All this thinking’s made me wonder if… maybe I’m the one not ready for a relationship. I can’t be honest or decisive; I don’t truly know what I want from Jack; I can’t see what we’ll look like in a year. And maybe that’s the very real constraints on us talking, or maybe it’s me.
The simplest thing to do would be to break it off, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone. When we’re good, we’re really good, more than I ever thought I’d have with someone.
The other option is to quit my job, but I love what I do (I mean, not today, but when I’m allowed to actually do my job). If my parents’ relationship has taught me anything it’s that a woman doesn’t fit her life around a man. Besides, DFK would win a podium before Jack would agree to be my boyfriend, so I’d be resigning for nothing. I think we both need the jeopardy for this to work. And we’re back to me being an issue. Not quite on Jack’s level, but not scot-free.
I guess there’s a third option, and that’s to… keep doing what we’re doing for now. It doesn’t exactly solve my problems but it postpones the heartache until I can figure out something better.
I stroke aside the hair that’s fallen in his gorgeous face and before I can think too much about it, lean forward and kiss him. He’s taken aback – we haven’t properly kissed since before the photo was released – but he doesn’t falter, hands finding my face and holding me to him.
‘Thank you,’ I breathe against his lips.
‘Thankyou.’
I smile. ‘I meant for the coffee.’
‘Of course.’ A beat. ‘I’d do anything for you, Roberts.’
No you wouldn’t, but I have to make peace with that.
I slip out and hurry to the portable toilets. Urgh, what a day. My head’s a state.
I’m washing my hands and about to make my way back when a woman asks in French, ‘Is anyone in that one?’
‘No, it’s free,’ I return, also in French.
When I look up, Celine Fournier’s looking back at me. She’s a legend in French racing, both as a racer and the country’s first female F1 broadcaster, and now she’s head of F1 coverage for France’s Sportif+. We’ve never met but I’ve known of her since I could walk.
‘I was testing you,’ she says, extending her hand, the lines of her supremely tanned face more prominent stretched into a smile. ‘Celine.’
‘I’m Mi?—’
‘Minnie Roberts, I know,’ she cuts in. ‘You haven’t lived in Monaco for years and yet you still haven’t forgotten your French. Well done.’
I feel a surge of joy.Celine Fournierhas heard of me, and more than as Channel 3’s token woman. Pinch me! ‘It’s a bit rusty.’
She gives a vague shrug. ‘It will come back if you practice. Channel 3, how is that going? Holland was shit, hm?’
She doesn’t beat around the bush, does she. I push down the very British urge to apologise for such a base story crossing her desk. ‘It was ok. My team have been great,’ I lie, ‘and I’m so grateful.’
She screws her face up like she’s bitten into a rotten cake. ‘Grateful?Why?’
‘For how they’ve,’ I swallow at the sight of her staring me down, ‘supported me.’
‘Supported you,’ she echoes, a thin eyebrow raised.
‘And allowed me to keep my job.’
She’s laughing. She’s actually laughing at me. I don’t think this is good. ‘SoEnglish,’ she says with a smirk. ‘If any employee of mine ever felt grateful for having their job, I’d fire them. Employing them isn’t doing them a service – they’re doingmea service. If your network are making you feel that way, you should leave immediately. You’re a talented broadcaster, Minnie; don’t take career advice from skinny ginger English men,’ so… Greg, ‘and definitely notBrian O’Connell. I’m waiting for the day cancel culture rips him to shreds.’
I’m too busy mentally noting all her wisdom to laugh. I wish I had a pen.
‘How long have you and Jack Bowden been together?’ she asks, and I almost jump out of my skin. She didn’t say it accusingly, her smile’s warm like she’s genuinely interested, not searching for an inside scoop. But maybe it’s a trap. This could be one of the reasons why she’s such a lauded interviewer, she reels you in with false niceties.
‘We’re not together. It was one stupid kiss. We were both so drunk?—’
‘I’m not talking about the photo. When a man looks at you like he’s been looking at you all season, it’s your duty as a woman to put him out of his misery.’
‘I would never compromise my—’ I can’t think of the translation, ‘—ethics of journalism?’ I manage, feeling somewhat like Trevor McDonald.
