Her room in the hotel is more lavish than she had expected. The fine white linen of the bed sheets and the spares neatly arranged in a little square like a parcel gift, upstanding halogen bulbs on gold platform sconces hanging either side like wedding veils, the table of old teakwood freshly varnished. The smell of jasmine in the air. From the window she can see half of Interlagos glow against the simmering of the evening sun like a melting pastel canvas, the washedout greys of the chalky sky and the hue of the Pinheiros river like an oil painting and the roofs glinting in the eye of the sun. But most of her view is the track. It’s barely even a mile away.

Once she’s sorted out her belongings she spends a while just watching it all. Trying to formulate some reality in which all of this makes sense. She’s six points behind Irene and there are only two and a half months left in the season. The mathematics of that fact are almost overwhelming. She stands there with her hands on the balcony railing not really knowing what to think. The sun bleeds away like a diffused coal and she’s still there. She doesn’t know if she’ll win or if she even can. If she has the capability to outdrive Irene in the second half of the season or if it’s just as Wendy said it would be. All she knows is that barring a catastrophe, second place is hers. But second isn’t a win. Second doesn’t get to hoist that trophy to the howl of the crowd in Korea in ten weeks’ time.

It’s nine in the evening when she makes her way down to the motorhome in the parkinglot. Wendy and a couple of the other mechanics are sat around talking about the last-minute preparations for the practice sessions in the morning. They say hi to Seulgi and she says hi back as if she’s in a trance. It all feels so very strange. She goes straight to the simulator room and loads up everything and puts in a good thirty laps. None of them are excellent but none are as bad as America either. It’s like she’s on autopilot almost. The motions spring up and she runs through them because she must.

Friday is always different. The atmosphere changes overnight, every time without fail. At the track the garage is alive with sound and the crowd only just now filling the stands sit waiting for something magical and the first engine sound has them on their feet straining to catch a better view. Seulgi straps on her gloves and adjusts her helmet and tries to calm herself. She isn’t thinking about Irene at all. She rarely does on race weekends at the track. It’s only in the moments in between, the tender times alone, in the evening post-practice or once qualifying is over or in the brief hours after the race before they’ve got to head out for their early-morning flights, that she resorts to that helpless stargazing state of fugue, where all she can think about is: Irene, Irene, Irene.

Wendy taps her on the shoulder and makes her turn around. She’s already smiling. ‘Are you good?’ she asks.

‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

‘We’re expecting big things out of you this weekend. The aero package is all fixed and ready for you now. The downforce should be incredible.’

‘What about the Samsungs?’

‘They’ve still got the straight-line speed,’ Wendy says a little gravely. ‘But that’s to be expected. They’ve got the better PU. It’s the corners where we’ve always shined, and with this new aero stuff? Should be a really close fight. Especially with your driving out there.’

‘We’ll see,’ Seulgi says. It’s more to herself than anything. A handful of the cars from further down the garage are already pulling out onto the track for their outlaps. Joy’s in her cockpit adjusting her steeringwheel. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid this time,’ Wendy says.

‘What, like get out of my car again?’

‘Like exactly that.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’

‘Good. And good luck, cowboy.’

Dynamite.

She feels the full weight of that moniker when she’s out there during the first session. The morning sun is cool on her back and the car is responsive like nothing she’s ever driven before. Wendy was right. The downforce is drastically different. It lets her brake ever so slightly later and get on the power a fraction of a second faster and power out with such ease compared to America. Everything feels smooth again. The Senna S slips by and Curva do Sol is a breeze and even the tight braking for Descida do Lago at turn four feels better than it ever did in the sims. She pulls into the garage fifteen minutes later to find Wendy with her arms folded poring over one of the boards at the back of the room. It’s her in first and Joy in second and the Samsungs after that.

‘Well,’ Seulgi says. Wendy only nods to the names and times. ‘Half a second?’

‘Half a second,’ Wendy says.

‘How is that possible? I thought the Samsungs had the better car.’

‘They’re sandbagging.’

‘Sure. But by that much?’

Wendy looks at her with a terse pursing of the lips. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.’

‘I can go faster. I know I can.’

‘Be my guest.’

