The Surrogate

Prologue

Hungary. Late July 2021.

Seb can't get the idea out of his head. Ever since a female friend had mentioned it during a catch up in a local café in March, when he'd last been in Heppenheim, it's been constantly on his mind.

He remembers her just casually putting the idea to him, it was almost as if they were talking about him getting a new car, as if she was helping him to decide which make or model to go for. But this wasn't a car that they'd been talking about, this was a human life or a newborn baby to be more exact. "Why don't you look into surrogacy?" Emma had suggested before adding, "don't look at me though, I couldn't go through something like that. I couldn't carry a baby for nine months and then have to give it away."

He's spent weeks researching it and Emma is the only one who knows about it. He's afraid that people will think he's weird for wanting a child through surrogacy when he hasn't even tried to have babies with a girlfriend or a wife.

He's a single man. During his years with Ferrari he's been far too busy to think about relationships or marriage and children; winning world championships is all he's been focused on, it's been a childhood dream to win in red, to bring the glory days and the glittering trophies back to the Scuderia. But it hasn't worked out, there's been a few times when success was almost in his grasp but it slipped away through a combination of his mistakes and the team's and the dream turned sour before it ended.

Now he's halfway through his first year with his new team. Aston Martin have been like a breath of fresh air, Seb feels renewed and reinvigorated; the stress has gone, the pressure has been lifted from his shoulders and he's fallen in love with racing all over again. So far this season has been the first one he's really enjoyed since 2018.

Since he's not had the same demands on his time this past year that he'd been used to with his old team, it's meant that he's had a bit more down time. The extra free time has been good but it's also given him too much time to think. Living in a big house in the Swiss countryside is wonderful but it would be even better if he had someone to share it with. The converted mill is missing the sounds of laughter and little feet running around the place, it's missing toys and nursery furniture scattered around the place, swings and slides in the garden and children's artwork proudly displayed and taped to the front of his fridge. It's a family home, it's not meant for a single thirty-something guy to rattle around in on his own.

He's longing for a family of his own, he's pining for the day when his little girl holds his hand and calls him 'daddy', he's dreaming of the day when he can take his kids karting or camping or whatever they want to do.

His need to become a father is even greater than his desire to win world title number five yet so far he's failed to meet the woman of his dreams, 'the one' who he wants to spend the rest of life with and share in the joy of becoming parents.

So he's decided to take matters into his own hands, he doesn't need a girlfriend or a wife to make him a dad. Yes, it's an unorthodox way of doing things, some will say it's downright odd but he knows he'd make a great dad and he's already got the next year all planned out for when he achieves his goal.

It'll be expensive, surrogacy doesn't come cheap and in a way it feels wrong to be putting a price on a new human life so he's looking at it from a slightly different perspective - it's not the baby he's paying for, it's to compensate the woman who'll be carrying and growing his child in her body for nine months. It'll be a way of thanking her for bringing a precious new life into the world and giving him the best gift in the world - fatherhood.

And he's determined that he can manage this feat all on his own, he's got it all mapped out to the smallest detail. He knows that when the baby is born it'll be tough juggling the demands of being a Formula One driver with being a new dad and that the baby will arrive part way through a jam packed 2022 season. If he plans it right though, then his baby would be due in the summer break and it'd at least give him a couple of weeks to get used to the big change in his life. He's not going into this blind, he knows that he'll need help at every race weekend he attends from the Belgian GP onwards (where he goes the baby will go, that's non negotiable) but the next season will most likely be his last and after that he'll become a full time parent.

Lifting up the screen of his MacBook, he's straight on to the website he's spent the past four weeks looking at, poring over tons of information and a list of different potential baby-mommas. It feels wrong to be picking a woman out from a website but he's narrowed it down to two who he's interested in meeting. Once tomorrow's race is over he'll be free of his F1 commitments for about three weeks; it's time he's going to use wisely, starting with travelling to London in the hope of starting his journey to parenthood.