Lost and Found

Chapter 11

Daily life had been much the same. Sara would go to work early and leave around five to make herself and cookie some food. Then she would do some more research or tidy things up and call with friends – Anthoine, Pierre or even Carlos – or family.

At work, part of the things she did was try and arrange a moment where Andrea would get to come over to Paris. In the end, it had been decided that it couldn't be any sooner than June – much to both Camille's and Sara's dismay. So, the following week, Camille took a few days off and flew to England to see Andrea, leaving Sara to work at an empty desk without any distractions for a change.

With her newly found interest in racing thanks to Anthoine and Pierre, she watched both Grand Prix that she wouldn't be able to attend before Spain. She tried her best to understand it, but all the profession related terms made it hard at times. She was in no way familiar with them. She recognized the words from the times spent at the track when they were still in school, but she in no way knew what they meant.

So with all the knowledge she lacked, she came to the conclusion the races hadn't been that much of a disaster, or at least, China wasn't. Pierre had qualified and finished the race in sixth position. Granted, there was more than a minute separating him and his teammate and almost a minute separating him and fifth place belonging to Charles Leclerc up ahead, but it had been better than the race before and Sara was proud.

Afterwards, Baku followed, which did not do well for Pierre who was disqualified from the qualifying after missing the sign to go to the scales and therefore had to start from the pitlane. To make matters worse, his car broke down and he was forced to retire from the race in the 38th lap.

For Anthoine, Baku wasn't as much of a disaster. He didn't do particularly well in qualifying but made up nine places to finish sixth in the feature race to finish fifth in the sprint race.

All in all, the races made for mixed emotions. Especially with Carlos doing okay in Baku and not so much in China, opposite to Pierre.

Sara sighed deeply and hauled her heavy bag over her shoulder. It was time for their trip to Florida, hence she was back in Belgium in the – middle of the week – to surprise her mother with the flight tickets for the entire family.

"What did you bring? Your entire closet?!" Melissa looked at her daughter as she dragged a holdall and a suitcase into the house. "It's my birthday, not you moving back into my house day!" She looked at her daughter. "Did you get fired?" Sara laughed at her mother's response.

"Am I that big of a disappointment you expect me to be fired?" Mandy looked at her daughter with a pointed look. "Mum!" Sara in her turn exclaimed but she hugged her mother tight nevertheless. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you, darling." They pulled back. "It better not all be laundry because your washing machine broke down again." It had happened once that Sara's washing machine had broken down the day before she would go back to Belgium. Because she didn't want to bother anyone else with the laundry and the pressure of having to have everything washed and dried in half a day, she had taken all her laundry back to Belgium and had asked her mother to wash them for her.

"Don't worry mom. It is not." She walked up the stairs with her luggage, leaving her mother at the bottom of the stairs.

"Then why do you have that much luggage?" Usually, a holdall was all she needed for the time she spent back home, but things were clearly different this time, Melissa was just unaware still.

"Now you're just teasing her." Martin stood at the top of the stairs, grinning down at his sister. "You're pure evil."

"It's not like I can actually tell her why I have brought this much luggage yet, now can I?"