7. Chapter 7
7
Chapter 7
FINN
“ I t’s long straights!” Jack raises his voice to make himself heard above the din of the engines. We’re making our way towards the car. I’m P nine. Qualifying went well yesterday, and the crew was ecstatic.
“I’ve been racing this track for my entire Grande Prima career.” I pull the fire-resistant balaclava over my head. “I know.”
Jack’s not being pedantic. He’s just nervous. Jack never knew me when I raced for Velocity Racing, for Felix. He doesn’t know how I used to drive. This new style is making him nervous. Well, old style. Ever since I signed the documents, after learning that my contract won’t be renewed, I’ve been driving like this, like I used to. I’ve done what I set out to do, and now, with the papers signed, sealed, and ready to be delivered, I feel almost free, like the hold the past has on me has lessened.
“It’s a very abrasive surface,” Jack continues, jarring me back to reality. “We’re doing a two-stop strategy. ”
I sigh and climb over the side of the car, lowering myself into the seat.
“Conserve the power unit for the straights!” Cars are revving around us, drowning out his voice.
Before he can say anything else, I shout back, “I know, Jack!”
He checks the harness as I run through my ritual of touching the buttons.
I pull on the helmet and he raps it twice with his knuckles before hurrying away.
The countdown, as always, takes my breath away. I spend all my time gearing up for this moment, and every time we’re here, it feels like I have hardly any time at all to prepare.
When the green lights come on we’re away. I am accelerating with reckless abandon.
Erik cautions me over comms. He isn’t used to doing that.
The trick is to not think at all.
Since Monaco I have spent extra hours in the hotel gyms, running, pushing, pulling, lifting. I have a weekly session with the Delta Victor trainer, who does reflex training with me and Reuben, and serious neck and shoulder exercises.
And yet I could not unlock my jaw or relax my shoulders since Camille looked at me that way.
With pity. As if I’m being forced to do this, as if I don’t have a choice.
Unbidden, the memory of Ma leaving came to mind. The house had been quiet when I woke up, that morning after Da came home from the hospital. I had come down the carpeted stairs on quiet feet, didn’t want to disturb Da. She never even saw me. She was standing at the front door, turned towards the mirror hanging there, arranging a hat on her head, crying.
She picked up her bag, opened the door, stepped outside, and closed it quietly behind her.
I watched through the murky glass as her silhouette faded away to nothing, and I knew.
I knew that I would never see her again.
That what Da had asked of her was too much to bear.
And I knew that if I could ever stop feeling as betrayed as I was in that moment, that I would never ask from anyone what he had asked of her.
My fingers clench the wheel harder.
This is the choice. I am living with the choice that I made.
Don’t think.
Mathieu Dubois, Rheese, and Lucien Rousseau are all bunching up at the chicane up ahead. They’re battling it out to be through first, and none of them look like they’re going to relent. Lucien collides with Mathieu’s rear spoiler, and they spin out. Rheese avoids the debris and pulls away on the straight.
“P seven,” Erik says, ecstatic.
I deploy the energy recovery system to boost me out of the corner and into the straight.
I am just over a second behind Rheese. When I floor the throttle on the straight I am pushed back into my seat, neck and shoulders straining to bear the heavy force working against me. I’m in a designated DRS zone. It means that I open the flap on the rear wing, the Drag Reduction System, and it helps the car reach higher speeds on the straights.
I need to pit to change my tyres, but I want to pass him first. I’ll lose my position, but as long as I come out right behind him again, we can resume our battle.
Two laps later, I trick him into thinking I’m feinting when I’m not and I take the inside line and pass .
“P six.”
Erik is worried about the tyres and frankly, so am I. I’m losing grip and it’s costing me precious seconds.
I go another eight laps before the safety car comes out.
It jars me back to Austin, Texas, like it always does.
Don’t think.
Somewhere up ahead is an accident and the safety car comes onto the track to slow us down to allow the marshalls to clear up the debris, which would be a danger to us. It’s a way to keep the race going, even if it’s slow, and we aren’t allowed to overtake.
While we bunch up behind the safety car, I muse over strategy for the pull away. It’s essentially a second start, all of us bunched up. The distances we had gained between each other were closed. Some drivers up ahead opt to pit. Rheese doesn’t.
Erik calls me in to refuel. We have very little time, and I will lose my position, but hopefully I won’t have to pit again, and make up the spots when the drivers in front of me are forced to pit.
The safety car enters the pit lane too and I just know that somewhere on the track, Ollie Blythe is pulling away from the pack. I pit, refuel, tear out and Erik confirms I lost two positions.
I stick to the strategy.
We’re on the last five laps and Rheese pitted too early in the race. He’s struggling with tyre degradation, and no option of pitting again. His car’s handling is shot, and he’s battling to stay on the tarmac.
I pass him and finish sixth.
I just scored eight points for Delta Victor .
When I get out of the car, mobbed by crew and spectators alike, I swivel around to look for Jay’s telltale camera that towers over the crowd. Camille can always be found at his shoulder, directing the shots.
I don’t see them.
I’m disappointed. The realization of it jars me.
* * *
FINN
We’re six races in out of twenty-three. That means I have seventeen races left. I have spent the past fifteen years of my career with a singular focus.
