AUTHOR'S NOTE: 6 more chapters to go! Enjoy :)

Chapter Theme:

Penguin Prison - Show Me The Way

By Monaco it’s all but said and done.

Perhaps it’s the glamour of it all. Monaco has always been her favourite place, with or without Seulgi. It’s a weekend to remember in the act of forgetting, too drunk on thousand-dollar wine to piece together more than fragments of glitz-soaked evenings in fancy restaurants. The only city she’s even moderately comfortable in getting drunk in. Places like the Hermitage. Wines like Chateau. Hotels like the one where Seulgi leant forward with all the courage in the world and changed them both irreversibly and forever. She smiles at that. Her bags are sent up to her room in the Beau Rivage, overlooking the circuit sleeping outside, and she’s still smiling.

It’s just after ten in the evening when she gets the text from Wheein asking her to come downstairs. She’s stood in the lobby with her arms folded when Irene goes down and waves to her and calls her over. ‘What’s up?’ she says.

‘Nothing. Just thought I’d see how you were feeling before practice tomorrow. See if you’re still as good as you were in Singapore.’

‘Better,’ Irene says, and it’s the truth.

‘How was Korea? Did you do anything exciting?’

‘Only to me. It wouldn’t make sense if I told it to you.’

‘Try me.’

‘I went for a long night drive. Like, six hours. And then I did it again the next night, just to clear my head. Then I saw a few friends I haven’t spoken to in years. Then I had a meeting with the Tommy Hilfiger people about these shoes I’ve been putting together with them. Seems it’s all coming together on that front.’

‘Yeah?’

Irene nods, smiling proudly. ‘With any luck they’ll be released to the public on a limited run in December, and then restocked around February time. To keep demand high.’

‘Never knew you were a shoe person.’

‘Neither did I until I decided to do it. But I love it. I think I love a lot of things I’ve never actually known about. Too busy spending all my life devoted to racing and everything to do with racing. Never any time for anything else.’

Wheein just looks at her. The solemn understanding in her eyes is enough of an answer already. It tells Irene she’s aware of how all-consuming Formula 1 has been in her life, her love and her passion and her anger and her spirit, her every waking moment, and then some. ‘I’m glad to see you like this,’ Wheein says. ‘Really, I am.’

‘Me too. I feel good for tomorrow. I feel like it’s all going to work out. And if it doesn’t, at least I’ve tried.’

‘It’s not like you to say that.’

‘I know. I must’ve changed.’

‘An awful lot. I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not. I’m leaning on saying yes. Unless you crash out in qualifying tomorrow or something. In which case, maybe it’s time to ditch Seulgi for good.’

‘What—’

‘I’m kidding, relax. You’re cute together. Or were, however you’d like me to put it.’

‘How do you know? You’ve seen us together, like, three times. And have you ever even talked to her?’

‘No,’ Wheein says. ‘Not once. But I bet we’d get along quite well. Maybe you should introduce us.’

‘Some other time, maybe.’

‘When you’re back together, you mean?’

To this Irene doesn’t both responding.

‘To answer your previous question, you seem different this year. Have been since the end of last year, before you even won the title. And I’m not talking about your performance or anything, or the racing, so don’t say anything. I just mean…I don’t know. I can’t describe it. You seem more at peace with yourself.’

‘Believe me, I don’t think I am. Although I’m getting there.’

‘I meant away from the racing. Away from the winning and the losing, however you want to classify it. Forget all that for a minute. But you, as a person, as you are right now, you seem more at peace with things. Like there’s a weight lifted off your shoulders. Like you’re more…relatable, I suppose?’

‘Thanks,’ Irene says flatly.

‘I didn’t mean it in a negative way. That came across wrong. Honestly, I’ve always liked you. You know that, even if we don’t meet much or anything. That’s just the sort of people we are – work colleagues. We both understand that. But you’ve mellowed out this year. You’ve become more…what’s the word?’

‘Human?’

‘Yeah,’ Wheein says with a content smile, as if the puzzle has pieced itself together on a whim. ‘That’s a good way to put it, I think, if a bit pretentious. Human. Now if only that can translate over into the racing as well.’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but it’s a long path. And I’m still on it.’

