Second Split

Chapter 1

ADRIAN HUNTER never saw his final sunrise.

The wind reached down from a glowering sky and slapped drizzle across his face. He shivered, stamped his feet, watched tiny waves radiate across streaming concrete. The rain had a mind of its own, he thought. It clawed under the hood of his marshal’s parka, no matter how low he pulled it.

Behind him the empty grandstands rattled to the tune of a thousand beer cans. Between wet gusts he caught the shuffle of feet on a walkway above. A cleaner, he supposed – sweeping up yesterday's memories. Triumph and tragedy, a blur of colour and noise. If he breathed in deep, he could taste it – tortured rubber and singed carbon, the sickly-sweet tang of burned fuel.

The British Grand Prix. Same as it ever was.

His marshal’s post overlooked the southern tip of Silverstone Circuit. Before him, the Hangar Straight rose to meet its famous corner, named for the nearby village of Stowe. This swept into a dogleg as it crested the rise, dropping away towards the Vale chicane to his left. A veil of fog cut his domain off from the world, the truncated strip of track prompting an old memory and a half-smile. Like a stray bit of Scalextric.

Sounds came at him from beyond the veil. A clang, the muted shriek of a wheel gun. Seemingly close by, but the fog was playing its favourite trick; the noises emanated from the pitlane, half a mile away.

He pictured it: funereal compared to the ordered chaos of race day, twenty-four hours earlier. Engines silent, burned-out mechanics dozing in the garages. Drivers huddled in oversized jackets, wishing themselves on faraway yachts or private jets.

Off to his left, the diffuse glow from the paddock buildings faded in and out as curtains of rain blew across the infield. The weather looked to be worsening – puddles linking to form streams across the tarmac, the red-and-white striped kerbs glistening.

What had they said in the safety briefing? He shut his eyes, forced his mind back. Minimum visibility. Yes. Surely that was marginal now. Not for the drivers, but for the medical helicopter. No chopper, no cars allowed on track. The teams would be packing up by mid-morning, the post-Grand Prix test session over before it began-

All at once the sweats came again and his knees buckled, ice melting down his spine. He gripped the railing and rode it out, told himself to focus.

Be strong. For Caroline.

His earpiece squawked, making him jump. Pitlane open. Chest thudding, he glanced at his watch as the numerals ticked onto nine o’clock, felt a familiar tingle at the nape of his neck. Five seconds later a new sound carried through the fog.

The hollow scream of a Formula One engine.

He took shallow breaths, listened to the car make its way around the circuit. Distance and the restless wind diluted its savagery to an undulating wail; the melody calmed him. The nausea tightened its grip but he ignored it, clamping his gloved hands together.

It was all right. There would always be the circuit, the cars. Another race. A reason to bear the pain.

And out there in the rain, Penelope Jane Aston was dancing.

Chapter 2

The circuit unfolded like a ribbon of glass, mirroring the pewter sky.

In tarmac and steel, in earth and grass, it lived and breathed and lay in wait for the foolhardy. One false move and the beast would pounce, swallow you whole. Spit the pieces into gravel traps or tyre walls.

But if you showed due respect, ventured through the looking-glass, it would relinquish its secrets. Ripples and pocks in the soaking tarmac, roughened areas where the changing seasons had taken their toll. Precious nuggets of grip.

With fingertip feel and the seat of her pants, Penny Aston searched for these.

The car was skittish, clumsy on cold tyres. She guided it into Silverstone’s Chapel corner at what felt like walking speed, pressed the throttle pedal with a feather touch. The rear wheels spun, skipped the tail sideways; her hands flicked the steering wheel a half turn to the right. Controlling the slide, keeping the beast at bay.

She slithered out to the striped kerb, straightened up, finally dared to give the car its head. Eight inches behind her seat, the engine shrieked up at the sky; she held on tight as her stomach and kidneys tried to swap places.

Beyond a hundred miles an hour the aerodynamics squashed the car into the road; with stability came a transient calm. The wind dragged ever-smaller raindrops from her visor, the treaded wet weather tyres mopping up a bathful of water every four seconds and shooting it into a fifty-foot rooster tail of spray.

The hulking crescent of grandstands at Stowe loomed ahead, dwarfing the corner beneath. She counted off the distance marker boards, the hundred metre board missing a jagged chunk of polystyrene and its 1. Yesterday’s memory intruded.

She banished it, aiming the car into Stowe with a single sweep of the wheel, trying to keep all four tyres keyed into the streaming surface-

-too fast-

The front snapped away first, the rear following as she tried to correct, the car writhing like a poked cobra over the kerbs onto the tarmac run-off area. She swore, double-clicked the left paddle behind the steering wheel to drop two gears and rejoined the circuit.

A familiar voice crackled in her head. “How’s the car, Pen?”

Penny grimaced. Her mistake would show as a lurid spike on his monitor.

