

also HALLOWEEEEEEN! i'm batman for it (don't even fucking ask -- my friend wouldn't let us be posh + becks) 

oh and it's derby day which is interesting 

anyway thanks for reading -- missed you guys !!!!!