‘You can still win, you know.’

‘I know. All it takes is one bad race. Or even a couple average ones. The problem is, she’s not the person she was eighteen months ago. Hell, she’s not even the person she was six months ago in Baku, or in Bahrain. She’s better now. More confident, more assured, more…at peace, I guess you could say.’

‘Cool. Stealing my lines.’

‘It’s a pretty good description, honestly. I don’t know how I’m supposed to contend with that. I suppose all I can do is try. Maybe I should get some rest before tomorrow.’

‘That would be advisable, yeah.’

Wheein just looks at her. It occurs to Irene in a moment of awkwardness that standing in the middle of the lobby makes them look like intruders, like vagrants brought in the from the street by mistake. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she says, and heads on back to her room upstairs.

Her hotel room is only one floor up from Irene’s but Seulgi never catches sight of her before practice on Friday. Nor does she think about her much. It’s strange and it’s new and it makes her feel like an intrepid adventurer, in the very process of redefining what it means to be herself. Alone, without Irene. And yet oddly still the same person, just not quite whole. Better with her, but quite fine without her. And only three races to go.

The day outside is grim and cloudy and the sun has decided it best to hide and it smells of the sea and of oil and vaguely of champagne, as befitting Monaco. Seulgi adjusts the straps of her orange gloves. ‘Weather forecast still the same?’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Wendy, tablet in hand, ready to get going. ‘Sixty percent chance of rain this afternoon, fifty percent tomorrow, fifty percent for the race on Sunday.’

‘So, probably no rain at all, then.’

‘Probably. Is that a problem?’

‘Not at all. Was just wondering.’

‘Should be a good one this weekend,’ Wendy says. ‘Cars are pretty much even. Whatever they did to their aero seemed to have work, but it’s all about skill around here. You know that.’

‘Of course.’

‘You should be challenging for pole.’

‘I know,’ Seulgi says, climbing into the cockpit and checking her helmet and fixing in her steeringwheel. ‘I’ll never get used to how cramped it is in here.’

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’

‘I don’t know. On one hand, it can get pretty uncomfortable, but on the other, do I want to be getting comfortable in something like this? I feel like that would say a lot about me as a person. And I feel like I’d only end up getting complacent. So, who knows. Not me.’

‘You ready?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘Go get ‘em, champ.’

Seulgi checks the wheel and the pedals. Everything feels as it always does the first time she steps into the car on a weekend, new and exciting enough to have her heart racing before she’s even outside the garage. She heads out of the pitlane and slowly up the straight toward Massenet, past their shared accommodation at the Beau Rivage to her left, the great marble and limestone of it winking in the pale and distant sunlight, the white paintwork glimmering along the car’s nose cone like melting ice. On the inside of the halo device just in front of her head are the letters REVE newly printed in bright orange font, lest she forget.

‘Take it easy out there,’ Wendy says. ‘Get a feeling for the car. For how it feels in the slower corners. Don’t go too hard on the tires or anything. No point yet. We’ll be running race sims later, just to make sure we’ve got the data we need.’

The first image of Irene worms its way into her head when she’s barreling out of the tunnel and back into the dim and unwarm daylight, a brief vision of her smiling and looking on from the Samsung pit garage and waving out to Seulgi and then disappeared and gone for good. It’s so vivid and so sudden that Seulgi misses the braking point for the Nouvelle chicane and is forced to lock up and drive straight across it and down toward Tabac in a minor slipup. A lap later it hits her again in the same place, and then a third time as she exits the hairpin and down toward Portier again. On this final occasion it’s the memory of Irene’s car planted firmly into the safety wall from a year ago, the beginning of her downward spiral. The fuse had been lit but the charge dormant. Korea had been a momentary reprieve from her self-doubt.

The thought that strikes Seulgi reveals nothing she doesn’t already know but is clarifying nonetheless: Irene had been right. Last year was no indication of whether she was alright with losing or not. None at all. Going through the chicane again – this time having slowed well ahead of the braking point – she remembers their long conversation about that exact thing in Korea last year, merely days before the race. Where Irene had told her she was okay with losing because she had Seulgi and it was all fine and Seulgi was what she had been missing in her life all along, the puzzle minus one piece, the coldness of her beating heart.

