Page 13

I’d never considered arson before I found myself living in a motorhome with Harper James. Right now, sending the whole thing up in flames so I can return to my quiet hotel room sounds like a really good idea.

Sharing one of these with Elijah for the last three seasons was nothing short of brilliant. In the first season it helped us bond, in the second season it kept us sane when so many different weather fronts threatened to ruin various Grands Prix during the European leg, and last season it was home to many pizza nights and quiet beers as we celebrated every win.

This year it feels like a prison, the same four walls but somehow smaller, and suffocating.

I’m already at boiling point with the situation and it’s only day five.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I shout. Yet again Harper’s left half of his outfit from last night all over the living room floor, and he’s already coating all of the kitchen surfaces in a loaf’s worth of toast crumbs.

Harper’s eyes shoot open from where he’s leaning, half-asleep, against the counter, feeding himself toast in just his boxers. If I weren’t so angry, I’d let myself appreciate the picture in front of me a little more.

‘What?’ he grumbles, rubbing a buttery hand through his curls to get them off his forehead. It’s gross, but the boner trying to make an appearance in my shorts doesn’t agree.

‘It’s disgusting in here, Harper. How can you live like this?’

‘Seriously, the sun hasn’t even come up. It’s like 8am. Why are you screaming?’

The blinds are still down and he’s clearly hungover – I can smell stale beer in the air – so he has no idea that the sun came up hours ago and it’s definitely not 8am.

I go round opening each blind one by one to prove my point. He covers his eyes, squinting and groaning. The Austrian sun’s not warm by any means, but it’s undeniably daylight.

‘We have to share this space,’ I say, gesturing angrily to the mess he’s generated in the wake of making a couple pieces of toast.

‘Okay, Grandad. I’ll clean up after a couple hours’ sleep. Give me a break.’

A break? He’s treating the whole of his racing adventure like one big break.

‘God, you’d think I was asking the world from you, not the bare minimum.’

Maybe this is the world for Harper. Like he’s never had to tidy up in his whole life. I don’t really know much about his background. Maybe he had a butler following him around with a dustpan and brush, or maybe this is a form of weaponised incompetence.

‘I always plan to clean up and then by the time I get to it you’ve already done it,’ he says.

‘Because you leave plates and bowls in the sink for days on end. We’re going to end up with a fucking fly infestation.’

‘They’re soaking. You’re meant to leave them to soak.’

We aren’t getting anywhere with this conversation and I know I’m just wasting my time. Leaving him to it in the kitchen to argue with himself, I grab my sports bag and give myself a once over in the mirror to make sure I’m presentable.

‘Where you off to?’ he asks, hovering over my shoulder as I try to sort my hair out in the mirror by the door.

I probably shouldn’t be worrying about what my hair looks like when I’m about to head to the gym and get sweaty, but there’s press and fans lurking everywhere right now. I have to pass through the access-all-areas point for fans in order to get to the gym and, call me vain, but I don’t need shit photos of me circulating on social media.

‘To the gym, not that it’s any of your business.’

‘Do you always preen this much to go and work out?’

‘I’m meeting Jackson.’ I’m not sure why I feel the need to add this. It’s not like we’re going on a date – it’s just the gym.

‘You two seemed to be joined at the hip lately. Anything you want to tell me?’

‘No.’

‘I’m just surprised. Didn’t think he was your type.’

‘My type to work out with?’ I shoot back, even though I know exactly what he means. Apart from the curly hair, there’s no other similarities between Harper and Jackson.

‘Hmm. Well, have a good day, I guess.’

He drops the subject way faster than I expect, returning to collect his half-eaten toast from the kitchen counter.

Infuriatingly, he leaves the knife – with butter smeared on both the blade and the handle – on the side, not bothering to even put it in the sink, never mind washing it up.

I’m tempted to do it for him, but he’s never going to learn if I do. So I leave, not caring if I’m too early to meet Jackson. I just need to be anywhere other than within throwing distance of Harper right now.

Jackson, unlike Harper, is punctual and doesn’t flake without letting me know, so he’s actually waiting outside the gym when I arrive. We’re both early, it seems.

I know I have a face like thunder because the corridor of fans I had to pass through on my way here all told me to cheer up.