It isn’t in the second stint of practice that they find out. The Samsungs have improved their times but Seulgi’s still a good four tenths of a second faster than both of them and faster than Joy too. ‘I think you’re right,’ she says. ‘They’re not giving it everything they’ve got.’

‘No point, really. Might as well wait until tomorrow. Give us a false sense of security.’

‘What do we do?’

‘What can we do? Race, I suppose.’

Seulgi only nods. She takes one last look at the times. The crowd on the hill across the main straight look like miniatures in the afternoon sun. She wanders down the pitlane in search of Irene but Irene’s already halfway back to the hotel. Seulgi lingers long enough to take a couple pictures and sign some autographs and give a few interviews to the media and then she takes off back to the hotel. She doesn’t go searching for Irene. That can wait. The first thing she does is hop into the sim and practice like it may be her last time.

In the final practice session on Saturday morning she sets a new lap record. Then four minutes later Irene breaks it by one tenth of a second.

‘How?’ Seulgi says, coasting the car around Pinheirinho corner and down for Bico de Pato. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We were right. They were sandbagging yesterday.’

‘How do they have much speed left to give? It’s ridiculous.’

‘Yeah, well. Just focus on qualifying for now.’

The first two rounds of qualifying come and go easily. None of the top drivers ever push their cars before they have to and Seulgi’s the same. She qualifies in second place both times, just behind Irene. It’s in the final round that she hammers the accelerator and grips the wheel just that bit tighter. Every corner just a little faster, squeezing out everything possible from the new downforce. The grip is incredible. The tires don’t slide even an inch. America feels like a lifetime ago. ‘Okay,’ Wendy burbles across the radio. ‘Okay, keep it up.’

She never tells Seulgi if she’s leading or not during qualifying in case it distracts her and Seulgi’s thankful for that. She flies past Merghulo and the crowd cheer her on. Then it’s Junção and Subida dos Boxes for the final straight at nearly two hundred miles per hour. She can feel the wind even through her helmet. It ruffles in her suit and down the back of her neck. The car trembles with every ounce of speed gained. Like it might come apart at any minute. She crosses the line and slows immediately for her cooldown lap and Wendy is silent in her ear. ‘Well?’ Seulgi asks. The crowd are still cheering. ‘How was it?’

Silence a while. Then: ‘You did a one seven point one. Congrats, Seulgi. That’s a new lap record. Again.’

She gives a little fistbump in the air. It occurs to her she’s breathing much harder than usual. Perhaps it’s the desire to show Irene again just what she’s made of, as if she might have forgotten after the disastrous distraction that was America. She stops the car in the garage and climbs out and checks the boards before Wendy has a chance to say anything to her. She’s on pole position. Irene’s in second. Then it’s Joy and Yeri and all the others as usual. ‘Pole,’ Wendy says. ‘Congrats. I knew you could do it.’

She hugs Wendy and checks the times again. It’s close, but that doesn’t matter. She’s first anyway. On her way out Joy congratulates her with a hug and she waves to the crowd and gives a little show before it’s back to the hotel. She showers and changes and goes to find Irene before her hair has even dried properly. Maybe it’s a little presumptive or overeager but the truth is she can never think straight when it comes to Irene and this is no different. She finds her sat out in the hotel garden at one of the tables watching the night. She’s wearing a widebrimmed sunhat and a lemoncoloured shirt and she looks so palely beautiful Seulgi has to stop in the doorway a minute and just look at her from a distance. As if to go any closer might return her to some less real origin forever. But then she turns around and catches Seulgi staring and smiles and says, ‘Something in your eye?’

‘Hi.’

Irene waves her over. They sit at the table under the shade of a parasol and smile at each other like figures who can do nothing but smile. ‘Congrats on pole,’ Irene says with a grin.

‘Thank you.’

‘You looked really fast out there.’

‘So did you. After yesterday, I mean. Were you sandbagging?’

‘Secret.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘If I could give anything away, you’d be the first person I’d give it away to. But I can’t. It’s against the rules. Plus, if it helped anyone but me or Yeri win, that’d be unethical, no?’

‘I suppose so.’

She makes a gesture as if to say: There you go, then.

Seulgi just watches her across the table. There’s so much she wants to say but it’s impossible because in truth she doesn’t know what exactly it is. Just a coagulation of jumbled thoughts in her head and none of them want to come out. So she sits there studying Irene with an apprehensive smile and then Irene shifts on the bench and says, ‘Nice day today.’