But Irene had been right – she had not lost.

Korea had brought another championship title, another podium celebration, another year of victory. How could anyone possibly be entirely sure the opposite was also true? Nothing is ever set in stone until it has already occurred. Irene had won. Seulgi had lost. So the idea Irene was fine with losing and similarly that she would suffer no ill will toward Seulgi or self-flagellating misery or anything of the sort was to miss the point entirely – she never lost. In the denial of it, the emptiness of such a statement was confirmed.

It’s only Wendy’s voice amid the radio static that breaks her from this chain of discussion in her own head, to say briefly, ‘Fifteen minutes left in the session. We’ve got some good data from this. How is the track feeling?’

‘Track is good,’ Seulgi says, and it’s the truth. Monaco is great on Friday and better on Saturday and unbearable on Sunday. Too narrow to overtake, too close to life on the very edge of what is considered sanity. The walls are everywhere. There is no rest or reprieve from the stress of near-constant disaster. No last-minute maneuvers or divebombs like Bahrain or China or Brazil. It’s pole position or it’s lose.

‘You can come back in whenever you like,’ Wendy says. Slowly she eases the car down for the final lap and turns into the pits at Rascasse for the end of the session. She looks, only briefly, for Irene. But the Samsung is still out on the track and Seulgi pulls in beside Joy and thinks about her no more.

‘What did you do last night? Anything interesting?’

Irene shrugs. ‘Sim laps mostly,’ she says. ‘Here and there.’

‘I thought you didn’t like going in the simulator the night before racing.’

‘I don’t. But I didn’t have anything else to do. Normally I’d—’ she stops and looks at Wheein smiling with curiosity and decides to drop it.

‘What?’ Wheein says.

‘Nothing.’

‘You were going to say normally you’d be with Seulgi.’

‘Yes I was. Happy now?’

To that Wheein only smiles again. She passes Irene her blue helmet and Irene slots it over her hair and tucks her hair in and adjusts to the new feel of it. In truth the laps in the simulator served only as a sort of meditation, a midpoint between thinking about nothing and thinking about Seulgi, a minor distraction. ‘I can feel it,’ she says.

‘Feel what?’

‘Everything, if that makes sense.’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘I can feel it coming back to me. It’s weird. It’s like, the less I focus on the racing, the more I become focused on the racing. I expect that doesn’t make much sense either, but it’s how I’m feeling. It’s this strange place I’m in where it feels like my obsession with this was only holding me back from what I could be. And I know how stupid that sounds.’

‘Because you’ve already got four titles.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I mean. But I never…you know. Loved myself. Does that sound cliché and vague?’

‘A bit. But I get you. And now you do?’

‘I’m partway there. I just need time.’

‘Well,’ Wheein says, nodding and smiling her mischievous smile. ‘Time is all we’ve got, Irene. You want to know what I was busy doing last night?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Not a whole lot, as it turns out. I heard they were downstairs having a couple drinks but I didn’t join them.’

‘You never do.’

‘Neither did you until Seulgi came along.’

Irene shrugs shyly. Already a handful of cars from the other teams are pulling out of the pitlane in a howl of noise and setting off on their first qualifying laps. The crowd growing restless. Everything in Monaco has an air of expensiveness to it, even the spectators. The balconies of the private rooms at Beau Rivage packed with attractive models and CEOs hanging over the railings with Pina Coladas and dazzling Rolex watches. It isn’t raining but it looks like it might. Out in the harbor the billionaire superyachts look like origami shapes on a bed of crystalline.

‘Guess neither of us are into that sort of thing,’ Wheein says.

‘You know what? I think I just might be.’

‘Really now.’

‘Like I said, I’m getting to know myself better. New times, new me.’

Wheein looks at her in silence for a good while. Then she says, ‘Good for you. I mean it. Now do me a favour and get in that car, please.’

‘Yes boss.’

