Page 1 of Retrograde

‘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 he burrowed.

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 his actual child 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 an IEC 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.

Faith had shown everyone that Bea had a very different side to her, despite the reputation she’d gained from entertaining the drivers in the bedroom and spending their money like it was going out of fashion.

Julien included. That phase of her life was the unfortunate result of a mountain of insecurity that came with being thrown into the lifestyle of the rich and famous with little time to prepare.

But even Faith’s influence couldn’t deter her from dressing to the nines everywhere she went.

‘We all know Gabriel is scared of her,’ Faith laughed.

‘Esme is at a team event for Eden Racing so she’ll be here later in the week.’

‘I miss her, it’s a shame we can’t have her on our team too.’ Faith pouted.

Esme was the newest addition to their circle.

She had always been around but on the outskirts.

Because she did social media for an opposing team, she never had much reason to hang around with Revolution.

That was until Faith, Bea and Lucie saw her potential and got to know her a little more over the course of last season, and decided to bring her on board as their fourth business partner for Girls Off Track.

She was softly spoken and shy when she wasn’t in work mode, and she was several years younger than the rest of them who were all in their late twenties or early thirties now, but she just fit in with the group.

She had the same work ethic, ethos and determination to bring more women into motorsport that they all shared.

She was also willing to put up with the chaos that followed the Revolution drivers, Brett especially, and wasn’t easily embarrassed by their antics.

‘You saw her last week.’ Lucie rolled her eyes. ‘You spent hours traipsing around London, looking at wallpaper samples for the office bathrooms.’

The Girls Off Track London office was the next chapter in their growing endeavour, and decorating it had almost been more stressful than getting the programme up and running, but a nice kind of stress.

Some of the hardest decisions they had to make were based on colour schemes and cushion textures and seating layouts, not ‘how many podcast guests can we afford this quarter’ or ‘where’s our next workshop going to be?

’ That had all fallen into place easily as the company grew.

So, when Bea had suggested a stereotypical pink colour scheme for the entire office, they had all agreed because it was a fun colour to work with.

They had even bagged a pink racing car to display in the foyer.

It had been a gift from one of the female-run IEC teams, who had jumped at the chance to be able to contribute to a cause so close to their heart.

They wanted women to walk into their office and be wowed by bold prints and the eclectic look of the place with lush green velvet sofas and brass lamps, to feel less like they’d stepped into a formal meeting space and more like they were having coffee and cake in their living room.

It allowed for creative freedom and frankly, Lucie thought the men of the motorsport industry should take notes.

How did anyone come up with ground-breaking ideas while staring at blank, white walls?

Where was the inspiration? Well, clearly they managed, but she liked their way of doing things far better.

The podcast now had a designated studio space, with equipment that had made Lucie’s eyes almost fall out of her head when she saw the price.

Faith, the expert on sound recording and new technology, had insisted this was what they needed, but Lucie had struggled to grasp why they couldn’t just use the portable equipment they’d been working with up until now.