‘They’re on different a capella teams. Consorting is forbidden,’ I throw over my shoulder as I return the dish to the kitchen.
‘That’s stupid. You should be wiz anyone you want to be wiz,’ Étienne proclaims. Strong words from someone who’s never had a girlfriend.
‘Hey, Min?’ Kurt calls. ‘Does your mum still have that “no dating a driver” policy?’
I’m almost drop the dish.
‘Quoi?What’s wrong wiz drivers?’
‘Who told you that?’ I demand, returning to the living room. Kurt’s removing his cucumbers; Étienne’s are falling off of their own accord.
‘Your mum told my mum at the Ackland dinner in Miami.’
Jesus Christ. She was meant tohelpme, not paint me as a sixteenth-century maiden forced to live under my mother’s iron fist. ‘It’s not a “policy”; she’s not the KGB. It’s just… having gone through the F1 WAG lifestyle herself, she doesn’t want that for me.’
‘Mais oui,un yacht à Portofino, des bijoux de chez Cartier,’Étienne reels off on his fingers, ‘une Maserati dans le garage?—’
‘English!’ Kurt barks.
‘—des vacances en Martinique.Quelle horreur!’
Kurt tries to scowl at him but his face is fixed in place. ‘You wouldn’t like it if I switched to German.’
‘You lived in Monaco for eighteen years and you can’t speak French.Pathétique.’
‘Yeah, well, they don’t speak French at Eton. Isn’t that right, Min?’
‘Enough, you two,’ I say. ‘Anyway, it’s not like that. It’s the media scrutiny, the travelling, and it’s not exactly a safe job, is it?’
Étienne thrusts a finger at me. ‘Yourlife iznot?—’
‘The fit girl’s back!’ Kurt tugs Étienne’s shirt, and their attentions are diverted.
Well that was horrendous.
My much-needed reprieve promptly ends when the scene cuts and Brittany disappears.
‘C’mon, you’re on tour for ten months of the year with twenty drivers – some of the most eligible men in sport, if not the world,’ Kurt argues, and Étienne preens. Honestly, theseboys. Egos the size of Pagari’s budget. ‘You’re telling me there’sno oneyou like?’
‘It’s just my mum’sopinion, not a rule. I’m a grown woman. I can do what I like.’
‘You agree with her, though,’ Kurt points out.
Étienne’s “the best you’ve ever ’ad” salade niçoise churns in my stomach. ‘I…’ Either way I spin it, I’ll end up insulting them or looking like a yes-man.
To my sweet relief, I’m saved by Kurt piping up again, ‘So who’d you pick?’
‘What, like she’s going to chooseyou?’ Étienne prods him in the stomach.
‘Oof!’ Kurt shoos him away. ‘Of course not, we’ve known each other since before you were born. But there must be someone.’
I try to extinguish the face that springs to mind. It’s been two weeks since Imola and not an hour’s passed where I haven’t thought about it. That lay-by. That car. Those shoulders. Those magic fing?—
But that’s bad.
Bad bad bad.
It has to stop.