‘Yeah. It’s alright.’

‘Sorry. I’m not really very good with small talk. I know I’ve said that before but it’s true. I’m actually pretty awful at it.’

‘It’s okay. I’m not the best either.’

‘If I’m not talking about motorsport I don’t really have anything interesting to say, you know? And I can’t really talk about that twenty-four-seven without people getting bored of me. Not that I talk to many people or anything. But yeah.’

She looks at Seulgi and looks down at her hands folded on the table. ‘I’m leaving at five AM on Monday morning,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Don’t know why I told you that. I guess it’s just the only thing I’ve got to talk about.’

‘Why so early?’

‘We’ve got some stuff to be doing back in Korea before we head off to Monaco.’

‘Secret stuff?’

‘Secret-ish.’

‘I’m not leaving until Tuesday,’ Seulgi says. ‘Got a meeting Monday afternoon, so we’re all sticking around for that.’

‘A secret meeting?’

Seulgi giggles. ‘I guess so.’

‘To do with the car?’

‘If I told you that, it wouldn’t be a secret.’

‘Fair play.’

‘I’m sorry about what happened in America, by the way.’

‘You said that last time.’

‘Yeah, but still.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Irene says. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Like I said, these things happen. You can’t change it. Can’t go back. The best thing to do is to look forward, to keep your head up. I’m more upset for all the others, to be honest, especially Yeri. She was taking it pretty hard for a while.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It wasn’t her fault, though.’

‘I know. I think she knows that as well, but when you see something like that, you’re first instinct is to shoulder the blame. Even if you know it’s a freak accident, you can’t help but feel responsible.’

‘Is she okay now?’

‘She’s fine. She’s a smart kid. Got her head screwed on right. Might even be a champion one day, once I’m retired.’

‘What about me?’

‘What about you?’

Seulgi’s about to reply when she catches the hint of mischief in Irene’s grin. ‘Rude,’ she says. ‘I could still beat you this season, you know?’

‘Imagine that.’

‘I won’t have to for much longer,’ Seulgi replies, and she likes to think it’s the truth. The determination both to prove the world wrong and to make Irene proud is what drives her forward, strange as it may seem. The desire to do better than her best. To live up to all the nicknames and the press releases and the hype over her debut. To stand up on that podium in Korea and look out over the crowd and see Irene smiling at her. She thinks that might be worth almost as much as the trophy itself. Maybe exactly as much.

Pole position is a feeling like nothing else. She sees only the lights and the crowd and the cameras. Everything else is irrelevant in her rearview mirror. The engines rev and the car hums and even stationary the car feels smoother than it did in America. She smiles behind her helmet. This one is going to be a good one. Might even be the best.

‘Remember what we talked about,’ Wendy says.

‘Two-stop strategy. Yeah.’

‘Alright. Good luck.’

She catches a brief glimpse of Irene in second beside her and smiles involuntarily. She's wearing a different helmet than usual today. It's a bright yellow with the number 12 painted on the side.

The first three lights come on and she holds her breath. All the world seems to slip away again. The thrill is almost indescribable. When all five lights go out she’s on the accelerator so quick it’s inhuman. Her start is incredible but somehow Irene’s is even better. By the first corner they’re neck and neck and fighting for the lead as they have been so many times before. The difference now is that the Samsung might have her pipped on the straights but the new downforce gives her so much grip through the corners. She eases around Curva do Sol in first and Irene is wheel to wheel with her going along Reta Oposta and then when braking for Descida do Lago Seulgi takes the lead again. It’s only a slight but it doesn’t matter. By the end of the second lap she’s comfortably a half second ahead of the rest of the field.

‘Ten laps,’ Wendy reminds her. The softs are worn from qualifying but they still feel good. She takes Ferradura and Curva do Laraninha faster than she’s ever taken them before. The car sails by. One hundred and then one hundred and forty and then her foot is on the brakes and it’s down to sixty in no time at all and her head is rattling. When she glances at the rearview mirror Irene is right there behind her again. The other cars are a few seconds back. She powers out of Merghulo still in the lead and the static cuts in and Wendy says, ‘That was a purple sector back there. Just keep it up now.’

