Faith makes it to Qatar in time for the season’s kick-off. Everything is bigger and more classy here than at the old established tracks. It somehow matches her new role as the owner of two successful teams. Everything is big now, and more complicated. She feels small.

  She has transferred the management of Mori Motors to Hugo Oliveira. The operative decisions are all his. She belongs to Claymore. Owning both teams is not a sustainable thing. Ren and Nicholas and herself are already working on a solution that is not going to strip Claymore of the advantages a collaboration with Mori has given them.

  The rumours had started again, of course, after Mori’s death, and especially after news had gotten out that Faith had inherited the team and everything he had owned. People were talking, and this here in Lusail is her first public appearance. People are not saying friendly things.

  She holds her head high when she goes to the first management meeting, together with Oliveira. She had offered Tom that he could go to represent Claymore, but he had declined. Oliveira is similarly driven as Mori had been, which means that there are little changes to the way the team is run. Faith admires the Brazilian for his directness and exactness. She has gotten to know him better, she has observed him with his wife and kids, and with them he is a lovely, funny man, but at the racetrack, there is no room for fun or jokes. He is a machine. Her other team is in excellent hands.

  Claymore, compared to that, feels like a bunch of rookies ans amateurs. This is mostly her fault.

  The reporters had not really given her space to breathe. The old stories had been brought up again, all the speculations about her relationship with Mori. Fairy tales know no greater seductress than her. If you knew, Daijiro chan, what I’ve been doing to you! If only she could find it funny at all.

  The vibes at the meeting feel exactly like that. Much like at the start of the previous year, except that nobody dares to utter their comments out loud because now she has power. People do not stare, but they do not talk to her, either. Oliveira keeps out of it. And so does Tom, which hurts Faith the most.

  She needs Tom to keep Claymore running, and he does a fantastic job. The minute she appears, however, he withdraws. He is not an idiot. He is not going to go on like this forever. He really should be sitting here now. Why is this so messed up?

  The reporters are allowed into the room at the end of the meeting, for a short press conference. Of course, she is the centre of the attention. Again and again, people ask after Mori and her new role, until she has enough and says, “Gentlemen, what are we talking about? Isn’t this supposed to be about racing? We’re kicking off a new season, and you obsess about my personal life, and that of Daijiro Mori. Is it so hard to accept that sometimes life acts up and does not go as expected? Can’t you just do you job and report about racing? Would it not be much more exciting and appropriate to ask Hugo what he thinks about the new Akane engines? Claymore, by the way, is using the Akane-Mori engines from last season, they are doing fine. Or ask Luigi how the beautiful new design of his cars agrees with the desert wind. Or ask anybody about their choice of tyres. Ask something meaningful, and stop behaving like yellow press reporters.”

  Her little sermon is followed by silence. Then somebody asks, “Would you like to tell us something about your choice of tyres, Mrs Casadoro?”

  “No.” She laughs. “Excellent question, though.”

  There is laughter, and then Hugo starts knocking on the table. Slowly, the other team managers and the journalists join in.

  Tom has been watching the press conference on his computer. Again, he is impressed with the way Faith is dealing with these things. One almost forgets that she is so very young, only twenty-four! She has aged, in some ways, during the past months, but considering what she has had to go through, it is a miracle that she is here at all. She laughs a lot less, but she is going to recover. She had been dealt a blow by the death and the will of her grandfather, landing her in an awkward position, and she had created all sorts of problems for herself, enough for a lifetime, but she has pulled through and come out on top. She had corrected her mistakes and she is the soundest human being he knows.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Of course, she had been lucky, too – she had picked the right people to advise her, among them himself. If the people knew that she had spent the last weeks with Mori, nursing him and keeping him company, everybody would respect her, and they would not dare to bother her with stupid questions. She could have acted differently, waiting it out, but she had gone forward and done the right thing. Tom shudders at the thought. She is an admirable person.

  And today, at this meeting and when faced with the press, she had pulled through once more. He had declined when she had asked him to go in her place, saying that they wanted to see her, not him, which is true, and she had accepted it. She has a gift for dealing with the press; they ought to make better use of this.

  That she had asked him at all is probably due to the fact that his position on the team is not a happy one. He cannot leave the team right away. She is still too busy dealing with the consequences of Mori’s will. What he knows about it are only the things Nicholas and Ren have told him the other night when they had gone out for a drink. Ren had also told him what had gone down between her and Mori. Tom is sorry to have been so cruel during that video call, but it is impossible to address again. Mori had willed that she could do what she liked with his team – keep it, sell it, whatever. He had trusted her, and she is doing her best to honour that trust.

  He would have liked to work at Mori Motors, but the decision to put the team into Oliveira’s hands had been made by Mori himself, and it was a good decision. Faith is in no way to blame for not changing it. Apart from that, he cannot leave Claymore now, not yet – and so the spiral begins again.

  He cannot leave her. Why exactly is hard to tell, though. He had hoped, at some point during the past year, that they might find a way to do things together. But there had never been a moment when they had both been free. The last time had been when she had come to see him at the hospital in Glasgow, but no, not even then. He had been weak. It had always been asymmetrical.

  Their one moment had been in Melbourne, perhaps, but she had already gotten herself into that business with Mori, and from then on it had been a vortex, and the occasional glimpses of friendship and trust had been tantalizing and not helpful at all, since all they had done was keeping alive what probably never would get a chance to blossom. As a reminder, he had kept the press photo from Silverstone. In fact, he is looking at it now, and it is breaking his heart to see them smiling at each other at that moment of triumph. He would never be part of her life. He ought to move on as soon as possible. Find himself a new job, and a new life.

  The door of the trailer opens and Faith comes in, flopping into the seat across from him, untying her hair and shaking it loose.

  “How was I?”, she asks.

  “Brilliant.”

  She sighs. “What do you think, how are we going to do?”

  “Within the top quarter. If nothing bad happens.”

  “Oliveira is doing an amazing job. Nothing has changed over there.”

  “Over there?”

  She looks at him. “Tom, Mori Motors is the last thing I wanted. It is going to be the first thing that I sell. But Claymore has to profit from that.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Oliveira is not going to be replaced any time soon. I’m sorry if that fucks up your plans. But he decided it that way, they are a winning team, and I cannot change that.”

  “I know, Faith.”

  “Tell me as soon as you’ve made up your mind as to what you are going to do, please.”

  Tom does not reply. She ties her hair together again and gets up to leave. “I thank you for everything, but I’m not going to stop you if you find something you’d rather be doing.”

  The race is a bumpy affair; the desert heat is unkind. They are experiencing all kinds of mishaps. Strathairn, on zoom, calls them toothing troubles. The other teams suffer as well, and after a long stretch where Mori’s drivers are leading, they lose one of their cars due to engine failure, and Deniz and Sandro end up in second and fourth place. An excellent result, and important to strengthen Faiths position in her negotiations with Akane, the Japanese constructors. Everybody leaves with the feeling that they have placed their bets on the right team. Only Tom is having mixed feelings, despite having predicted their good results. Everything is right, and still it feels wrong.

  Faith leaves on Sunday night, calling out, “See you on Thursday”, to everybody. Nicholas is holding the door for her. They are off to Japan. Tom feels excluded.