The other woman

France

This weekend marked the start of a triple header, three race weekends in a row. It was a particularly busy time for the travelling team members as they'd have to pack everything up on Sunday night and leave as soon as they could to make the trip to Austria where they'd spend the next two weekends.

For Aleksandra the triple header was a curse as well as a blessing. It meant that she didn't have to put up with seeing Seb and Gisela all over each other and didn't have to watch him playing happy families but it did mean two and a half weeks with him without much of a break.

The crew were unfortunately having to work through lunch after Seb had spun at turn eleven in the first practice session and that included Jake who'd she'd been wanting to speak to. He'd had a private meeting with Seb to try and clear the air back in England and an uneasy truce had been reached but Alex was yet to see him, feeling like she owed him an apology for what happened that night in Milton Keynes.

What she didn't know was that Jake had been warned to keep his distance.

She stood at the back of the garage watching him, he was among a small group who were currently working on the car's suspension. Every now and again he'd look her way and she'd catch his eye but he made no effort to talk to her.

Britta, meanwhile, had caught up with Seb in the paddock and the two of them were heading into hospitality for some lunch. She looked around, looking for Alex but she was nowhere to be seen.

Seb kept his mouth shut but inside the jealousy was resurfacing, he knew where Alex would be - in the garage where Jake was.

Rather than go back into the garage after her he sent her a quick text, informing her that himself and Britta were now having lunch and that she should join them too. He purposely made sound like an order and not an invitation.

"While she's not here...." Britta began as they sat down at a table. "....I wish you'd tell me what's going on between you two."

He put his phone down and removed his team cap to ruffle his hair. This wasn't the first time she'd asked him this and he was really trying to act as if everything was normal, he'd even gone as far as encouraging Alex to do the same, obviously their efforts hadn't been good enough. It wasn't that they weren't getting on and they weren't arguing either, things just weren't as they'd been and Alex was often quiet, as if she'd got a lot on her mind. There were times when he even thought that she was avoiding him. Wondering if he'd missed a notification in the ten seconds he'd sat there, he tapped on his phone to see if she'd replied. There was nothing, just the image of a happy, smiling Gisela sitting proudly with their three children.

"Seb." Britta tapped on the table to get his attention. "Talk to me."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He shrugged, looking towards the door in the hope that she'd come in. He was glad and so relieved that nothing about that night in Keynes had become public knowledge, it meant that Britta was none the wiser too.

"Somethings happened, you two have disagreed on something and whatever it is, Alex is still unhappy about it."

He looked at her, giving her a please-shut-up-now-and-leave-it kind of look. After all their years working together, he knew that she knew him well enough that they could often communicate without saying a word. Even Antti had got the hang of it when he'd been here, he hoped to get that same closeness with Alex too.

"Is it her contract? Does she have an issue? Is it something to do with your training programme?"

He rose a brow slightly, she obviously hadn't got the meaning of his look a minute ago.

"Is it to do with Soren?" She asked, ignoring the looks he was throwing across the table at her.

"Hey champ, I hope you haven't ordered anything naughty." Aleksandra joked as she sat down next to him. It felt like she'd literally appeared out of thin air.