“Crap…” The chicane at Vale was next; this lap’s first real test of the brakes. She trod the left pedal; saw, out of the corner of her eye, the blurred tread on her right front tyre stop dead. The car slewed; she sawed at the wheel and tapdanced the brake pedal, trying to avoid a mortifying visit to the scenery.

“There’s no grip. No traction…” She sucked in a breath as the car hit a lake at Club and more or less floated through the final corner.

Back on the start-finish straight, paddock buildings towering on her right; along the pit wall stood a row of covered enclosures, one for each team. All dark except the fifth; she glimpsed a face, palely lit by the screen before him.

Bruce Docker. Race engineer, punchbag, waterproof shoulder.

Despite the wet she was past a hundred and sixty miles an hour by the end of the straight, jaw clenching, lifting the throttle for the high-speed entry to Abbey… through without drama; the car was better at speed.

“…and no brakes,” Penny grouched.

“Well, it’s bloody wet…” Bruce Docker, purveyor of priceless wisdom. “Try going two clicks back on the brake balance.”

“Won’t do any good, I- need a bloody… parachute.” This while barrelling into the tight left-hander at The Loop with only one wheel turning.

“Copy that… we’re showing low tyre temps. Give it two more laps then bring her in.”

“Okay.”

You shouldn’t be out there in the first place, he hadn’t said. On the back straight, she winced as the ache in her thigh spiked. They were learning nothing, wasting fuel and tyres and putting the car at risk. In this weather, nobody else would bother taking to the track.

But I need to be out here.

Through the slow left-right of Brooklands and Luffield, the fast kink at Woodcote, the car twitched and shivered and scorned her attempts to keep it pointed in the right direction. The driver, at least, was coming to life, the Monday-morning fog clearing from her head.

Copse came next. Old school, warp speed. Deep breath.

Scream if you want to go faster-

The wind gusted, sent the car chattering over the waterlogged exit kerbs; the beast licked its chops. She sidestepped it, steadied the car; blasted up through sixth gear before slowing for the Becketts complex. Together they danced through the sequence of Esses, the engine playing a staccato riff as she balanced power, grip and traction.

Back on the Hangar Straight, she keyed the radio. “It’s better… tyres starting to come in, brakes are okay-”

Something’s wrong. Instinct prodded; she glanced at the mirrors, the readout on the steering wheel. Nothing. The Stowe marker boards flashed past.

300… 200… 00-

She lifted at ninety metres, massaged the brake pedal for half a second and turned in. The front skittered, then bit, the car’s nose arcing towards the crest of the rise-

A smudge of movement, bright orange, rushing across her path from right to left. Her hands wrenched the wheel right, aiming for the widening gap as her right foot jumped off the throttle. But the car, starved of grip, began to loop around as its rear tyres gave up-

A thud, a lurch, and the orange blur was gone, over her left shoulder. In slow motion, the red-white stripes rotated ninety degrees; she watched an eerie glow sail across her field of view.

Paddock lights, she thought – as time speeded up and her shattered front left wheel assembly speared into the earth beyond the kerb. The world upended.

Fire shot through her from skull to hips-

Then all was silent black.

Chapter 3

Wish I had a fast forward button.

Penny stared into the mirror and imagined, for a blissful second, that it was Saturday. Tomorrow. Qualifying day. The second passed; she gritted her teeth, leaned closer, clamped the tweezers in place and yanked.

“Ow!” A jingle of metal on porcelain. “Sod it-”

“What on earth are you doing?” Kat Hartwell paused with nail brush in mid-stroke, met Penny’s eyes in the mirror.

“It’s no good.” Penny looked away. “I’m not going.”

She felt iron fingers grasp her shoulders and spin her around.

“I’ll hear no more of that.” Kat retrieved the tweezers from the washbasin. “We are going, and we will enjoy ourselves.” She zeroed in on Penny’s left eyebrow. “Now hold still.”

“Why – ouch – do we put ourselves through this?”

Kat sighed. “To make you – and by association, me – look good. A little more Grace Kelly, a little less Einstein.” She examined her handiwork. “Good thing we haven’t done your makeup yet. You’d have washed it right off.”

“It bloody hurts.” Penny wiped tears from her cheek.

“You didn’t cry when you crashed at Valencia and a piece of suspension went through your leg.”

“This hurts more.”

“And I thought racing drivers were the real gladiators.” Kat set down the tweezers. “That’ll do. Right, you get on with your makeup, and I’ll lay out the dresses.”

Penny sat down on the edge of her bed, shoulders slumped. “Can’t I say I’m sick, or something?”

Kat raised her eyes to the ceiling. “You know you can’t, Pen. Frank and Merrick expect you to be there. And those fans that won the competition… you’re a star. People want to see you.”

“Balls. No-one sees me when you’re there.”

To call Kathryn Jane Hartwell a knockout was to call Michael Schumacher a moderately successful pedaller. At five foot ten, with porcelain skin, a mass of golden curls and legs to shame a supermodel, she made the hordes of nubile beauties that flocked to the Formula One circus look faded and artificial.