By lap seven she’s two seconds ahead but her hands are still clammy and her heart still pounding. The two-stop is a risky strategy. If they time it wrong, Irene’s lead will be too insurmountable. But if they’re right with the times, the new tires will give her the lead within a dozen laps again. On the straight at Reta Oposta on lap eleven Irene grabs DRS and tries to shoot up the inside and Seulgi swerves to cut her off just in time to watch her fall back a slight in the mirror for the corner up ahead. The crowd are on their feet again. The fact that her season-long fight with Irene is the most entertaining part to them isn’t lost on her.

‘Okay,’ Wendy mutters. ‘Box this lap. Box this lap.’

She pulls into the pits on the main straight and watches Irene cruise by into the lead. The new mediums are on in about three seconds. She pulls out of the pitlane in third and curses under her breath. Three seconds is half a second too long. ‘Just focus,’ Wendy says, as if knowing already. ‘You’ve still got this.’

By the time of her second pitstop on lap forty-three she’s closed the gap to only about two seconds. This time it’s better. She’s still comfortably in second on the next lap when Wendy breaks up the howl of the engine to say, ‘She’s just boxed this lap. Give it everything you’ve got.’

‘How much time do I have?’

‘You’ve got about two seconds to make up. You can do this.’

Two seconds is absurd but sometimes the absurd is what she needs. She flattens the apex at Bico de Pato and powers away hard on the accelerator and Wendy says, ‘You’ve just put in another purple sector. Amazing. That’s what we need.’

The turns come again and again. She speeds down the main straight and catches sight of Irene coming out of the pits at the far end. It’s going to be close. That much is for sure. Two seconds is a lot of time. She’s hard down on the accelerator in eighth gear and Irene starts speeding up at the end of the pitlane and Seulgi realizes just how close it’s going to be. The mistake comes only half a second later. She brakes late for the Senna curves and locks up the front wheels and loses only a moment of time but a moment is long enough for Irene to get back up to speed and retake the lead.

‘,’ she mutters.

‘It’s okay,’ says Wendy. ‘You’ve still got this. You still made up about a second and a half. Just keep your head down.’

The gap is so small that when they brake Seulgi has to weave to avoid running into Irene’s backend. That the Apex is faster in the corners is obvious now. They’re neck and neck for another ten laps. At Descida do Lago on lap fifty-eight Seulgi hurls down the inside and brakes late and almost loses it and Irene extends the gap by half a second again.

‘Easy,’ Wendy says in her ear. ‘Don’t get overconfident. Just drive like you normally drive. No need for that.’

Yeah, she tells herself. Maybe she’s right. She puts in her best lap time on lap sixty-two. It’s only a moment later that Wendy tells her it’s a new track record. On the main straight she has DRS and the car surges forward in a huge of air and the downforce is so powerful the back of the car presses into the road when she brakes for the turn. The titanium underboard kicks up a shower of sparks and the fans gasp and Seulgi slips down the inside line and into first only for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she says to herself. Half a lap later Irene’s alongside her again.

‘Come on,’ Wendy says. ‘Hang in there.’

There are seventy-one laps. By lap sixty-six they’re still dead even. Irene barely has the straights but Seulgi has the corners easily. They’re both side by side going into Descida do Lago again and Seulgi brakes a slight later and retakes the lead to the roar of the crowd in the grandstands. It isn’t until she foots the accelerator again coming out of the corner that she first realizes the car isn’t doing anything. She hears the engine whine slow and dim very suddenly. Irene sails past her into first and down to the turn at Ferrardura and then she’s nothing but a faint figure in the afternoon sun. She’s doing almost two hundred miles an hour and Seulgi’s only doing sixty, then fifty, then thirty-five.

‘Oh no,’ she mutters. ‘Oh no no no. Wendy. Wendy what's happening?’

She guides the car gently onto the grass at the side of the track. ‘Wendy. Wendy, tell me what’s happening?’

The silence is awful. Even the engine is dead silent. Then Wendy says solemnly: ‘Engine failure.’

‘What? Are you kidding me?’

‘I’m sorry, Seulgi.’

‘What can I do?’

‘It’s over. We have to retire the car.’

‘No. No, I can’t—’

‘Turn everything off, please. P-zero. That’s P-zero. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m so close, Wendy. So close.’

