The Photographer

(30) Decisions

It had been long ten days for Seb without Iris but it had been ten days where he'd not wanted any distractions. He'd had so much to think about and he'd needed the time alone while he'd agonised over what to do.

Retirement from Formula One, when racing had been pretty much all he'd known for his entire life, was not a decision to be taken lightly but circumstances over the past few months and particularly in Austria had pushed him close to the limit of what he could take. It wasn't just the lacklustre performance of his still unnamed AMR22 that was behind his final decision, it had been a combination of things. Inconsistency from the race stewards, errors by the team both in the race and in qualifying, pressures behind the scenes that included meetings and phone calls about the lack of points finishes, the boss's son being given preferential strategies and sometimes being made to feel like he was being compared unfavourably to his teammate, clashes with sponsors who didn't agree with his principles on climate change and human rights and wanted to silence him and make him conform and the not so small matter that he constantly questioned himself on the fact that what he did for a living basically made him a hypocrite. He no longer felt at peace with himself jetting around the world to race cars that burnt fossil fuel. Everything had come to a head and staying in Formula One just didn't feel right anymore, no matter how much he still loved racing and the changes Formula One had coming to the sport.

There was a life outside of F1; there were other things he wanted to do, other interests and new passions he wanted to find and explore and F1 was becoming more and more difficult to fit in with that.

If it hadn't been for one thing (more specifically one person) then he would have made his announcement this weekend. Iris, his beautiful flower. She was oblivious to the fact that he'd just made one of the biggest decisions of his life so far, she'd got no idea he was even thinking of retiring. She had to be the first person he told outside of his family and he wanted her to know before he officially told Britta, Antti and Mark so she wouldn't doubt how serious he still was about their relationship. She had to know that leaving F1 didn't mean the end of things between them, he wanted her to be an even bigger part of his life from the moment his career ended and he was hoping that she'd leave the sport along with him.

Entering the paddock on a busy media Thursday, he planned to have told her by the end of the day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Iris," there was a knock on the office door and she spun round in her chair to see one of the girls from catering standing there with a bouquet of white and purple irises, "these are for you."

"Just put them on the other desk, thank you," Iris pointed the desk that was sometimes used by Neil. She waited until she was alone again before getting up from her chair, going to the flowers and plucking the little white envelope from the card holder, nestled amongst the blooms from which her mother had chosen her name. Pulling the card from the envelope, she turned it over to read the message. Again there was no hint as to who had sent the flowers, just a simple message that read, 'Beautiful Iris x'. Feeling even more unnerved, she puffed out a long breath and then muttered, "fuck, Ben's going to go mad." This was the third bouquet she'd been sent now. After the first one had been delivered to Silverstone, a second bouquet of roses (red that time) had arrived at the team's UK base just a week ago. Not knowing who was sending them was getting really creepy and Ben wasn't happy that someone else was sending his wife flowers. This third bouquet was going to have to go in one of the large waste bins in an unseen area behind the paddock, she couldn't risk Ben seeing these.

There was another knock on the door, making her nearly jump out of her own skin and she looked towards it, cricking her neck in the process and yelping in pain, "fuck!"

"Shit, I'm sorry!" Seb dashed over to her and immediately removed her hand where it had flown to her painful neck, to replace it with his own. He began to gently rub her skin, hoping to ease the pain. "I didn't mean to startle you, I thought I'd come and see you before the fun starts," he explained, kissing her forehead as she stood still and let him continue, "I've missed you so much."