To right a wrong.
And now, after everything, and experiencing this strange sense of freedom, I’m battling more guilt than ever.
Because I’m enjoying myself. Because right after the race, I looked for Camille.
I am betraying the promise I made myself.
I book a car and make my way to the airport, out towards the private terminal, and it comes to a smooth stop next to a small private jet. The driver jumps out to open the door for me and I am welcomed by an air hostess who accompanies me inside.
It smells like a new car inside and I take a seat on one of the large leather armchairs, kicking my legs out in front of me.
I am immediately served a whiskey.
I always use the same company when I go to visit her.
I have four hours of peace and quiet and I spend it doing a play-by-play of the race in my head.
When we land at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, another car is already waiting, and it takes me straight to the care facility.
Her name is Grace, and she has natural auburn hair and green eyes. Angry red pitted burn scars cover half of her head. One ear is practically burned off. It splotches angrily down her neck. It covers sixty percent of her body. Only ten percent of mine.
Her muscles have atrophied away to practically nothing and she can’t breathe on her own.
She isn’t aware that I’m here. She’s nothing more than a beating heart.
“Mr Brennan?” It’s the nurse. He’s standing on the threshold of the room, and I can hear the question in his voice.
“Please,” I say. “Come in.” I take a seat in the armchair next to her bed. He makes his way inside and shakes my hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
It’s been a year since I was last here.
He gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and asks if I’d like anything to eat or drink.
I shake my head.
He brings me a jug of water all the same.
I take my pill. It’s an antidepressant I started taking about a year after the accident. I used to think that depression meant you felt sad. That the pill picked you up.
Depression for me meant that I felt nothing at all. But in a different place altogether. One where the air was too thick to breathe, one where thoughts swirled together in a whirlpool, and where they faded mid-way, no resolution or end. It felt like I bounced away from answers, couldn’t grasp reason. Like floating lifeless in a void, heavy limbed and uncaring.
The depression I have now feels like I’m drowning, restless and aching.
I prefer it any day over that lifeless void.
And it takes more than a pill. The life I lead keeps me alive. Exercise, good food, sleeping well. Every aspect of the life I lead contributes to help the pill do its job.
For the life of me, I don’t know how others less fortunate dealt with it.
“How’s she doing?”
The nurse pauses, smiles.
“As good as can be expected.”
I nod.
Before he leaves, I can’t help it. I speak.
“What purpose did it serve?”
I’ve been asking this question for fifteen years. This is the first time I’ve asked it out loud.
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. We rarely talk when I visit.
“What do you mean?” he challenges me.
“What did it achieve, keeping her alive like this?”
All these years, every meal I’ve enjoyed was denied her. Every time I felt the sun on my face I recalled hers in the shadow of this perpetual room. Every woman in my bed, my mother’s warning. You can’t have a life, and here Grace lay, proof of my mothers words, the anchor that cemented me to the biggest risk of all.
Daring to think I could have it all.
“That was never your decision, Mr Brennan.” The nurse startles me back to the present. “That burden lay with her kids.”
I nod again, knackered after the long day. The race has drained me .
“How are they doing?” I stand and pour a glass of water, take a sip.
“She looks like her mother.” He smiles.
I think back to the fan, the young girl with the auburn hair who approached me in Melbourne. I shudder.
“And the boy, he’s smart. Doing well in school. He reads to her.”
We look at Grace, her hands neatly by her side, on top of the white linen sheet she’s covered with, tucked in around her.
“However,” he continues as he makes his way to the door, “I believe the purpose has always been the same.”
I look at him and frown.
“Dignity,” he says and slips from the room.
I don’t sit down again. Instead, I open the drawer of her bedside table. It’s filled with letters.
They are all addressed to me.
I get one every year from her kids. On the date of the accident.
I frown.
There’s a new one, on top, from the beginning of this year. It piques my curiosity. The girl, she never writes to me this time of year. I flip the letter over. Their address is right here, in Texas.
I pocket it. I don’t know why. There are fifteen years’ worth of unopened letters in the drawer.
I never planned to live past my racing career. I had always planned on ending my life when the day came. I have been anticipating that day for years. When I die, my lawyer will release the money I’ve saved for them, the two kids, and it will be theirs to do with as they please.
The trust for Grace will continue. She will always be taken care of.
She will always be my burden.
Guilt washes over me.
And here I am, feeling free, and wondering about Camille, if after this year maybe I could…
Could what? The way I spoke to her, told her to get out…
Does it matter? I look at Grace, her face practically unlined even though she’s aged fifteen years. She doesn’t even look serene; she looks like nothing at all.
I had taken that from her, and I had dedicated my life to atone.
And yet.
I touch the letter in my pocket. I can only imagine what it contains, the life I have robbed them of, the accusations, the anger and despair. And with everything wrapped up, and with the end of my contract looming, I have spent this year on the track taking more risks. I spent this year reaching for things I haven’t allowed myself to experience before.
Camille’s face looms before me.
I hoped that by coming here, I would finally feel free. Free to follow through on my decision.
I’ve spent a lifetime making sure I have nothing to live for, and suddenly it feels like I have everything to lose.