‘I know. I’m so sorry.’

Part of it isn’t even the losing. It’s the truth that she still hasn’t had the opportunity to race Irene on an even playing field. Bahrain and Japan and Britain, Irene had car issues. China and America, she crashed. Belgium was the rain. As she watches the last of the cars cross the line to the frenzy of the crowd she thinks about that for a while. Then she goes back inside where the cameras can’t catch her crying.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Wendy says.

‘I could’ve had it. I had it in me to beat her, I just know it. And then that.’

‘I know. It’s just one of those things that happens.’

‘I really felt it this weekend.’

‘I know,’ Wendy says again, hand on her shoulder.

‘I don’t think I can race like that again. It took everything out of me.’

‘You’ll have your chance in Monaco. And then in Korea.’

Seulgi looks back out at the simmering day. They’re already lining up the podium stands for the celebration. Irene in first and then Yeri and then one of the Renaults but the difference between Irene and everyone else is so great it might as well have been a one-car race. ‘I could’ve had it,’ she whispers again, to nobody. ‘I really could’ve had it today.’

The podium ceremony lasts until just after five in the evening. Seulgi stays around to watch Irene smile for the cameras and thank her team and she leaves only when the interview crews begin to surround her. The first thing she does when she’s back at the hotel is go straight to the motorhome and load up the sim and log in a couple warmup laps to try and calm herself down but it’s almost impossible. Her hands are still shaking. She isn’t crying but it’s not for want of trying. Logic dictates she should be practicing Monte Carlo but she loads up Interlagos and drives around it again and again, each lap with absolute concentration. As if the act of doing so may reverse the events of the day. She racks up a few good times and a few bad ones but she finishes every one of them. No breakdowns. No engine failures mere minutes before the finish line.

It’s almost eleven when the knock at the door comes. She thinks at first it’s Wendy turning in for the night but it’s three light raps and then a pause and then a final knock and she’s up and turning off the sim before she even realizes it.

The look on Irene’s face when she answers is part concern and part worry and it almost sets Seulgi off again. ‘Hey,’ she says.

‘Hi.’

She just stands there a moment. In one hand is an unopened bottle of wine and in the other two glasses stolen from the hotel’s minibar. In truth there isn’t much she can say. She holds up the glasses and smiles a lopsided smile. ‘Figured you could do with some cheering up,’ she says. ‘Can I come in? Unless you’re—’

‘I’m not busy.’

They sit down the far end of the bus around the table. ‘You’re the only one here?’ Irene says.

‘Yeah. I normally am. Everybody else sleeps at the hotel. This is mainly for practice and stuff. Is it not the same with yours?’

‘We’ve got two buses. So, kinda.’

Seulgi nods. Irene unscrews the top of the wine bottle and pours two half glasses and passes one to Seulgi. They toast and drink. It’s a fruity red with floral undertones and it makes Seulgi wince but it’s a good wince. ‘Where did you get this?’ she says.

‘I just asked for it at the bar. I don’t even know what it is. I don’t speak Portuguese.’

Seulgi sips at her wine. They sit there in silence for some time but it’s a good silence. It isn’t an awkward wait for someone to broach the quiet with small talk because neither of them want that and both are very much aware of it. So they drink. Irene shimmies out of her jacket and drapes it over the back of the couch seat and Seulgi has to try unreasonably hard not to start at the V of her collarbones, the pale of her chest, the delicate alcoholic wineblush of her cheeks when she’s a glass down and pouring them both another.

‘I’m sorry about what happened today,’ Irene says. ‘Really, I am.’

‘Thanks. I was so close.’

‘That’s always the worst part. When you’re only a couple laps away from the finish and you know you’ve got it within your sights and then just, yeah. I’ve been there before, believe me.’

‘Spa 2016.’

‘Yeah. You remember?’

‘I was watching it live.’

‘Man,’ Irene says, grimacing at the memory. ‘Forty-four laps and I break down on lap forty-three. I don’t think there’s anything worse.’

‘.’

‘That it does.’ She looks at the quivering of Seulgi’s gaze and sets her glass down and offers a wan smile. It isn’t much but it’s a help nonetheless. Just the truth of her presence is a gentle offering of support. ‘I’m really sorry,’ Irene says. Seulgi only smiles in return.