“Should I stay behind, then?” Kat’s face had clouded, the Canadian twang in her hybrid accent more pronounced.

“God, no. It’s just…” Penny blew out a breath. “If one more bloody journalist asks if we’re sisters, I am going to lamp him.”

“I know. The thought keeps me awake at night.” Kat turned away, stepped across to the built-in wardrobe and slid open the door. “We do look alike, though.”

“Yeah? Like Cameron Diaz and Ann Widdecombe, you mean?”

“We both have blonde hair and our colouring is similar.” Kat pulled a plastic-shrouded dress from the wardrobe and laid it on the bed. She fixed her clear grey gaze on Penny. “And I’m tired of hearing this. You have good skin and great cheekbones.”

“And a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac and thighs like a rugby forward.” Penny saw her friend’s beautiful jawline clench in frustration. “I’m sorry, Kat. I shouldn’t care. I don’t care, but… I’m a racing driver, for Christ’s sake. Not a pinup girl.”

“Don’t be such a drama queen. I turned Playboy down, remember?”

Two months before, a titillating rumour had rocked the paddock: allegedly Penny had accepted a huge sum of money to appear in a raunchy photo shoot. Pure fantasy, but they were still dealing with the fallout.

Something out of a nightmare tried to force itself to the surface. Penny shivered.

Watching her, Kat had paled. “That was tasteless. I’m sorry.”

Penny shook her head, dredged up a smile. “They should put it to the male drivers. Full Monty, F1 style.”

“Ugh.” Kat shuddered. “Can you imagine?”

Penny stood and walked to the window of her motorhome. They were parked at the fringes of the secondary paddock behind the main pit area, on what had once been a runway. Evening sunshine streamed across the open grassland of Silverstone’s infield, flashed off the turning rotor blades of a helicopter as it began to spool up. Thirty or more aircraft stood in two long rows on the tufty grass; as the first lifted off, the blades of a second began to move.

It was seven o’clock on Friday evening. The first day of practice for the British Grand Prix had ended with a team debrief an hour before. Four days of hard work stretched ahead: final practice and qualifying on Saturday, the race on Sunday; car and tyre testing on Monday and Tuesday.

For the next forty-eight hours, time in the cockpit would be golden. Precious snatches of calm amongst a wall-to-wall barrage of fake smiles, over-firm handshakes and stupid questions. Penny rested her head against the cool glass.

“Some days I’m not sure I’m up to this.”

As she said the words, she felt their echo from a dozen previous occasions. She heard Kat sigh behind her.

“Look. You are Formula One’s only female driver. You’re bound to attract a different kind of attention. It comes with the territory. If you want to be World Champion, you’re going to have to deal with it.”

The second chopper was larger than the first; the window rattled as it rose twenty feet in the air, pivoted through ninety degrees and lifted away to her right. She glimpsed a familiar logo, a red-on-white scrawl along its flank.

“I wish you could be me when the helmet was off. I could drive the car, and you could play the media darling. You’d be brilliant.”

“Penny…” When she turned from the window, Penny was struck by the expression on Kat’s face. There was resignation, as usual, and… something else.

Kat seemed to shake herself. “You need to focus on the goal. Don’t let the circus get to you. Take the frustration and turn it around, use it as fuel. You know this.”

Pull yourself together. Penny exhaled, nodded. “I’m sorry, Kat, I just get so… I’m just no good at pressing the flesh.”

“You’re a lot better than you think. You just need to relax, learn to enjoy it.”

Penny snorted. “Snowflake’s chance in hell of that.”

Kat wagged a finger. “Pessimism will get you nowhere, honey.”

“You should tell Frank.”

“I do,” said Kat. “Frequently. You two are as bad as each other.”

She unzipped the plastic shroud and lifted out a shimmering cocktail dress. Penny blinked as the sunlight caught a swirl of aquamarine sequins, flickering fire across the ceiling, leading her eye to the teak-framed print on the wall opposite.

The painting lent a sliver of character to her temporary home. Two grey wolves on a snowy hilltop; one stood guard while the other lay curled on a flat rock nearby. Penny focused on the savage beauty of the animals, the setting. Wished herself on a snowy hilltop.

Kat held up the dress, looked Penny up and down. Her guts clenched. Oh God, she wants me to wear that-

Kat narrowed her eyes, anticipating the protest. Penny bit her lip.

“I know I rant whenever we… whenever there’s eyebrow plucking involved. It’s like a warmup routine, I think. Helps me get through it.”

Kat blanched. “You mean we have to go through this every time?” Penny nodded. “Can I wear earmuffs?”

Penny laughed. “Of course. As long as you nod and smile.”

“Deal.” Glancing at the digital clock on the bedside table, Kat wound the Scottish half of her accent up to full strength. “Now then, Penelope. Stop being a Jessie and get your clobber on. The Vodafone Summer Ball waits for no woman.”

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