The first round of qualifying is simple enough. She coasts through in third place behind Yeri and Seulgi and adjusts a handful of settings on the steeringwheel to better get a feel for it all. One of her greatest strengths has always been her innate ability to adapt to any situation on the fly. During the second phase of qualifying she accidentally locks up the brakes going through Louis Chiron and moments later she’s already adjusted the brake bias by two percent and modified the differential settings on the LED display to counteract it for the next time it might happen.

‘Wheein,’ she says, slowing right down and letting the other cars go past. ‘Where am I?’

‘P4. Behind Yeri.’

‘And the Apexes?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Both of them,’ Wheein says. ‘They might have the slightest advantage out here today. Seems to suit their car very well.’

They each get time for two laps during the final round of qualifying, the one where it all counts. Her first lap is good but not spectacular, and for the first time in months the pressure feels as if it might throw her off balance. Her hands are shaking. Sitting in the pits listening to the engine idle and warming herself against the cold she closes her eyes and counts out ten languid breaths. Wheein leans over the halo and holds up a digital display of the timing board. Her lap wasn’t even good enough for fourth. Now Jennie is ahead of her.

‘You better make this one count,’ Wheein says. ‘This could be your championship decided here.’

The honesty with which she says it triggers something in Irene, the desire again to win, tempered in recent times by the possibility of losing, or perhaps more accurately time spent musing on what a loss could mean for her a person. Acceptable? Understandable? Or neither? Still figuring that one out, she mutters to no one. Still got time to go.

The big LED board beside the pitwall monitors reads two minutes in the session. ‘Alright,’ Wheein says. ‘Radio check. Not that you need it.’

‘Confirm.’

‘Make this one count.’

Her outlap is laborious, the weight of it immense. She’s quick around Rascasse and then smooth through Anthony Noghes at the final corner and the crowd are filming her and it’s five seconds until the start line and her last lap of the day. She’s the last car on circuit. The others are already somewhere along the circuit, feet to the floor. Seulgi among them. Make this one count, she says.

The next minute is like a minute spent racing in a dream. It’s Saint Devote and the straight up to Massenet and past their hotel and then suddenly it’s slowing at the hairpin to a crawl and flying out of the tunnel in a burst of painful light and throwing the car through Tabac and Louis Chiron to the cheering of the crowd. The rear of the car is uncharacteristically all over the place through Rascasse and again through Anthony Noghes and she has to fight at the wheel like Seulgi would to keep it under control but it’s blisteringly fast anyway. It’s a lap that has the crowd silent, a minute and ten seconds on the ragged edge of what can be done in a car, less than the width of a hair from the walls at all times, millimeters from the end of her championship hopes. Wheein is just as quiet in her ear. She crosses the line to a burst of energy and her hands are trembling and numbly cold and her heart like caged electric and a single bead of sweat falls into her left eye and has her wincing.

‘Well?’ she says.

Wheein is quiet a while longer.

‘Wheein.’

‘Knew you had it in you,’ she says proudly.

‘P1?’

‘You’re damn right P1. That’s pole position. What a lap.’

‘Who’s behind me?’

‘Well…everyone, really.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Seulgi’s P2. You wanna know the gap?’ Before she can reply Wheein says, ‘Three milliseconds.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Neck and neck. That was too close. Anyway, Yeri’s P3. Jennie must’ve put in a monster lap in the Renault because she’s P4 ahead of Joy.’

‘Alright,’ Irene says, not really listening. She waves to the crowd and pulls the car up in the podium spot and waves again with a great beaming smile on her face. Points are won tomorrow, but smiles are won right here, right now, with Seulgi watching on from the side as she gives the most enthusiastic interview of her year, arms folded over her chest, hair a mess, smiling just the same.

It’s the fancy VIP bar on the ground floor where she least expects to see Irene and the ground floor bar where she sees her anyway, coming in from the stairs across the room and scouting out a free spot at the countertop and ordering herself a Martini. She looks about absently, with a sort of idle appreciation of the beauty of Monaco, the glamour of her surroundings, hair swept behind her ears and palely dolled and so utterly beautiful that Seulgi has to catch her breath and stop herself from standing up and walking over and kissing her in front of the entire bar.