‘It’s okay. You know what I just thought, though?’

‘What?’

‘This kind of makes us even again, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you crashed in America, and I finished first. Then I broke down today, and you won. So, it’s as if the last two races never happened. We’re right back where we were.’

‘Suppose you’re right.'

'Nice helmet today, by the way.'

'You saw it?'

'On the start grid. The number twelve.'

'I figured I'd do something to show my respect. I like to think it brought me the luck to win today.'

'It wasn't luck.'

'It was a bit, with you breaking down and all.'

'You were faster even before that.'

'Maybe,' Irene says. She studies Seulgi for a long time. As if trying to gauge something from the way she sits there. To Seulgi she is almost unreadable. Only when she smiles does it give away anything at all. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she says. ‘Or, a couple of ideas. But I don’t know if you’ll like them.’

‘What are your ideas?’

‘Can I have a go in the sim?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Why not? I want to see if it feels the same as ours.’

‘It’s the exact same.’

‘I know, but the setups might be different. Definitely will be.’

Seulgi looks at her for a moment. Perhaps it’s the wine or perhaps Irene feels emboldened in her presence but Seulgi’s never seen her like this before. This comfortable and charming. ‘I guess,’ Seulgi says, and the smile she’s rewarded with tells her immediately it was the correct decision. She loads up the console and logs into the sim and lets Irene sit in the chair and adjust the wheel and the pedals. The room is a small en-suite, nothing to it but the enormous monitor on the back wall and the console in the corner and the chair and accessories. And a half-eaten packet of peanut M&Ms on the table by the door. Irene shifts about and runs her hands over the wheel and tests the pedals under the weight of her feet. ‘Well?’ Seulgi says.

‘I mean, it’s about what I expected. Can I do a couple laps?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Okay,’ Irene giggles. ‘I might be a little tipsy, so forgive me.’

‘Already?’

‘I’m a lightweight.’

‘Clearly.’

She loads up the Chinese Grand Prix and selects her settings and acclimatizes herself to the environment fully. ‘Why this one?’ Seulgi says.

‘Figured I might as well, since I never got chance in real life.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

Irene only laughs. Perhaps she is a little drunk. The gentle pink tinge of her cheeks tells Seulgi that is a definite possibility. She watches the change in Irene’s demeanor when the game loads and the lights come on and the engine spools into life. All that sluggish meandering slips away. It’s just her and the car and the track. The determination in her eyes is almost frightening. She eases past the first four corners and down the straight and Seulgi stands there just watching her. The image of the game twinned like a distortion in her eyes. She’s fast even in someone else’s sim. Then on turn twelve she loses control and the back end slips out and the car crashes into the barrier and is ruined.

Irene giggles again. The expression on her face is like a switch. She takes her hands off the wheel and looks at Seulgi and shrugs. ‘Told you I’m a bit tipsy,’ she says. ‘But hey, at least I got further than in real life, right?’

‘Very funny.’

‘You want a go?’

Seulgi shakes her head. ‘I’d just do the same thing,’ she says.

‘Bin it into a wall?’

‘Something like that.’

Irene reaches over and turns off the console and sits back in the chair again. The silence is almost tangible. The dimness of the room. Just the two of them. They watch each other with a wary circumspection like strangers meeting for the first time on thin ice. As if the wrong word or action may serve only to divide them back into some more wretched state neither of them wants to acknowledge. The look in Irene’s eyes is almost telling in and of itself. What she needs and what she cannot voice. When she breaks the quiet it’s in a voice barely her own. ‘Come with me,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘I know somewhere we can go.’

‘Where?’

She doesn’t bother responding. By the time Seulgi’s grabbed her jacket and the bus keys Irene is already out the door. The night is long and cool. The thin moon lies swaged against the cloudbanks far to the west and stars fill the roof of the world like nightwriting and a faint wind blows in their jackets. The parkinglot is empty, the hotel also. Irene never says a word. Seulgi follows her all the way back through the lobby and out across the road and down the longbanked hill to the racetrack. The fences are of a thin mesh a good ten feet high. The white of the floodlights along the side of the straight look like clinicians’ lights in the dark. ‘What are you doing?’ Seulgi says.

