Page 1 of Retrograde
1
‘Honey, I’m home!’ Lucie flung the door open, expecting to be greeted with the typical chaos of the Jensen-Moretz household. Instead, she was met with silence.
Silence which lasted all of ten seconds before a grey and white ball of fur came hurtling towards her, covered in dirt. Ford. Her best friend’s aptly named step-dog. He put his paws up on her shoulders and licked her face, a habit Faith had spent the entirety of her marriage so far trying to train him out of. ‘Ford Moretz, get back here right now!’
Lucie encouraged him down before he could get into any more trouble as Faith rounded the corner, her denim dungarees covered in a combination of muddy pawprints and paint splatters, and her blonde hair, now a few inches past her shoulders, dripping wet. ‘Did I catch you at a bad time, Jensen?’
‘What kind of racing driver decides to start painting the exterior of the garage during race week? I’m about ready to strangle my husband. Anyway, why are you here early?’
‘Sorry.’ Lucie smiled sheepishly. ‘I was trying to surprise you before I checked into the hotel. Brett and Marco aren’t here yet, and I didn’t want to be lonely.’
‘Oh! You’re welcome to join the madhouse. Jules let his second child out in the fields unattended, and heburrowed. Again. Came back all proud and promptly shook his fur coat. Mud everywhere, all over our fresh paint job. Julien is in zen mode so of course he’s unbothered. I get the hosepipe out, Ford thinks it’s a game.’
Lucie scratched behind the husky’s ears. ‘He lets the dog get away with everything.’
‘Same can’t be said for hisactualchild who is far better behaved.’
Lucie laughed and shuffled further away from the front door, finally managing to close it behind her. Julien’s daughter Jasmine was an angel of a kid, and Faith had hit the jackpot with her new family. Stepping into a maternal role had come naturally for her and the only thing Jasmine ever asked for was the chance to attend a race. Oh, and VIP tickets to see Taylor Swift which, between her dad and his teammates, she had managed to bag for her birthday.
‘Where’s he at? Out back?’
‘Wherever there’s work to be done, that’s where he’ll be.’
They grabbed a fruit juice on their way out, and as she stepped onto the patio, Lucie’s heart skipped a beat. As a social media manager for the IEC, one of the biggest motorsport organisations in the world, she had known Julien for the majority of her career and he had owned his compact, but architecturally beautiful Malmedy farmhouse the entire time, but the view never failed to amaze her. The trees of the Ardennes Forest lined the property, but in the foreground were lush green fields which all belonged to Julien.
He even had stables, a new addition, where he let the neighbours keep their horses and taught local kids to ride. When he was here, anyway. He and Faith split their time between Belgium and Hawaii, where Jasmine lived with her grandparents while Faith and Julien were travelling for races and team events.
‘Carolan!’ Julien dropped his paintbrush, right back in the sage-green pot of paint, and stood up to give her a hug. ‘Where’s Brett?’
‘Late. He detoured to Brussels to meet… Casey Winters? I think? I can’t keep up with which drivers he hangs out with and when any more, to be honest. Anyway, he’ll be here in the morning.’
‘Seems strange seeing you here without him.’ Julien pulled a face.
‘Feels weird, too. He keeps disappearing on me for weekends with the lads. Literally left me at a resort in Marbella a couple of months back in the middle of our stay.’
‘Please don’t say “lads” again.’ Faith curled her lip in disgust. ‘You’re too American.’
‘I’m Italian.’
‘Born and raised in America.’
‘Point taken. Am I still allowed to say “shagging”?’
Faith rolled her eyes. That had been Lucie’s favourite British slang word when she’d first met her two seasons ago, when Faith had joined Revolution Racing as a social media manager and the pair of them had been put in charge of the main IEC socials, and she had been relentless in using it whenever she could. ‘Fine.’
‘Marco still comes into town tonight?’ Julien quizzed. ‘I’ll get him to come here. We can have a chilled couple of days before we all head to the hotel and get to work. I’m going down to the track tomorrow though, just to admire our girl.’
By ‘girl’, he meant this season’s Revolution Racing car. His pride and joy, and the car he shared with Brett Anderson and Marco De Luca. And the mechanics, engineers and team bosses, but primarily, she belonged to the drivers. They were the ones who had to learn every part of her as they careened around the twists and turns of racetracks across the world, and they were the ones who consistently took her over the finish line in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators. Usually in a position that put them on the podium.
This season, she was called ‘Lola’, which was some sort of Marvel reference. It had been Marco’s turn to name the car and he was two years deep into consuming anything and everything to do with the franchise. Brett liked to go for names that sounded like they belonged to someone’s grandma, and Julien always went for something cheesy and cliché.
‘Where are Esme and Bea? They didn’t tag along either?’ Faith asked.
‘Bea is still in Paris, doing some last-minute shopping because, you know, the pit lane is also a catwalk when your name is Beatrix Miller.’
‘Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Gabriel and the other CEOs introduced an official uniform for the photographers? Something really dull like black jeans and anIEC polo shirt.’ Julien chuckled to himself as he cleaned the paintbrush.
Bea was one of their closest friends, head of photography for the IEC, and the girls’ business partner for their women in motorsport campaign. The friendship part of their relationship was a new thing for Lucie, who had maintained a hatred for the woman until Faith came along.