‘If you stare any longer you might get stuck like that,’ Joy says.

Seulgi looks at her across the table, acutely aware she’s blushing.

‘Are you still doing the whole apart-but-actually-together thing?’

‘We are apart,’ Seulgi says, as if convincing herself of it. ‘It’s a healthy separation.’

‘I never said it wasn’t.’

‘Where’s Wendy tonight?’

‘Shouldn’t you already know? She’s your engineer.’

‘Probably sleeping, then.’

‘Probably,’ Joy says. She sips her water and her eyes stray to the right of Seulgi for a moment.

‘Mind if I squeeze in?’ Seulgi hears. She turns to Jennie smiling at her politely with a little tilt of the head and scoots up to let her sit down.

‘Are you ordering anything?’ Joy asks.

Jennie shakes her head. ‘I just came to see where everyone was.’ And then, gazing out of the window, into the ringed shine of the streetlights along the circuit way: ‘This place is so gorgeous. I’ll never get over it.’

‘Congrats on outqualifying me today.’

‘Thanks. I put in a monster lap.’ She says to Seulgi, ‘Congrats on P2,’ and it takes her a moment to realise Seulgi’s eyes are on Irene at the bar again, still sat solo, still idly sipping her Martini. Jennie looks at Joy and Joy shrugs. As if to say: Ask me later, it’s a long story. It’s a while before anyone speaks. Seulgi’s gaze drifts from the bar to Joy and she smiles as if caught within some momentary lapsing dream and says softly, ‘I’m excited.’

‘For the race?’

‘Yeah. I think this is the day I realise I can finally do it. No more self-doubting, you know? And it sounds strange saying that. Sounds like that by saying it, I’m trying to convince myself of it. Like I’m trying to force it to be true, but I’m not. I genuinely feel like this is who I am now. I think the turning point was Austria. All I needed to do was realise that not everything will always go right. Win lose or crash, what matters is that I persevered, and persevere. Right?’

‘Right,’ Joy says.

Jennie looks at her again. ‘Where did that come from?’ she says.

‘It’s been on my mind for a long time,’ says Seulgi. ‘I’ve just been trying to find ways to formulate what I mean properly. And now I think I have. So, yeah. Win, lose, crash. It is what it is. The universe has its own plans.’

‘That’s deep. Maybe I should get a drink, you know?’

At that Seulgi laughs. It’s a content laugh that tells much of how she’s feeling, a placid tranquility at her place in the world she inhabits. Her eyes fall on Irene again, inspecting her drink, one hand on the stem of the glass and one leaning on the wood counter. ‘Now to wait on her,’ she mutters quietly.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing. Ignore me. Talking to myself. I think I’m going to call it a night early. Get some rest.’

‘Good idea,’ Jennie says. ‘Good luck for tomorrow. Win lose or crash.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

It’s left and behind her to the stairs up through the hallways of the Beau Rivage and to her room but she stands there by the table for a moment as if unsure of how to proceed and then with a trepidation at the unknown in her heart she goes on up to the bar and leans against it and waits for Irene to notice her, but she already has. She noticed Seulgi the moment Seulgi stood and excused herself. Sat trying not to laugh at how obvious she’s being. For a minute Seulgi just watches her in the low light. The shine of her. How right.

‘Want me to order you a drink?’ Irene says with a smirk, eyes still on her glass. ‘They make some good cocktails.’

‘I was just heading off.’

Irene finally looks at her. The subtle glint of self-pity in her eyes is long gone. ‘I was about to do the same,’ she says.

‘Can I ask you a stupid question I should probably know the answer to?’

‘Sure.’

‘What’s your car’s name?’

‘What?’ Irene says, laughing.

‘This year’s Samsung, I mean. What have you called it? Wendy told me you name all your cars. Can’t believe I didn’t know that. Last year’s was Starburst. The year before was Cobalt. She said she didn’t know the others.’

‘2017 was Gloria. 2016 was Hermes.’

‘Hermes? Like the delivery company?’

‘Like the Greek god. Because he was fast.’

‘Right. What about this year’s?’