Irene lodges a foot in one of the mesh holes and tests the weight of it with her hands against the fence.

‘What are you doing?’

She looks at Seulgi with a smile so genuine and childlike. ‘There’s supposed to be a fireworks display at midnight tonight.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Across the river. Come on.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To watch it.’

‘We’re not allowed in there.’

‘So?’ Irene says. ‘Who’s going to find out?’

‘Are you serious? They’ve got cameras.’

‘Who cares. Live a little.’

She lofts herself a couple steps up in the mesh and grasps a hold of the fence and pulls herself up. Seulgi watches her climb and swing one leg over to straddle the top of the fence and slowly drop herself down foot by careful foot until they’re separated by the very mesh itself. She looks at Seulgi with a rather endearing brand of mischief playing in her floodlit eyes. ‘Come on,’ she whispers.

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Maybe a little. It’s nearly midnight. We’ll miss it.’

‘Where are you planning on going? It’s a racecourse.’

Irene nods towards one of the small inclines behind the pit garages and the tight corner at the far end. ‘We can see it from there,’ she says. ‘Come on.’

‘I thought you had a flight at 5AM tomorrow.’

‘I’ll get another one.’

‘What? Don’t you have a meeting?’

‘I don’t care. I’d rather be here with you.’

Seulgi studies her for a moment for any sign of wavering in that confidence but no such thing exists. Just a harmless and brilliant smile urging her on. She doesn’t know whether it’s the right thing to do or not, only that her feet are already moving for her. It’s one foot in the mesh for balance and then her hands reaching up and climbing steadily to the top and hefting herself over to the other side. ‘It’s okay,’ Irene says. ‘I’ll catch you if you fall. Unless you’re heavy.’

‘My knight in shining armour.’

She lowers herself onto the grass and takes a moment to look around. Perhaps there are cameras. Perhaps not. She was only saying it for the sake of saying it. What is the truth is that it is very illegal and Irene doesn’t seem to care. She descends down along the side of the track and crosses over by the end of the main straight and leads Seulgi up onto the rise of the hill behind the garages. From there they can just about make out Pinheiros river to the east. The low shapes of hills and houses and the nestled trees like stalks of enormous broccoli in the moondappled light. Somewhere out there beyond the river the people talk among themselves and small bonfires light the waterside like signal beacons and all otherwise and without is quiet to a fault and only the wind is there to remind them of what is real and what is surely not. Irene sits on the neat trimmed grass and stretches her legs out in front of her and pats for Seulgi to join her. Dirt and small rocks and other such things. They sit with their legs in front of them waiting in silence. They wait for a long time.

It is one minute after midnight when the first firework erupts. The brightness of it is astonishing. They watch like children transfixed with the thought of something greater. Twinned in their eyes the shapes of things that become more magical by circumstance. A burst of fireworks explodes in the dark with a series of tinny pops that sound like tennis balls. Hot ropes of glycerin run against the painted canvas of the night and fall and slip and are lost. Greater ones form with the stars. The new heavens receding, streams pale as the nightstar. Gaudy ephemera retreating slantwise into the void, their shapeless shapes wicked and distorted in the penumbra of their own smouldering doing. Out there they are cheering and they are happy. Seulgi rests her hands on her knees and watches with agape and a smile on her lips. She never looks at Irene. Another ripple of fireworks skitters up coilwise and snaking and bursts in a ribbon of colour, superheated spectra running against the cold. It smells of zinc and gunpowder and faintly of smoke. You can almost taste it on your tongue. A trident of streamers explodes in a flurry of pops and Seulgi feels Irene shift and Irene’s hand take her own very gently and without a word. So cold and raw and tender. They don’t say anything because there is nothing to say. Nothing that could be said. She locks her fingers together with Irene’s and clasps her hand tight against her knee and smiles and the fireworks twin in her glassy eyes like fragments of a dream and are lost again and again forever and it is her and Irene and nothing but. There is no racing, no championship, no points, wins or losses, crashes or near crashes, blunders and breakdowns, failures, victories. There is just the ecstasy of the night in its becoming. The moon and the shapes of the stars and the fireworks forming out of the dark some semblance of a purer light and Irene and Seulgi hand in hand. There is nothing else. Just Irene and Seulgi, alone, forever and a day.