I’m grateful Jackson doesn’t ask what’s up straight away, because I’d probably explode. Instead, we head to the locker room, discard our bags and jackets, and get to work warming up.

He side-eyes me as we use adjacent cross-trainers, like he’s trying to figure out how to ask whether anything’s wrong. It’s making me slightly paranoid, because it feels like he sees everything. I don’t know what Anders has told him about the bollocking he gave us earlier on in the season, or whether Anders knows that Harper and I took his suggestion of faking a friendship in public literally. I also don’t know what influence Jackson has over decision-making within the team, which makes this situation a bit of a political tightrope.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told Jackson about the kiss. I didn’t name Harper, but I have a feeling he suspects it was him. It was tearing me apart; really messing with my head in a way that was translating onto my track stats. And I can’t afford that. I just couldn’t keep it in any longer, the intrusive thoughts and the overthinking, and one day I just blurted it out while we were grabbing a coffee. Plus, I’ve known Jackson for about a decade, even if this is the first season he’s joined us on the tour as part of the Hendersohm management team. He’s just a year younger than me, and if the circumstances were different, I think we’d probably have become close friends a long time ago.

His dad is my boss, which didn’t help at the beginning, and Jackson was always a little standoffish. It’s hard to write objectively and critically about your friends, and since he’s built his career and reputation as a Championship race reporter I know that presents a challenge. When he was starting out, there were the usual accusations of nepotism because his dad is the principal of one of the most successful and competitive teams. In some of his early long-form pieces – articles for motor racing magazines, and one TV documentary I remember in particular – he went too far the other way, in my opinion, and made some unfairly scathing pronouncements about Hendersohm drivers, including me, and about his dad and the latest engineering choices. Looking back, I think he was just trying to establish himself, and now, more than a decade on, he deserves his reputation as an insightful critic, a good interviewer, and one of the top motor racing pundits around.

His sabbatical as part of the Hendersohm management team comes at the request of his dad. I know Anders is proud of his son’s career, but I think he also wants to encourage Jackson to swap sides and use his knowledge and experience to become a team manager and eventually a principal, like him. I’m not sure it’s what Jackson wants, but I suppose that’s the point of trying it out.

Sitting opposite each other on the floor while we stretch, we discuss what weights we’re going to lift today. I’m still stewing over the Harper situation and obviously not doing a good job of hiding it.

‘You doing okay?’ he asks as I scrub the rag across my sweaty forehead with a little more vigour than is perhaps necessary.

We’re alternating Russian twists and kettle-bell swings and I’m channelling my frustration into faster reps, leaving me panting more than usual. ‘Mmm. One more set.’

‘How’re things going?’

Jackson’s skirting around the topic of Harper, like he doesn’t want to pry or insinuate what he thinks he knows. Which is probably for the best.

‘Urgh,’ I groan, falling back completely on the mat so I don’t have to look at him whilst I moan. ‘I’ve never lived with anyone like Harper James. It’s been five days and I already can’t take it. I miss Elijah. He never left toast crumbs and butter knives lying around like he expects me to be his personal maid.’

‘So he’s a bit messy?’

I glare at Jackson. A bit messy?

‘And the rest. He’s an inconsiderate, selfish asshole. He comes in at all hours of the night, crashing around the kitchen and making so much noise. He drowns the bathroom every time he showers because he can’t seem to pull the door completely shut. He also wears no clothes, like, all the time.’

‘Oh, no. Imagine having to look at a half-naked, sexy athlete all day. It must be so hard for you.’

If only Jackson knew how hard. I saw Harper towel-drying himself the other day. Does he not know how to close a door?

Jackson knows I’m bi, and a careless use of pronouns when I was telling him about the kiss means he knows it’s a guy who’s currently messing with my head.

‘I’d rather he put on a shirt and did the washing-up from time to time.’

‘No you wouldn’t.’

Savage. I fake a gag, but Jackson doesn’t let it go. I guess years of interviewing has given him a pretty good radar for bullshit.

‘You’re the only person I know who doesn’t want a front-row seat to the Harper James show,’ he says.

‘I came to the gym to get away from him. Can we talk about something else?’ I’m sick of hearing his name.