‘Haven’t got one yet,’ Irene says. ‘Don’t know why. I guess I just got forgot. What about you?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says shyly.

‘You named yours?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well.’

A momentary pause. She says in a soft voice, ‘Reve.’

‘Reve?’

‘It means dream in French.’

‘Why Reve?’

‘Well…it means dream in French.’

‘Apart from that, I mean.’

‘Don’t know. I just thought it sounded nice. Rolls off the tongue, no?’

‘Yeah, it kind of does.’ She hums in amusement. ‘Reve,’ she says. ‘I like it. Is that what you wanted to ask me?’

‘Yeah. Don’t know why. I just did.’

‘Well then.’

‘I should probably head off.’

‘Yeah.’

She stands there awkwardly staring at Irene and Irene back at her. Trying to formulate some form of proper response or additional query or explanation for her feelings but she cannot. So instead she holds out a hand and says, ‘Good luck for tomorrow, champ.’

Irene giggles, low in . She shakes Seulgi’s hand. ‘You too,’ she says. ‘Partner.’

On the grid ready for the lights to go out she’s still smiling.

Perhaps it’s telling of the influence Seulgi has over her that she spent an hour last night in bed trying to think of an appropriate name for her car and came up dry and now she sits thinking only: Reve is cute. That’s just like her. I wish I had thought of Reve.

The static jolts her out of her trance moments before the lights signal the countdown. ‘Alright,’ Wheein says. ‘You’ve got pole, now it’s time to bring it home. No heroics into Saint Devote, please. Keep the lead, open a gap, dictate the pace, and do what you do best around here.’

‘Park my car in the middle of the track, you mean.’

‘Exactly. Don’t let anyone even think of getting past you. Just make yourself as wide as possible. Tire deg should be low, and the chance of rain is down to twenty percent.’

‘Typical.’

‘Right. No more talking. Good luck.’

The first light is on before she’s finished. The engines behind her begin to growl and the crowd are drowned out and it’s no longer thoughts of Reve or car names or Seulgi at all. It’s the short run up to turn one and the inside line through Massenet and adjusting the brake bias for the Swimming Pool. Five lights. Time in an hourglass, paused indefinitely. Her heart beats out a torrid rhythm. The lights go dark and Irene pulls away and the world bleeds through with the acceleration and her head is spinning and she brakes and locks up and manages to maintain the lead over Seulgi only barely but it’s all she needs. Barring catastrophe the race is already won.

She slows into first gear for the hairpin and catches sight of the train of cars slow behind her on the tight corner as they roll slowly down the decline and toward Portier and then into the tunnel where the sound is enormous and everywhere. The car feels much smoother through Swimming Pool and it’s a testament once again to her ability to adapt on the fly less than a day before that she’s pulled out nearly a second’s difference in one lap. Seven laps later and Seulgi is behind her once more.

The crowd watch them disappear in a blur through the tunnel. Her lines are smooth and coordinated. Seulgi never attempts a move. She’s too smart for that. She knows already that Monaco is almost too narrow to overtake and Irene is good enough to turn that into a near impossibility. Fourteen laps into the seventy-eight-lap race Irene peels off into the pitlane for a new set of soft tires and is back out in fourth place as she sails up through Beau Rivage and weaves so close to the wall at Casino to nearly scratch the paintwork from the barrier.

‘Right,’ Wheein says. ‘Everyone ahead of you has yet to pit, so you’re good for first still.’

‘Why did you pit me first?’

‘To stop the undercut attempt.’

‘Undercut? At Monaco? I’m going to lose time in traffic.’

‘No you won’t. Not if she boxes in the next two or three laps.’

‘I hope you’re right on this one,’ Irene says, eyes still on the tunnel as the dark engulfs her and the car along the road in a great heaving roar of air. Two laps later and she’s at Swimming Pool when Wheein says, ‘She’s just pitted from the lead. You’re good for first. You should have a two-second gap going into turn one.’

But when she’s at Saint Devote and then up through Beau Rivage once more there’s no sign of Seulgi anywhere. Not even in her mirrors. First it’s a pale blur of an Apex that isn’t Seulgi and then only for a moment the smaller image of Yeri in third. ‘Wheein,’ she says, hands hard on the wheel. ‘Talk to me. Where is she?’

A long pause. Wheein says solemnly, ‘They weren’t ready for her.’

‘What?’

‘In the pits. Miscommunication on their end. They weren’t ready with the tires when she boxed. She was held up for a long time. She’s down in sixth now.’

‘,’ Irene mutters, unaware she’s said anything at all.

‘Focus on your own race.’

‘I will. I will, don’t worry.’

It isn’t until lap fifty she sights any other cars behind her that aren’t backmarkers. Joy’s white-and-orange Apex appears as a small and distant shape coming out of the tunnel as she rounds the Nouvelle chicane and is gone again at Tabac. ‘Wheein,’ she says.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why did you put me on the mediums?’

‘We thought they’d give you the advantage in pace.’

‘How long did you say they were supposed to last today?’

‘Tire degradation is low.’

‘But how long?’

‘Thirty-five to forty-five laps.’

‘And you gave me these tires on lap fourteen,’ Irene says. ‘So you want me to do sixty-four laps on these?’

‘We thought it was the best option at the time.’

‘I’m losing grip already. The rears are both going.’

‘You can hold it together. Just conserve your pace. Dictate the flow.’

She does just that. There’s no other alternative. Seulgi is long behind her but the grip is loose and she has to fight to stop it sliding at Rascasse and the crowd are aware something is up, the decision is questionable. On lap fifty-one she’s nine seconds ahead of Joy. Eight laps later and the gap is so small Joy has DRS on the main straight and Irene can see her appear enormous as they both slow for turn one. ‘Wheein,’ she says. ‘She’s got so much more speed than me on those tires. I don’t have much more to give.’

‘I know.’

The crowd are out of their seats. Going up the hill before Massenet Irene glimpses the yachts silent out in the harbour and winking like ships of Greek marble in the pale light. Joy is still behind her ten laps later. The pace is there and she’s massively faster than Irene but Monaco is too narrow and Irene too good and the crowd watch in awe as she places her car perfectly on every line as smooth as smooth has ever been, pinpoint accuracy. Lap sixty-seven, then sixty-eight. Wheein is silent. Joy’s impatience gets the better of her at the hairpin. She tries to cut down the inside and Irene cuts her off and Joy is forced to break hard enough to almost miss the turn completely, hands frantically hauling the wheel around like a shipman at sea to stop it from veering into the far-side barricade.

It’s a slipup that costs her almost two seconds. A mistake that Seulgi would not have made, nor Irene herself. By the time Joy manages to catch Irene again on her superior tires Irene is crossing the finish line to a round of thunderous applause and the cameras are already out and she has won. ‘Wheein,’ she says.

‘Good . That was some real good .’

‘Never put me on those tires like that again.’

‘It was a risk today, but it paid off. Because of you, Irene. You drove a perfect race.’

‘Where is she?’

Wheein doesn’t even need to ask. She says in a small voice, ‘Finished sixth. Yeri in third, Jennie fourth.’

The calculations are complete by the time she’s in the garage after her interview and wiping the sweat from the back of her neck. Seulgi’s twenty-eight-point lead has become eleven, with two races to go. The gravity of that doesn’t hit her until she’s cooling off in her hotel room, the ecstasy of victory still aglow as she sets the trophy on the table beside the other trophies she carries in her luggage and turns it so it catches the pinchbeck dusklight at just such an angle as to look chiseled from some more perfect gemstone and thinks, for the first time since Baku: I’ve got my mojo back. I can really do this.

Seulgi is smiling.

Win, lose, crash. Her confession to Jennie and Joy plays back to her in a loop alone in her hotel room. Today was a costly mistake, perhaps a championship-losing one. A team error caused by a lack of communication. But the first thing she had done after climbing out of the car was hug Wendy and tell her it was okay and that these things happen. That it was nobody’s fault. You take the bad with the good.

And Wendy had looked at her and with a smile of sincere compassion on her face had said, ‘You weren’t lying.’

‘About what?’

‘About finally finding yourself.’

‘No,’ Seulgi had said. ‘Not even for a moment.’