‘Okay,’ Jackson obliges. ‘You looking forward to going home for a couple weeks after this one? Silverstone’s always such a good track for you.’

‘You can say that again.’ I’ve never scored below P3 on that track, even in my rookie year. Home turf, and all that. But, most of all, I can’t wait to see Elise and the kids, and Mum too, of course. That’s what is most important this year about going back to the UK. ‘Of course, I love Silverstone. A P1 in front of a home crowd would be sweet. Plus, seeing the family is needed right now, feels like I’ve been away too long.’

‘Yeah, family’s important,’ Jackson continues. ‘You’ll never hear him say it, but I don’t think Dad ever got over losing Mum. He’s excited to have me on tour for a few weeks.’

Five years ago, in the middle of the season, Anders’s wife, Brita, suddenly passed away and it hit him hard. He’d actually taken a day off during the season because of it, something he’d never done before. For months he walked around like a dark cloud, barking orders and storming out of meetings. It got to the point where people were afraid to approach him, but eventually the senior trainer, a long-time friend and colleague of Anders’s, took him aside and had a word. I don’t know if he went to therapy or not, but by the time the next season rolled around he was mostly back to his normal self – at least in public.

‘That must be tough,’ I say. ‘And what about you?’

‘Oh, you know. I felt really lost for a while, but…’ Jackson visibly swallows and he blinks a few times. ‘I miss her all the time, obviously, but it’s different for Dad. He’s not very good on his own.’

‘He’s definitely happy to have you here,’ I say. ‘He seems a little more relaxed.’

The look on Jackson’s face tells me he wants to say more, but then he changes his mind. My spidey senses tell me there’s something brewing amongst the senior leadership team, some big secret I’m not supposed to know. Except Jackson quickly schools his face back into the open, friendly, approachable expression he usually wears and the moment passes.

I’m close to asking what’s going on, but if he wanted to tell me he would. We’re friends, aren’t we? I should just ask.

But there’s a part of me that’s a little afraid. I’m afraid it’s about the future, about next year, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I still get asked in every interview about whether I’m going to retire at the end of the season, and although I always brush it off and give an answer full of stock phrases that give absolutely nothing away, the truth is that I don’t know. It’s been so much harder this year, harder on my body, harder to deal with the chaos that Harper’s brought to the team, harder to stay focused.

And for all Harper’s chaos, his results have been incredible. Even if Elijah recovers before the end of the season, they might choose to keep Harper anyway. They might even select him over Elijah for next season. It’s unthinkable.

The only person I want to talk about this with is Elise, and she’s not here. She’s also got so much on her plate already that I don’t want to add to her burden. It feels like Jackson and I are building a real friendship, but he’s still the son of my boss and I clearly have trust issues.

‘Ready for bench press?’ I ask. I want to get this workout done so I can face whatever shitshow Harper has waiting in the motorhome while I’ve still got the will to live.

But, when Jackson and I are done and I eventually get back to the motorhome, Johannes is in the living room, and Hendersohm catering containers are scattered across the floor. They’ve both got their feet on the coffee table and they’re playing videogames on full volume.

‘Really?’ I ask, wiping my feet on the team-branded welcome mat. I know I sound like a nag, but I can’t hide the annoyance in my tone. It’s one thing being out and about with Johannes, but another bringing the competition into our current home where he could catch a glimpse of sensitive team documents or overhear any kind of calls.

‘Nice to see you too, Kian,’ Johannes replies, unconcerned.

‘Nothing against you, Johannes, but just wondering if you could maybe take him to puppy-training classes, cos I’m sick of living with someone who isn’t house-trained.’

‘I’m right here, you know,’ Harper says, like I could possibly ignore him.

‘I’m going to take a nap before the strategy meeting. Is there any chance you could keep it down in here for the next hour?’ It’s a long shot, but as I’m being nice enough to ask, maybe he’ll be polite enough to oblige.

Harper says, ‘Yeah, sure,’ but neither of them is looking at me as they continue to compete in whatever pointless bullshit shooting game they’re playing. The volume stays exactly where it was.

For fuck’s sake.

I’m so bloody close to losing it with him.